Jane Krutz, an enthusiastic advocate for more than 47 years for the Arkansas Educational Television Network, died Sunday (March 25) in Little Rock. She was 86. “It is literally true that there might not have been an AETN without her,” Allen Weatherly, executive director of AETN, said in a tribute on the network’s website. “In fact, she was advocating for a public television station for Arkansas years before we finally made it to the air in the mid 1960s.”
Krutz frequently appeared during membership drives, testified before Congress for public broadcasting in 1995, served since 1996 on the AETN Commission, and received the PBS National Volunteer of the Year award. The original studio at AETN, still in service, is named for her. “She was just a remarkable person,” Weatherly said.