With CPB funding gone, public media must lean on creativity and community

Back in November, addressing the coming storm, I quoted Kris Kristofferson’s lyric “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.” Today, I’d like to quote a source even nearer to the heart of the matter: “And now for something completely different.”

If you don’t know where this comes from, look it up. It is a large part of our foundational DNA, part of the path not taken and, I believe, a key to the future we all want to create for public media.

When Monty Python introduced this now-iconic phrase, they meant it ironically. Like clockwork it appeared in every episode, as oddly reliable as it was patently absurd. Such a claim could never live up to its hype, and that was part of the joke. Nothing lives up to its hype, not even public media.

And yet there was truth in the promise of “something completely different,” delivered each week by the Pythons, Bill Moyers, Fred Rogers, Great Performances, Austin City Limits, Frontline, Car Talk, This American Life and so many other shows that were allowed to take flight on our air. Part journalism, part public access, part video art and independent film, with an ethos stretching back to the Marshall Plan and the post-war public broadcast services that emerged throughout Europe and Japan, American public broadcasting gave us access to things we might never have experienced, opening our minds and horizons to new places and ideas.

It is our current government’s collective determination to withdraw its support from this enterprise. Fair enough — the wheels of government must grind on wherever the politics lead it. But public media was never a government institution. It is a public one, accountable to the people it serves. While government funding may be welcome, it should never be relied upon.

Station managers are keenly aware that public media funding comes from many sources, only a small percentage being from the federal government. And PBS and NPR should know there are greater goals than to ensure their institutional survival. If survival is all their directors care about, they will never make people care enough to sustain them.

So instead of wringing our hands, let’s talk about what we can do together now.

First, take an inventory of what’s left. Understandable as it is to grieve what’s been lost, we must also remind ourselves that significant resources remain within the public media ecosystem. They are not always evenly distributed, and this is an area where PBS and NPR can be of service by helping to even the playing field.

We have just experienced an extraordinary wave of goodwill from the American public, resulting in a welcome but (at this point) still contingent surge in member support. Now is not the time to hoard our limited resources; by making this generous investment, the public is calling on us to rise to the occasion.

So rather than prioritizing cutbacks and layoffs, we should seek to deploy our limited resources quickly and cost-effectively, looking for ways to do more with less. This may result in less polished work, but high-end production is not a quality our audience considers essential. What they want is something that informs or broadens their experience, whether it’s giving them new ways to engage with the world or just providing a healthy, cathartic moment of laughter or recognition.

Once we’ve taken stock, we’ll want to reach out and work together. Stations, syndicators, producers, writers, crews, talent, outreach coordinators and the rest, crossing lines between traditional television and radio, should all be looking for opportunities to pool their resources in pursuit of common goals. Let’s not get too hung up on convention – flexibility and scrappy inventiveness will better serve us now.

Finally, we need to partner more assertively with other cultural institutions — many of which are facing similar challenges — and with the community groups and foundations that support their efforts. The more actively we recognize their value to their communities, the more readily they will recognize the lasting value in us.

Most critically, public media needs to invest in people. Creativity, community and heart have always been at the core of our mission — even down to the volunteer-staffed phone banks featured in our pledge drives. Yet over the past 25 years, I’ve seen so many talented, civically engaged people forced or otherwise chased out of the system by insular, bureaucratic thinking. We need to go back to being the incubator of untapped possibility we once were.

If we can take these steps, we can build on the public’s faith and turn it into a mandate, with or without government support. The world is once again watching — this time, let’s make sure they don’t change the channel.

Douglas Chang was producer of Live From Lincoln Center from 2012–20 and supervising producer of POV from 1997–2000. He has also served as program director of KCET in Los Angeles and, most recently, as a senior director of programming and development at PBS with a focus on the arts.