Courtney Pledger, a Little Rock native who became a noted television and film producer, will now use that experience to lead the Arkansas Educational Television Network as its new executive director, Gov. Asa Hutchinson announced Tuesday.
Pledger has been executive director of the Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival since 2012, rebuilding the national profile of the festival. She will start her new job March 20 at an annual salary of $114,000, an AETN spokesman said.
"I take this job with a great degree of excitement and enthusiasm," Pledger said during a news conference at the state Capitol. "I'm very eager to get to work."
Less than an hour earlier, the AETN Commission unanimously voted to approve Pledger's selection. Conway-based AETN, now in its 50th year, is the state's only public educational television network. AETN isamong 349 Public Broadcasting Service stations in the nation and broadcasts through six stations in the state.
Pledger is taking the job after the death in November of Allen Weatherly, who had been AETN's executive director since 2001. Weatherly was 64. Deputy Director Tony Brooks, in his 16th year at AETN, has been interim director.
Hutchinson and Pledger thanked Brooks for his "continued commitment" and for leading "a talented team." Hutchinson also praised Weatherly for serving the state "with passion for more than 20 years."
While there has been talk of reductions in taxpayer funding for public television and radio by state legislators and some within President Donald Trump's administration, Hutchinson pledged Tuesday that there aren't any planned budgetary reductions for AETN. The governor called AETN's programming "important to this state."
Pledger said she hasn't planned on any changes at AETN, nor had Hutchinson alluded to any.
"He gave me no marching orders," she said.
Pledger said the role of public television and of AETN is vital to viewers, citing research that lists PBS news telecasts as being the "most trusted, thoughtful and truthful coverage."
AETN Commission Chairman Kathryn Jones of Bentonville said she enjoys hearing from viewers who tell her how much they, or their children, enjoy AETN's programs and that they don't want its programming to be cut back by reductions in government appropriations.
"That's the way to see the worth of AETN," Jones said. "Just to have people who value public broadcasting."
Commissioner West Doss of Fayetteville, one of three delegates from AETN to the National Public Media Conference last month, told other commissioners Tuesday that attendees were informed of polls showing that 70 percent of Trump voters and 80 percent of people overall support public broadcasting.
In announcing Pledger's new role, Hutchinson lauded "her vision for this agency" and her "incredible background in television."
Pledger's Hollywood experience includes small acting roles and work as a producer for such television films as A Killing in a Small Town, which won lead actress Barbara Hershey a 1990 Emmy and a Golden Globe, and Challenger, about the space shuttle disaster.
Pledger's work has garnered several awards and honors, including a prime-time Emmy Award nomination and the Women in Film's Lillian Gish Producing Award.
Pledger also served as an executive producer for the DreamWorks Animation film company while living in California. She returned to Arkansas in late 2011.
She began in the spring of 2012 as executive director and programming director for the then-financially troubled Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival, reviving the festival and helping it re-emerge on the national scene. By 2014, the festival had earned status as an Oscar-qualifying event for short films. The festival, in its 25th year, is the oldest all-documentary film festival in North America, according to a news release from the governor's office.
"She has brought national acclaim for the Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival," Hutchinson said during the news conference. "I recognize her talent and her leadership. She will be an important part of my team."
Born in Little Rock to parents from Fordyce and El Dorado, Pledger said she is "steeped in Arkansas." Her family moved out of state while she was a child. She graduated from high school in Jackson, Miss., and received a bachelor of arts degree in theater from Millsaps College in Jackson.
Metro on 03/08/2017