Arkansas PBS Commission recommends North Little Rock lawmaker to be network’s new leader

This article was first published by the Arkansas Advocate and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Arkansas PBS’ governing board on Wednesday nominated state Rep. Carlton Wing to take over the agency as CEO and executive director, pending approval from Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

Wing, a North Little Rock Republican and House Speaker Pro Tempore, would replace Courtney Pledger, who resigned in April after eight years at the helm of the public television network.

If confirmed, Wing would be required to resign from the Arkansas Legislature, triggering a special election to finish his term through 2027. Wing announced in June that he would not run for reelection to a sixth term in 2026.

In an email, Wing said interim executive director Sajni Kumpuris asked him if he would be interested in running the agency. Wing and his wife, Leigh, co-founded the video production company Wing Media Group. He is also a former sports broadcaster for KARK, an NBC affiliate in Little Rock.

The Arkansas PBS Commission approved Wing’s nomination with no dissent after more than an hour of discussion in executive session. As of Wednesday afternoon, Arkansas PBS spokespeople had not responded to an email asking how many applicants the commission considered.

If confirmed, Wing would be Arkansas PBS’ third tie to Republican state lawmakers in less than two years. In June 2024, Sanders appointed Maria Sullivan, wife of a state senator, to the commission.

Wednesday’s quarterly commission meeting was the first for its newest member, former state Rep. Charlene Fite, a Van Buren Republican who left office in January after declining to run for a seventh term last year. Her term on the commission will expire in 2032, a year after Sullivan’s.

Fite’s appointment has yet to be formally announced by Sanders’ office. She replaces former commission chairman West Doss, whose term expired in 2024 but who continued to serve in the absence of a replacement. Vice Chairman Woody Freeman conducted Wednesday’s meeting, and the commission has not chosen a new chair.

Sullivan’s husband is Jonesboro Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan, the legislature’s most vocal critic of Arkansas PBS. He unsuccessfully tried to reduce Arkansas PBS’ spending authority in the 2022 and 2024 fiscal sessions.

Arkansas PBS’ spending authority has repeatedly faced resistance in the Arkansas House. Wing was among the lawmakers who urged their colleagues to pass the network’s appropriation bill in 2024, when the bill passed after three attempts. The appropriation took five attempts to pass the House this year.

Funding discussion

Sullivan introduced a bill in February that would have dissolved the PBS Commission, but he and Doss said in March that they reached an agreement for Sullivan to leave the commission alone.

Transferring the commission’s duties to the state Department of Education would have jeopardized Arkansas PBS’ funding via grants and donations, Pledger told lawmakers in February, urging them not to pass Sullivan’s bill.

Arkansas PBS lost $2.5 million in programming and operational funds after the Corporation for Public Broadcasting lost federal funding this summer. CPB announced in August that the majority of staff positions would conclude on Sept. 30, with a small transition team staying on until January 2026. The Community Service Grant from CPB accounted for 51% of Arkansas PBS’ operating expense funding, Kumpuris told the commission at a special meeting in June.

The commission decided at that meeting to renew its PBS affiliation. Renewal allowed the agency to continue purchasing PBS programs to air, some of which are chosen by PBS’ national headquarters. Losing this programming would have led to a drop in donations even though forgoing the renewal would have saved the state agency $2.3 million in national dues, which it usually pays with federal funds, said Marge Betley, CEO of the Arkansas PBS Foundation.

Since June, the Foundation has provided the network with a “one-time emergency fund” of $1.5 million, supporting both operating expenses and about half of the national dues, Kumpuris said Wednesday.

“We’re grateful for the Foundation giving us this time to adjust,” she said. “There are some PBS networks that didn’t get that time.”

The financial aid meant the network only had to use about $500,000 more of its reserve funding than it did for fiscal year 2025, Kumpuris said, and she and other agency officials found ways to reduce expenses by $1 million without impairing network operations.

Kumpuris also said she and Betley are discussing the option of the Foundation covering the entirety of the network’s dues in fiscal year 2027.

“That’s really what our donors give for, primarily with membership, is to support those PBS dues,” Betley said. “That’s one of the primary messages that we send to them when we’re asking for their support [and] that’s the intention of the individual fundraising that we do.”