PBS’s CEO on the role of public access media in a digital—and divided—world

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Transcript:

Alan Murray: Leadership Next is powered by the folks at Deloitte, who, like me, are exploring the changing rules of business leadership and how CEOs are navigating this change.

Welcome to Leadership Next, the podcast about the changing rules of business leadership. I’m Alan Murray.

Michal Lev-Ram: And I’m Michal Lev-Ram. Alan, I have a question for you that I’m pretty sure today’s guest would be interested in hearing the answer to, and that’s, how much TV do you get to watch?

Murray: Wait, wait, are you really asking me that question? Uh, well, so, to be honest, I probably watch maybe 30 minutes in the morning on news, and an hour at night before I go to bed. Is that fair? How about you? You can’t ask me that question and not answer it yourself.

Lev-Ram: You know, it comes and goes. It depends if I’m binge watching something or not. But I would say a little bit more, but not above the recommended, you know, no more than well, not recommended, but whatever the maximum of two hours a day. And that’s on a binge day. 

Murray: Well, the question we’re going to get into in a minute is how much of that watching is public television? Because our guest today is Paula Kerger, the CEO of PBS, and she’s been in that job for 18 years.

Lev-Ram: Yeah, that is a long time, nearly two decades at the role. And Alan, I have to ask you, can you imagine being CEO for 18 years?

Murray: No, please, let’s not talk about that. I’ve got four years under my belt, and it feels like 18. It’s pretty tough, but I have a very soft spot in my heart for PBS, because I spent, gee, I think almost 10 years appearing regularly on a PBS show, Washington Week in Review. It was before Paula’s time. When I went to Florida, I always felt famous. I was a big hit with the PBS crowd.

Lev-Ram: And I have a soft spot in my heart for PBS for a different reason, and it’s because of the kids’ content. One of the things I brought up on the show is, not only my kids have watched a lot of it, but I also watched a lot of it. It was one of the ways I got … English was more ingrained in me at an earlier age when my family moved to this country. So anyways, the fact that she’s been at this role for so long, going back to that. This is one of the things that I thought was super interesting about this interview, because you have to think about how much the world of TV has changed in the last 18 years, right? 

Murray: Massive transformation. I agree with you. And, and what’s so interesting that we talk about this in the interview is that she was responsible for driving the digital transformation of PBS. She doesn’t really have that much control. You have 330 public television stations that are all separately owned. She doesn’t control them. And so she had to nudge, encourage, lead them into the future.

Lev-Ram: Yeah, no, you think about how difficult digital transformation is when you’re not this federated organization, but in her case, there are layers and layers of challenges. And I have to ask you, Alan, another question for you. You tried to sell her on the idea of producing more business content today, and how do you think that went over?

Murray: Well, so I mentioned I used to do Washington Week in Review. They had a show then called Wall Street Week in Review. There was a brief time when our colleague Geoff Colvin from Fortune hosted a show there. But today they really don’t have any business programming. I think that’s a big weakness. And Michal, I think we just should sit next, sit close to our phones and wait for Paula to call us and take Leadership Next to PBS.

Lev-Ram: Agreed. I’m sitting close to mine, and for now, here is our conversation with the CEO of PBS, Paula Kerger. 

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Murray: So Paula, I want to start with the most fundamental question, I’m sure I’ve been asked a million times in this job, but: Why does the world need PBS? Why given all that’s going on in media, the explosion of different kinds of media, why is public access media important to us? 

Paula Kerger: Well, Public Media, and I think the need for PBS, frankly, has not shifted in the 50 years since it was created. We were created as a space to do all the things that the marketplace wasn’t gonna be able to sustain. And the marketplace shifts all the time. And we’re seeing fundamental shifts right now. And so, areas like documentary film, which had been a mainstay of public broadcasting, has gone through, you know, quite an interesting period over the last few years, where it felt like there was a huge marketplace for docs. And now, almost no marketplace for docs, unless you’re writing about crime, or celebrity adjacent, or you know, some current affairs type of stuff. There has to be a space where you can bring forward ideas that may not be hugely popular, there has to be a place for high-quality children’s content, for really, a place of inspiration and exploration. And that’s what PBS has always been, and will continue to be. 

