Remarks as prepared for delivery on Monday, February 27, 2023. Watch a recording of this Presidential address.
When last we met, at the 2020 Public Media Summit, we were just two weeks away from the outbreak of the most pernicious pandemic the world has seen in a century.
A hundred million of our fellow citizens fell ill to COVID 19. A million died.
Our schools shut down, and millions of students suffered months of learning loss.
Our economy shut down, and millions of workers found themselves out of work.
Even our society shut down, as isolation and alienation, suspicion and polarization, crime and injustice sundered our body politic.
It was a bleak time that none of us could have predicted as we sat in this very room three years ago.
So today, as we gather for the 2023 Public Media Summit, with its theme of Inventing The Future, a little humility is in order.
For we have seen the truth of the Yiddish adage, “Mann tracht, unn Gott lacht.”
Man plans, and God laughs.
But even so, we find a cause for optimism and a source of strength in the fact that not only have we endured these three years of sorrow and anxiety, but we have been the authors of our own recovery.
Scientists invented vaccines to combat the coronavirus, faster than anyone thought possible.
Businesses invented new ways to work and created or restored 25 million jobs.
Governments invented novel responses to our national challenges and averted a host of economic, social and political calamities.
And we in public media invented a way to help salvage the education of America’s children, launching remote learning operations in all 50 States and providing a communications lifeline to students stranded without Internet access.
This resilience, this resourcefulness in the crucible of a deadly disease has been nothing short of heroic.
And we know now that this generation of Americans is “strong at the broken places,” that we have what it takes to survive, to thrive, to invent a future filled with useful innovation, brimming with promise, and bending toward justice.
Whether we do it or not is another question.
Over the next three days, you and I will explore public media’s role in Inventing The Future.
And we will have help.
Our keynote speaker today will be Frederick W. Smith, the founder of FedEx and a legend in American business.
As Mr. Smith will tell us, he never stopped innovating at his company from the first day to this one.
And we must do the same.
We’ll also be joined in the course of this Summit by other distinguished leaders, including a member of the Federal Communications Commission, bipartisan Members of the House of Representatives who champion our cause, and the Majority Leader of the United States Senate, who will share their experience, their advice, their visions, and their support for creating a public service enterprise reaching far beyond the confines of the television screen.
Fortunately for us, we in public media have a rich tradition of innovation and ingenuity to build on.
We were the first to harness the power of television to the pursuit of teaching and learning.
The first to deliver television programming by satellite.
The first to offer closed captioning, for the hearing impaired.
The first to offer descriptive video, for the visually impaired.
And this commitment to innovation and invention is only accelerating as technology makes new things possible.
Among dozens of other examples:
At both the local and national levels, we are embracing the opportunities of streaming, as viewing habits change rapidly and dramatically.
In Los Angeles alone, more than three million PBS KIDS apps have been downloaded, and young viewers are now watching more than 14 million PBS streams a month.
Detroit Public Television has launched the Michigan Learning Channel to help students and families enrich their educational experience at home.
South Florida PBS has created the Health Channel, bringing medical experts into millions of living rooms for advice on living well.
Vegas PBS has pioneered an extraordinary workforce development initiative to match job training with job openings in local markets.
Public television stations in California have demonstrated how to reduce earthquake warnings from 30 seconds to less than 3 seconds.
And emergency alerting for all kinds of hazards is becoming a new capability for public television stations in North Carolina and across the country.
Our stations in New Mexico are partnering with state agencies to bring education, public safety and border security to some of the most remote and rugged terrain in America.
A hundred of our stations now have datacasting capability to make such services available to millions of people in dozens of States.
Many of these stations are already combining datacasting technology with a growing cloud library of high-quality content to serve the information needs of disconnected students, daycare centers, health centers, emergency managers, and incarceration facilities.
Public stations in 20 markets have made the transition to the new ATSC 3 Next Gen broadcast standard – with all of its potential for greater mobility, security, addressability, interactivity, spectrum efficiency, and signal strength, as well as dramatically better picture and sound quality.
And more stations are converting every month.
Software on display at this Summit will give NextGen stations the ability to connect directly with viewers, increase engagement with them, and enable new revenue opportunities.
