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ASPEN, COLORADO — PBS CEO Paula Kerger recounted the “extraordinary” year her organization has had after President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans revoked its federal funding.
Appearing Sunday at the Aspen Institute’s Ideas Festival, Kerger was asked to summarize the dramatic saga PBS underwent, which she referred to as a “year of letters,” the first in January 2025 from Federal Communications Committee (FCC) Chair Brendan Carr, who was probing PBS’ corporate partnerships, followed by a letter that March from then-Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., who summoned her and NPR CEO Katherine Maher to testify before the DOGE Committee’s hearing, which she noted was titled “Anti-American Airwaves.”
“I repeat this all the time because of all the things in the last year, that was the most offensive,” Kerger told the Aspen audience.
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She then noted the letter she received from Trump on his executive order withholding federal funding from PBS and NPR.
“The most sobering moment of the year, maybe even my life, was signing the lawsuit against the president,” Kerger said. “I did feel the gravity of the moment. I mean, never in my life did I think that I would be signing a lawsuit against the President of the United States.”
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The effects of the pulled funding were immediate, pointing to the scrambled effort to fund its new PBS Kids show “Phoebe and Jay” and cancelling an initiative to provide American Sign Language for children’s programming.
“Our stations were counting on that money. Eighty percent of the money that comes from the federal government actually doesn’t go to me or to NPR, it goes to the stations. That’s where that money goes,” Kerger said, before citing “50%” of the budget at PBS-affiliated station like in Cookeville, Tennessee came from federal funding.
“We’ve laid off 100 people. I mean, we’ve had very deep cuts,” she later revealed.
Kerger said she turned to famed documentarian Ken Burns to help sway votes in the Senate after a bill to defund public media passed in the GOP-controlled House of Representatives.
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“I am very hesitant to ask someone like him to wade in on something like this because we try to protect our creative talent, but I was desperate at the end and I knew we were really, really close,” Kerger said of Burns, who was sitting beside her at the Ideas Festival. “He made calls and we had the votes, and then there was a pause for about an hour and a half and my colleague Jeremy… he and I are talking and he said, ‘I think we’ve got it. I think he pulled it out.’ And then we didn’t. And we lost by one vote.”
Despite the turmoil she revisited, Kerger then shared the “good part of the story,” which was the creating of a “runway” for stations who heavily relied on federal money with a fundraising effort dubbed the Bridge Fund, hoping it will provide them at least two years of funding. She also boasted the addition of “a million new members of Public Broadcasting Stations” since funding was pulled last July, adding that the majority of them contribute every month.
“This has not solved our problem, So I can say proudly we’re still here… but it’s up to all of us to make sure if this is something worth preserving that we’re leaned in together,” Berger added.
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