Murray: So do you explicitly look at the marketplace and say, Where are the gaps? What’s missing here?  And then focus your attention on those? So you’re not looking for the biggest opportunity, you’re looking for the biggest need? 

Kerger: I’m looking for the biggest need. And so, if you think of the rest of the marketplace that’s chasing eyeballs, I’m chasing, really, the public interest. And you know, what is missing out of that, and it shifts from time to time and, you know, I, I have a place with all the other media organizations at the Television Critics Association press tour. And I always feel like the outlier there, because I often say that, if suddenly there is a great interest in a franchise that used to be a mainstay on public broadcasting, I claim success, because the ability to really generate more and more good media, to me, is part of what PBS was was created to do. 

Murray: And if viewers can’t get enough: true crime programming. 

Kerger: Yeah, it’s not really—I mean, we dabble a little bit in some of the British mystery type of shows. But that’s not really the mainstay. I mean, what we were really thinking about are, you know, what are the programs that—look, we’re not spinach, so we’re hoping to be entertaining. But really, when we hit our mark, we’re hoping to be educational, inspirational. 

Lev-Ram: Some people like spinach, by the way.

Kerger: I love spinach, by the way. I love spinach.

Lev-Ram: But, but I want to ask, you know, obviously, people’s tastes in programming changes. And I know you said you’re looking at need, not just opportunity, or not necessarily opportunity. But what those needs are has also shifted, programming has shifted. You’ve been at PBS for a long time. Has the strategy, the underlying strategy, shifted as well?

Kerger: Well, look, what is our North Star is quality content. I would call it content of consequence, content that actually has an impact in some way. And that, you know, I think, for all companies, you have to understand what that core is, and what is sacrosanct that you don’t want to touch. But you can’t stay frozen in amber, you have to evolve as an organization, and you have to really pay attention to, you know, the needs of the public, and, what does it mean to fulfill those needs?

And so, you know, in terms of our strategy, the core about doing important programming, that remains. Documentary, kids programming, arts programming, news—all of those have been, you know, a through line, but how it’s created, where we put emphasis. Right now, we’re very focused on climate programming, for example, we’re very focused as we look out, not only at the next election, but also the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence as two important nodes to really look at this whole idea of, what does it mean to be an American? And what does citizenship mean? And how that then is, is thought about—both in terms of helping young kids understand, you know, basic civics, as well as the rest of us really understand, what is that glue that holds us together? What was envisioned when this country was put togetherm=, and what does this mean now? How does that inform what we do moving forward? That, to me, feels like a very public television kind of initiative to do, and, by the way, in addition to the work that we do for kids and for adults, we also have services and classrooms.

And so you know, there’s three pieces of the service that we provide. And being able to look at all of it together holistically, feels like something that is different and unique than any other media organization looks like. So in terms of how we think about our mission and how that plays out, obviously, we’re constantly thinking about the moment in history that we sit, and what will be important. The second is, and has become very important over the last years is, and how do we connect with people? Where are the places where people sit? And how do we make sure that we’re delivering content to reach them in those places where they consume content, so whether that’s broadcast, or through cable, which was traditionally how we were delivered, whether it’s through YouTubeTV, and some of the other platforms, whether it’s on places like Digital Studios, which is our YouTube play, which is a whole other type of storytelling, games, for kids, all of that. So the shape of the content may shift, because of the platforms themselves, you want to take advantage of what they offer up. But again, the objectives behind it, the mission behind it, that stays the same. 

