PBS reduces station dues nearly 13% in FY27 budget

The PBS board of directors approved a fiscal year 2027 budget Tuesday that reduces station dues to levels that predate the rescission of public media’s federal funding.

The budget projects that PBS will break even at $323.6 million, about $46.3 million less than the FY26 budget approved last June. Station assessments provide revenues of $197.7 million, a 12.9% drop from $227 million in FY26, which ends June 30.

The board proposed the FY27 budget in March and sought feedback from station leaders ahead of its final approval. A dues task force is working on another track to develop recommendations on how PBS calculates station assessments, according to Ed Ulman, CEO of Alaska Public Media, who is leading the task force.

PBS’ FY27 budget anticipates $68.8 million in income from grants that support content and technology investments. That figure includes $38 million in private grants and restricted gifts raised by the PBS Foundation. The foundation will also provide $16.9 million in general operating support.

A $15.2 million line item for “other revenue” includes “a draw from our long-term investment portfolio and also several other sources of revenue, including sponsorship, underwriting and ancillary revenue, as well as interest income,” said PBS CFO Tom Tardivo during a finance committee meeting Monday.

In remarks to the board Tuesday, President Paula Kerger said PBS is “on the cusp of a great transformation.”

“It’s going to be uncomfortable. It’s going to be difficult,” she added. “It’s going to force us to wrestle with important questions about what we make, about whom we serve, about how we do our business, about what public media needs to be for the next generation of Americans, not the last one.”

Kerger told the board that she’s “not giving up on the federal appropriation …, but we need to do this ourselves.” She characterized the surge of donations since last summer as “a movement” of growing support for public media.

“So let me say one more time, ‘Thank you’ to the people who told us our time was over. You remind us exactly what time it is,” Kerger said. “It is time to build the strongest version of public media this country has ever had. … The best chapter of public media is not behind it, it’s the one we’re about to write. And we’re going to write it alongside a country that’s come through every test in history and it’s going to come through this one too.”

Looking ahead

Kerger highlighted two forthcoming docuseries associated with Ken Burns: Emancipation to Exodus, slated for 2027, a four-part history series on the experiences of Black people from the end of slavery to the beginning of the Great Migration; and LBJ & the Great Society, scheduled to release in 2028. PBS has also acquired rights to Ken Burns’ entire film catalog for 10 years, she said.

Ulman briefed the board’s finance committee Monday about the dues task force. Consultants from Deloitte are working with PBS to develop recommendations on the station assessment.

“Our goal is to deliver a practical, well-grounded recommendation to this committee and ultimately to the full board in September,” Ulman said.

Ulman led the task force that developed the current dues model, which was approved by the PBS board in late 2024. That formula uses nonfederal financial support — data that CPB compiled on stations’ income from private sources — as a factor in determining dues. The dues model, which took effect with PBS’ FY26 budget, was intended to help stations predict their annual dues payments and ease the financial burden on large stations.