Paula Kerger herds cats.
Not literally, of course, but with 354 diverse local member stations to wrangle, the president and chief executive officer of the Public Broadcasting Service must sometimes feel that's exactly what she's doing.
Kerger visited Arkansas for a couple of days recently. While she was here, she checked in with the folks at AETN headquarters in Conway, led a community discussion on issues facing women and girls, attended a couple of receptions and a meeting of the AETN Commission at the state Capitol and, since she was in the neighborhood, was introduced to both houses of the state Legislature.
And maybe herded a few cats while she was at it.
It was a packed schedule, but Kerger is used to it. She had just come from a two-day symposium in South Carolina on PBS' Women and Girls Lead campaign and was headed home to Washington to catch her breath before hitting the road again.
Kerger's energy and expertise are critical for PBS in an era when media are changing before our eyes. The need has never been stronger for innovation and vision. Kerger has spent her entire professional career preparing for the challenge.
Kerger's background includes working in development for 10 years, first with the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), then with New York's global-leadership-developing International House.
She then spent four years as director of principal gifts for the Metropolitan Opera Association, and 14 years with PBS affiliate WNET-TV in New York, a primary program provider to PBS.
AT WNET Kerger was initially head of development, then station manager and chief operating officer.
In an era of belt tightening and increasingly fragmented audiences due to cable television and the Internet, the Maryland native was a natural choice to take the PBS reins in 2006. She is the sixth -- and the longest serving -- head of the organization since it succeeded National Educational Television in 1970.
The 57-year-old Kerger hit the ground running and hasn't slowed down. What has she done lately? First of all, we can thank her for bringing us Downton Abbey on her watch. The cultural phenomenon leads a long list of award-winning projects.
Last year, PBS programs earned 11 Primetime Emmy Awards, 12 Daytime Emmy Awards, and 43 News & Documentary Emmy nominations. PBS also received 12 George Foster Peabody Awards; three Writers Guild of America Awards; three James Beard Awards; one Screen Actors Guild award; and 10 Parents' Choice awards.
And as a nod to the changing times, PBS was also awarded three Webby Awards -- recognition for excellence on the Internet presented annually by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences.
Kerger has done all this with a ready laugh and approachable demeanor. Allen Weatherly, AETN executive director, has witnessed Kerger's leadership firsthand.
"I have worked closely with Paula for nearly a decade," Weatherly says, "including six years as an elected member of the PBS Board of Directors, and always find her to be very well-informed, intelligent, even-tempered and with a good sense of humor. The humor is important because every public media station is independent and probably every director thinks he knows the perfect thing to do.
"Paula has led PBS to new heights even with ongoing funding concerns, especially at the local station level -- certainly at AETN."
Weatherly added that his long-standing friendship with Kerger "has allowed some straightforward informative discussions about the future of our shared enterprise of public media."
Changing times and the future of PBS and its member stations were on Kerger's mind when she sat down for a 45-minute chat before the AETN Commission meeting.
The first question made her laugh.
How much do you really enjoy herding cats?
"I'm on the road a fair amount. Whenever you go through a period of change -- and we're in an extraordinary period of change in media -- it's unsettling.
"People who have worked in television stations have been very clear about what their business is: You have a transmitter, you're beaming content out, and hopefully you're doing something that's meaningful to the public. [Today] people are making very different decisions about how they're getting their material.
"And even if you're undergoing change for the best of purposes, it still takes people out of their comfort zone.
"For our stations, there are many different paths we could have gone down. We could have decided to circle the wagons like the music industry did, and force people to just come to our station or you won't get our stuff, or really make a bold leap and put our content in multiple places, including tablets and smartphones, as well as places like Roku and all these other devices, and hope that by giving people an opportunity to experience the content, they understand that there is also a local connection, and that's to AETN here."
Has it been difficult adjusting to the changing times?
"[The new technology] has been a harder leap for some -- to really understand that whether someone is watching on a tablet or watching on a big screen in their living room, they can still associate that experience with AETN.
"So we've put a lot of effort to helping stations come along, not just philosophically, but really building the structure so that if you have the PBS app on your tablet, or if you have bought a Roku, you have to register and you get AETN's material alongside Ken Burns and Downton Abbey and everything else."
Changing times or not, some critics ask why support PBS when they can get similar programs elsewhere?
"Just look at the other channels. People are interested in history; they're interested in science. We have been helped by the fact that History Channel went a very different way. Discovery has anacondas eating people. It really has just opened up a big opportunity for us because we've stayed focused on the kind of programs that have always been our hallmark.
"Ken Burns isn't Ice Road Truckers. We have no naked dating shows, no naked shopping, no naked real estate."
(For those out of the loop, Discovery Channel had a special titled Eaten Alive, and a survival/relationship series titled Naked and Afraid in which a naked couple are sent out to survive in the wilderness for 21 days.)
So, PBS is staying true to its original mission?
"I think for all of us, our name is the most precious thing that we have. Other organizations, frankly, have had some challenges. They have done programming or produced work that is not in keeping with their brand.
"People ask me, 'Can't you just be more commercial and you'll be just fine?' You see well-intentioned corporations that have decided that they would like to be the commercial version of PBS. That's really how Discovery was founded. They recognize that it's very hard to do that and be as successful a corporate entity.
"There is work in the public interest that is not going to get a huge audience. When we do a series on difficult subjects, it's not going to necessarily bring in a big audience that's going to attract sponsors and underwriters, but I think for the purposes of civil society, it's important and that's the role that a public media organization provides."
You've said in the past that if PBS is to thrive, it will be because of a "collective identity." How does that work?
"A lot of what I talk to our stations about is that we are PBS -- not me; not the people who work in my offices. The system is a collective and the thing that makes us so extraordinarily powerful is that as public media is owned by the country, PBS itself is owned by the stations. They shape it.
"Our work, together, is really trying to achieve scale as a collective that we can all share and expand upon at the local level. So although it's local and national, it's so woven together that the success of our overall enterprise is really reliant upon the success of each and every station.
"Which is why I do spend a lot of time on the ground meeting with stations. Yesterday I had a chance to spend a little bit of time with the full staff at AETN. I really want to see what the full range of people at the station are thinking about and wrestling with, what they're working on, because that shapes what we end up doing.
"And then, hopefully, if we've done our work right, we're giving the stations something that they can take and then build upon and figure out how they can make it even more relevant locally, how they can add programs into it.
"AETN has over the course of these last years been involved in this veteran's initiative doing oral histories. How is that relevant locally? It's hugely powerful. No other media organization would be able to do that.
"And I'm very conscious of it sitting here in the state Capitol -- AETN and a number of stations think carefully about how can it also help bring the education experience to life for kids.
"AETN's deep commitment to providing curriculum material for teachers and video material that they can use in the classroom is huge, both about Arkansas stories [and] relevant material out of the work that we're producing."
Relevant material? Can you cite a recent example?
"I thought about [Ken Burns'] The Roosevelts, which was such an amazing experience. That is a beautiful film, an important film.
"For anyone that says the American people aren't interested in quality and understanding our history, 33 and half million people watched it.
"But I think about kids, and to be able to lift pieces of that and use them in the classroom is really powerful. That's the kind of thing that AETN has consistently been a leader in and we're trying to help support that work."
Kerger last visited Arkansas in 2007, but says she'll be back next year for the celebration of AETN's 50th anniversary.
Style on 03/24/2015