Lev-Ram: By the way, we heard from our very own CTO about your digital transformation, which he’s very familiar with. But I wonder if we can kind of you can walk us through maybe a little bit about how you started approaching this, because there are so many different directions, you could go in with this with creating a multi platform experience, you know, being like you said, meeting where consumers where they are, but how did you approach this and make sure that it was still true to sort of what PBS has stood for over the years. 

Kerger: It’s an interesting journey, because also remember, I run a federated organization. So we have 330, individual stations that are separately owned and operated and governed in communities across the country.  

Lev-Ram: That sounds fun. 

Murray: I was gonna say, you’re not gonna say this, I know, but that has to be a nightmare. 

Kerger: It’s an interesting challenge. 

Lev-Ram: Well said.

Kerger: I have a lot of responsibility, but no ultimate authority to force anybody with anything.  And if you think about this whole period that we’ve been through, where for decades, our stations were very clear on what their job was, they had a broadcast signal that extended out over a certain geographic area, which was then replicated through cable, and they would push material out, and they control basically what was seen in their markets. So for me, I kept thinking about, okay, if the public is going to require a different type of interaction with us, then how do we bring not only the PBS content, but all of our stations along this journey together. And so it has been iterative, like everything in this world. And so the first work that we began to do in the digital space, is we were watching an emerging group of talent on YouTube, some of whom would have been public television producers back a few years earlier, but now we’re looking at this technology is the place to create content. And we thought, how interesting because here’s a space where we can bring some of the talent of people that are already there, not looking at TV producers, and they’re trying to figure out how we’re going to dump their stuff onto YouTube. So is it going to be a promotional play, but this was really thinking about what YouTube offered, besides efectos, also reaching a younger audience, which is something that I was always interested in, because I always felt like we have a lot of content that was of interest to a wide audience.

Murray: I’ve spent many years on your terrestrial channel, Washington Weekend Review, which was made me very well known when I went to Florida, 

Kerger: Correct. So there are a lot of younger people that do come in and out of our programming. But here is a space where clearly we could reach younger people. And so we created Digital Studios, we did it like a skunkworks. It operated not within the Television Group and operated as a separate organization. And we gave them a lot of latitude to experiment. And we got very lucky early on, we did this trippy little piece, that was an autotune of a Fred Rogers song that went viral almost immediately. It was just a Lightning in a Bottle event and we thought, Oh, this is kind of cool because we can do something that gets people talking about ideas and public media in a very different way that feels tied to our legacy, but also feels very forward looking. And then we started to invest in some YouTube artists and, you know, flash forward 22 million, you know, users a month, you know, something like 3 billion views since we started with it, it’s been hugely successful. So that was the first adventure that felt different than public broadcasting. Then, as you know, we were looking at the decline in DVD sales, which funds a lot of our producers, you know, how are you going to make up for that revenue. And we, you know, began to, to develop relationships with the Netflixs and Amazons, and so forth, that our deepest relationship was built with Amazon. So we have a relationship with them, where we not only distribute content, but we also have channels, and that helps us to pay our producers revenue that they would have made in DVD sales. And, and then we began looking at some of the other platforms, we developed the app, it was very clear as smart TVs were evolving, that that was going to be a space. And then we began to look at other ways to distribute content. So when we did a deal with YouTube TV, which is our most significant recent deal, we said, we would like to partner with you. And we would like to bring 330 of our friends to the table. So what we would like you to carry is not just PBS, but we want you to carry all of our stations. And, you know, it was an interesting conversation, which eventually went really well. And so that set the stage for them to deal with Hulu Plus, with local live and others that we continue to move out. So we’re bringing them all with us.  

Murray: Which you have to.  

Kerger: We have to! But it’s also they couldn’t do it on their own. But it’s scary, because we’ve got content now sitting in all these places, they don’t fully control. But we want them to own the experience locally.

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Murray: Jason Girzadas, the CEO of Deloitte U.S.  is the sponsor of this podcast and joins me today. Welcome, Jason. 

Jason Girzadas: Thank you, Alan. It’s great to be here.