And before us lies the intriguing prospect of using a portion of our spectrum to support a national data distribution network connecting consumers and institutions of all kinds to the billions of devices on the Internet of Things.
You will see this week a pathbreaking platform that deploys the right spectrum for the right purpose at the right time for precisely such applications – without the need for elaborate station engineering.
South Korea has found a way to link the NextGen broadcast standard with 5G technology for such a network, and we can too.
None of this is easy, but all of it is possible.
And this Summit will address how station management and boards can work together more effectively to adapt to change, invest wisely, and invent their own futures.
We have been encouraged to do such innovative and entrepreneurial things by Congress and the FCC for decades.
Technology has finally caught up with our ambitions, and we are eager to move forward on many fronts simultaneously.
Central to all of these ambitions is the continuing and growing support of the Congress of the United States.
At our last in-person Summit in 2020, I was proud to report that federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting stood at $465 million, as the result of a $20 million increase that you and we at APTS Global Headquarters had secured in the appropriations cycle just past.
Since then, CPB funding has increased every year, by a total of $70 million – and the CPB appropriation now stands at an all-time high of $535 million.
These increases have been approved by both Republicans and Democrats in Congress, and we are deeply grateful for their bipartisan support of your essential work in communities throughout our nation.
And that’s not all.
This support has also produced an increased budget for Ready To Learn, our program to help pre-school children prepare for success in the classroom, from 29 million to 31 million dollars.
Our appropriation for interconnection and system infrastructure increased from 20 million to 60 million dollars in just one year.
And we convinced Congress to establish the Next Generation Warning System infrastructure program, supervised by FEMA and administered by CPB – with new appropriations of $40 million last year and $56 million this year.
This new account will make it possible for public television and radio stations to upgrade their infrastructure, to ensure their reliability as critical components of the national network that generates Amber Alerts in every State and securely connects the American people with their President in times of national emergency.
It will also help finance stations’ transition to the NextGen broadcast standard.
We’ve been working to establish this station infrastructure program ever since Congress stopped funding the Public Telecommunications Facilities Program more than a decade ago, and we’ve done it, and it’s almost three times as large as PTFP.
State governments have stepped up their support of our work, as well.
Thirty-nine States now provide funds for public broadcasting, and 20 of those States – providing more than half of our State funding -- have both Republican Governors and Republican legislatures.
Including investments in capital projects and other special initiatives as well as station operations,
State funding for public broadcasting reached $363 million last year – an all-time record.
Altogether, government support for public broadcasting passed the $1 billion mark last year -- and that is a milestone worth celebrating.
But we must also recognize that all of this success has been hard won – and all of it must be constantly defended.
A new Republican majority in the House of Representatives has come to Washington determined to rein in federal spending and reduce the national debt, investing only in programs they deem efficient, effective and essential.
One influential proposal making the rounds right now would reduce federal spending by $9 trillion over the next 10 years, largely through cuts in domestic programs.
And we are on that list.
Securing further increases for public broadcasting in such a climate is a daunting prospect.
But we can say with absolute confidence that no federal appropriation does more with less than we do with one-hundredth of one percent of the federal budget.
Eight new Senators and 74 new Members of the House arrived at the Capitol in January, and it will be our responsibility – our opportunity – to show them, and every lawmaker, how essential our work in public safety, education and civic leadership is to their constituents.
And we must show them how an increased federal investment in that work will yield increased public service dividends in the communities we serve together.
We must impress on them that most stations, in most markets, simply don’t have the donor base of corporations, foundations and generous individuals to sustain these services, much less enhance them, without federal support.
The Government Accountability Office reached precisely that conclusion when Congress asked them to study the question several years ago, and the answer hasn’t changed.
This is why we’re asking for an increase of $40 million for CPB in the next appropriations cycle, and level funding for Ready To Learn, interconnection and system infrastructure, and the Next Gen Warning System.
Securing that funding this year won’t be easy. It never is.
We’re already being advised that “level funding is a win” for the next two years.
And under the House’s new rules for debate, an amendment to reduce or eliminate our funding could well come to a vote of the full House of Representatives.
