PBS Lost a Billion Dollars. Now what? With CEO Paula Kerger

Channels with Peter Kafka

Vox Media Podcast Network

Technology, Tv & Film, Business News, News

4.4 • 585 Ratings

🗓️ 3 December 2025

⏱️ 40 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The last time I interviewed PBS CEO Paula Kerger was 2019: Donald Trump was President, and Republicans were trying to defund public media — as they had been trying to do for decades. That didn’t happen then, but this year it did, and now Kerger is trying to fill a $1 billion funding hole. So far, she says, PBS and its member stations have held up ok — no one has had to shut down, yet. But while Kerger holds out hope she can convince Congress to start funding public TV again, it’s worth talking about why federally funded public media was created in 1967 — and whether it still makes sense to continue that setup in 2025. And if federal funding is permanently off the table, what will PBS do — and not do -- in the future? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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1:04.7	Every year, hundreds of thousands of people from all over the world flock to Las Vegas for the Consumer Electronics Show.
1:13.6	And they spend a week trying to sell each other on the weirdest gadgets you've ever seen in your entire life.
1:18.6	This week on the Vergecast, we're talking all about everything happening at CES, from the TVs to the AI gadgets, to the humanoid robots that everybody is hoping might someday do your laundry and wash your dishes.
1:30.9	All that and much more on the Vergecast wherever you get podcasts.
1:40.7	From the Vox Media Podcast Network, this is Channels with Peter Kafka.
1:45.3	That is me.
1:46.2	I'm also chief correspondent at Business Insider.
1:49.3	And today we are talking about media and the government and what happens when the government stops funding the media, which is another way of saying I'm talking to Paula Kirker, the CEO of PBS.
2:01.6	As all of you know, PBS and NPR lost a big chunk of funding this summer,
2:06.6	and now the effect of those cuts are starting to materialize.
2:10.6	The good news for people who care about public television is that PBS and its stations seem to be weathering the loss of 15% of their collective funding.
2:19.7	Reasonably well, for now.
2:22.3	Paula Kerger says she has a plan to replace some of that missing money,
2:25.0	and she's still a little bit hopeful she can convince Congress to give her organization more of their funding back someday.
	...

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