Murray: Jason, Leadership Next was created around this idea of stakeholder capitalism. But there’s clearly been political pushback to that idea. And there’s also economic pressure as the economy slows down. How do you serve all stakeholders? How do leaders balance the need to deliver profit and return on investment on the one hand, while also prioritizing the needs of these increasingly diverse stakeholders that they have to respond to?

Girzadas: Yeah, decision making in this environment is not easy. That’s for sure. The historic norms of simply looking at ROI from a financial lens is insufficient, quite honestly. What we’ve seen in some of what we’ve tried to do ourselves is open up the aperture to recognize that there are actually multiple lenses that need to be utilized when evaluating significant decisions. How does the decision impact the workforce? How does it impact these societal stakeholders and whatever the decision may be? And so I think that discipline, a multifaceted set of value drivers and value stakeholders will be increasingly a more common part of all decision making at board and executive levels that discipline, Alan, will make it easier to actually be more cognizant and inclusive of the multiple stakeholders in making significant decisions. Now, that doesn’t mean that the financial returns and expectations become secondary. I think they’re more balanced with the considerations with other stakeholder needs.

Murray: Jason, thanks for your perspective, and thanks for sponsoring Leadership Next. 

Girzadas: Thank you.

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Murray: This is such a great conversation, you were really talking about a case study of what Leadership Next is all about, modern leadership, where you are faced with a transformational existential challenge. You have the total responsibility, but none of the authority.

Kerger: None of the authority!

Murray: I mean, this has been a 20 year journey.  

Kerger: Close to, yeah, 18 years,  

Murray: 18 years. So what are the lessons you have learned? Yeah, because frankly, this is this is the challenge that virtually every leader we talked to, I would say, Michal, faces, it’s not like the old days when it was top down. You tell people what to do. And they’ll do what you tell them to do, you get your results. It’s much more about motivating, inspiring, bringing people along figuring out how you get everybody on the same page. What are the lessons you’ve learned in those 18 years that you could share with our listeners? 

Kerger: It’s classic stakeholder management, it is understanding that to make any change, people have to have trust in you, that you were in it for the collective whole and that there isn’t some, you know, various plot somewhere to the world or whatever it is. And that, you know, I think mostly, in most circumstances, not all, but in many circumstances, that if people at least feel heard, even if they feel that you’re asking them to do things that are painful, they’ll give you a little bit more latitude. But if they feel that you’ve shut them out, that you’ve come into a circumstance where I know better, trust me, we’re gonna get this done. You just have to spend the time and, and shoe leather. And I would love to tell you that I had this all worked out from the very beginning, but I didn’t. What happened to me was really very much a journey. When I took this job. PBS was in a very different place. There was a lot of distrust between our stations and PBS as the national organization. I had come from one of the stations I come from New York, I was at WNET, where I was the station manager and COO and so at least I could say of walking shoes I’ve I’ve been down this journey before. But I was from New York, which is an island off the coast of North America. It’s not exactly Peoria. It’s not exactly all the stations, it’s a big station one that produces content for the rest of the country. And so I felt that saying, I come from a station got me this far. But I really had to put myself out there. And by the way not to sell myself, but to actually understand what was going on at our stations and what their challenges were. And I wanted to hear that not just from the CEOs, but I wanted to hear from all the people on the ground, so that I understand what are the things they were excited about? What are the things that are keeping them up at night? What services were they trying to provide? What were their sort of hopes for the future? What do we not touch? All of those things. And so I have not visited every one of the 330 sessions, but it didn’t, almost all of them. And you know, so I felt like I had a good sense in conversation, not me just coming and talking to them. But really a conversation of what, you know, what people were really wrestling with and what we’re building together

Murray: Michal, I know you have a question, but I just want to say we I’ve been interviewing business leaders for four decades, little over four decades, it’s getting kind of scary, actually. But,  in fact, we did a poll earlier this year, where we ask CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, how did your leadership change during the pandemic? And there was one word that was used by half the people who answered that question, open ended answer you put any words in there you want to and it was usually only a few words, because they’re CEOs was empathy, 

Kerger: Empathy.