Our job is to make sure that such a proposal doesn’t pass.
And we intend to do our job.
We’ll be ready to meet any such threat, and we’ll show you how at this Summit.
We know that this modest federal investment produces magnificent rewards for the American people.
And more importantly, so do the American people – who year after year cite funding for public broadcasting as the most effective use of taxpayer dollars, after national defense and food & drug safety.
We know that a network of 750,000 grassroots advocates in Protect My Public Media stands ready to send thousands of supportive messages to Congress at a moment’s notice.
We know that the influential citizens who comprise our Leadership Council are poised to tell their friends in Congress how important your work is to their communities.
We know that regular station communications with government offices produce greater understanding and greater support for the work we do – and we know how to make those communications memorable.
We know that we have champions of public broadcasting sitting in some of the most important chairs in Washington, including senior bipartisan leaders of the Senate and House Appropriations Committees, Members of the Senate and House Leadership, and the President of the United States.
But we also know that party margins are narrow in both the House and Senate, that the epicenter of polarization in our country is on Capitol Hill, and that we still have to do the work.
We have to tell our story to every Senator and Representative in Washington – as well as to 50 Governors and thousands of state legislators in capitols throughout America.
And we have the confidence of knowing that the better they understand what we actually do, the more they’re going to like it.
They know about our national programming, and everyone will have a favorite.
But some may question why the federal government should subsidize one programming service when there are so many hundreds to choose from in the modern media world.
Our answer is that no one else in that world does what local public television stations do – and we do it very well.
In an age of media consolidation, we’re the last locally owned and controlled media in America.
We reach 97 percent of the American people.
Every one of those people is important to us.
And without the federal investment, that universal service would simply vanish.
While others program for ratings, and targeted demographics, and the big population centers on the east and west coasts, we tell the story of heartland America:
The high school sports championships, the farming news, the local elections, the history and culture and daily life of a hundred thousand hometowns across our country.
And beyond this homegrown programming, we serve the people of our communities with priceless gifts of education, public safety, and civic leadership:
The 60 percent of kids who don’t attend pre-school but get ready to learn with our help;
The teachers who use the extraordinary resources of PBS LearningMedia, geared to each State’s standards, to enhance millions of students’ education every day;
The police officers and first responders for whom every second counts, and who count on us for reliable emergency communications;
The government officials who use our platforms to speak directly with their constituents, with often life-saving information and without a filter of commentary;
And the 330 million Americans who trust us, more than anyone else, to make them well-informed citizens of the world’s most important democracy.
With growing resources, we could do more essential work, and do it better, as technology enables us to use our spectrum resources for precision agriculture, Smart Cities connections, auto safety, and a growing array of useful public services.
This is the story we want to tell our leaders – this week, and every week, forever.
President Woodrow Wilson said it well a century ago:
“The ear of the leader must ring with the voices of the people.”
We must make our voices, and those of the millions we serve, ring in the halls of Congress and in 50 State governments.
We must convince them that we are not mere petitioners for funding but faithful, resourceful partners with them in essential public service.
The awful years we’ve just endured have reminded us, though tragically, of the things that really matter in our lives.
Our health and safety matter.
Our children and families matter.
Our neighbors and communities matter.
Our democracy matters.
Our understanding of the world we live in, both locally and globally, matters.
These are precisely the things that matter most to us in public media, the reasons we go to work every day, the inspiration for all the progress we’ve made and all the innovation we’re planning for the years ahead.
We are fortunate that so many new people have brought fresh perspectives to the ranks of station leadership in recent years.
Almost 40 percent of our general managers are new to their jobs since our last live Summit.
And we are blessed that we are finally beginning to take full advantage of the profound power of diversity, equity and inclusion in everything we do.
Marshalling all of these resources;
Tempered by hard experience;
Wishing to serve our fellow citizens in every way we can;
Ready to rise to any challenge;
And eager to explore the undiscovered country that is the future;
Let our own ears ring with the stirring summons of Lord Tennyson:
“Come, my friends, ‘tis not too late to seek a newer world.
“Though much is taken, much abides…and that which we are, we are:
“Strong in will to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”
Thank you, and welcome to the future.