Murray: Which was not a word I heard very often and everything I’m hearing from you about the last 18 years. 

Kerger: It’s empathetic leadership. And it’s also the transparency piece is important. Because during COVID, you know people wanted you just say it was all going to be okay. They wanted you to tell them things that you could not say. And I think that it is it is a big leap for a lot of CEOs to be able to say, You know what, I don’t know, I don’t know exactly where all this is gonna go. But this is where I think that you know what, we’re gonna go through this together, and we’re gonna figure it out. And so I think hand in glove with that it’s definitely empathy. You know. So really working through this whole process over the last few years in particular, I think is just a powerful reminder of how important it is to be directly engaged. 

Lev-Ram: So I want to ask you, one of the challenges that’s  and opportunities it’s been building for quite a while, which you touched on is just the changing model, the changing landscape, but it’s also changed the economics, including for the creators, for the creatives. And so I’m curious. I mean, first of all, are the strikes the WGA, and SAG strikes impacting you and your programs? And I think more broadly, also, how do you think about making sure that as you’re exploring these new platforms, that the creatives are not only along for the ride, but that the economics work for everybody involved? 

Kerger: Public media has a separate agreement with SAGAFTRA and the WGA. So we are not subject to the contract strikes that are underway now. We have a full pipeline of programming for this fall. So I hope you’ll watch a lot! But I think that, you know, as I described a few minutes ago, one of the things that I’ve been very focused on is the entire economy. So I’m focused on our stations. But I’m very focused on the content creators, because if the content creators are not hed whole, this is what took us down the Amazon path, is we could see that they were going to lose the revenue that was coming into them through DVD sales. And we also can see that individually, they weren’t going to be able to negotiate their own deals that were really going to give them what they needed to, to continue on.. It’s a tough job to be a documentary filmmaker. And so being able to bring all of our, you know, producers together and to be able to negotiate all of this on their behalf, it’s very much with them in mind of what it would take to keep them together. 

Lev-Ram: So you’re saying Ken Burns is going to be okay. 

Kerger: Ken Burns is going to be okay. But, you know, and perhaps Ken could have done his own deal. But I think for most of them, it was, you know, it’s a very difficult, you know, path particularly now. I mean, you look at the recent Sundance Festival, where out of, I don’t know, 2000 plus submissions. One deal was made out of last year’s Sundance Festival, which is very different than just a few years ago when everything was being bought up. So I you know, and so and we’re in it for the long haul, you know. Documentary film is a very important piece of what we do and making sure that voices and stories that are not well told, are brought forward. And again, that comes back to your first question about why public media, you know, that’s a core piece of who we are, is finding those stories and bringing them out. 

Murray: You mentioned earlier that we’re headed into an election year. PBS is perceived, rightly or wrongly as leaning to the left of the political spectrum. And periodically, probably far too often for your taste, becomes a whipping boy, in election season…How do you deal with it? 

Kerger: Well, this is where having 330 stations that are in communities across this country are tremendously important. Because they are the ones really that spend a fair amount of effort making sure that local legislators understand what public media is in this country and what it provides to communities across this country. So the work that they do in schools, they’ll bring legislators in, so they can actually see the impact that we have in providing content and resources for teachers. A lot of legislators will come into local studios for their debates and so forth. But I think broader, just helping them understand what you know, really is a tiny amount of money. And if you look at all the public broadcasters in the world, and you look at how much of the government funding goes into them versus us, we’re sort of at the bottom of the list, I think we’re like about a buck 50 a person is what the investment is the national investment is in public media. And then we raise the rest. And so just making sure… 

Murray: What percentage of the total is public money versus…?

Kerger: Fifteen. That’s one-five. And that’s an aggregate number. So here in New York, I don’t know what it is for WNET, probably about 7% or 8% of their budget. Cookeville, Tennessee, which is a little station in Appalachia, that’s about 80 miles from Nashville, it’s probably about 60% of their budget. So, you know, when Lyndon Johnson had this great idea of a Public Broadcasting Service, his idea was that every community should have access. And so that’s one of the things that we make sure that we that legislators understand is that stop these periodic discussions about whether there should be funding No, but ultimately, and I’m looking for wood to knock on.

Murray: This is a wood free studio.

Kerger: But I think that, you know, hopefully, will, will continue to prevail. And you know, look, our stations in Florida, they run, they run a terrific tornado, excuse me, Hurricane alert, system, all of our stations together the backup infrastructure for the Emergency Alert System for the country. So we are always looking for ways that we can use our capacity for the public good. 

Lev-Ram: We can’t let you leave, or I can’t let you leave, at least without asking about PBS Kids programming.

Kerger: Yay, PBS Kids!

Lev-Ram: I gotta say, I’m a big Bluey fan. But you’ve got a huge slate of pretty incredible programs, and obviously have had quite a reputation on that front for a long time. And what do you think it is about PBS kids about the slate that you guys have? How do you keep it going? How has it become such a cornerstone of the organization? And how do you keep that up?  

Kerger: So you know, that part of our work is so profoundly important. So we were talking a little while ago also about, you know, technology and, and distribution. There are a lot of families that rely still on over the air television, and a lot of them have young children in their homes. And so for, you know, for many families, we are IT in terms of children’s programming. And our programming is put together, working in, in close collaboration with early childhood education experts. So our programs are tested, both in terms of their ability to hold kids’ interest, which everyone does. But then the second part is and also around curriculum that kids need to master before they enter any kind of formal education. And so I think people always think about PBS. And they think, oh, well it’s safe, but it also is very much structured on making sure that all kids, including those that don’t have access to high quality pre-K education, have that experience before they enter a formal education. And then we work with amazingly talented and creative producers. And as we have continued our work in the digital space with kids, we have remained very focused on how we make sure that our content is accessible to kids that may not have access to robust broadband. So if you’re a mom or dad, and you don’t have broadband, you can download our games and kids can play them on your cell phone, when you’re not connected to the web. And I think that is, again, an important piece of what we attempt to do. And I think with technologies that continue to evolve. We’re interested in digital, because when you watch something passively you gain certain knowledge and experience. But when you interact with any content, the educational attainment rises significantly. So for us to be able to continue to look at linear storytelling is a powerful way to engage kids. That’s great. And then to put that alongside of the work that we do in the digital space, I think it just creates something that is quite significant in helping to close the learning gap. 

Lev-Ram: Well, I have to say, well before Mobile Apps existed, I have to at least partly credit PBS with me learning English when my family moved to this country. So thank you. 

Murray: Wow how cool. And that’s great, but Paula there is one big thing that’s missing from PBS. A business program. 

Kerger: Actually, you’re right. 

Murray: And Michal and I are available.

Kerger: Yeah. Right. And actually, it is something we’ve we have talked about from time to time, because, yeah, so we’ll certainly keep your names in mind.

Lev-Ram: And it turns out, there’s an audience for it. It’s amazing. All right, Alan, I’m gonna let you have the final question here. 

Murray: Okay, the final question. This is our big final question this season. What book are you currently reading are recently finished, that made a big impact on that made 

Kerger: Hmm, made a big impact on me… I just finished reading Your Brain on Art. And it is quite interesting. I’m very interested in science anyway. And in neuroscience, I have always been a big proponent of the arts. I’ve had a public school education, of which art and music was a big piece. I have no talent in either area. But I think it changed my life. And this book really talks about how the neurons in your brain fire differently with arts experiences. So I am constantly stumping around the importance of getting arts education, exposure to kids and adults. And this proved my point. 

Murray: Great, great. I’ll read it 

Lev-Ram: Thank you so much. Yeah. Thank you so much for joining us.

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