NEW YORK – After a year of fractious struggles in public broadcasting over politics and finances, the Public Broadcasting Service turned inward this week to choose its next leader, selecting a veteran public-television station executive known for her diplomatic skills.
The PBS board of directors announced Monday that it had selected Paula Kerger, a top executive at New York’s Thirteen/WNET, to be the system’s next president and CEO. Kerger will replace outgoing president Pat Mitchell, a former commercial-television executive who is taking over the helm of the Museum of Television &Radio, a nonprofit organization that preserves broadcasting programs.
Kerger’s appointment was greeted with optimism by many of the system’s advocates, who called her the right person to tackle current challenges.
John Lawson, president of the Association of Public Television Stations, expressed hope that Kerger would be able to resolve some historic tensions between PBS and the 348 member stations that finance it, noting her “calm demeanor” and depth of experience.
“You’ve got to find a way to preserve the localization in public television but also pursue business strategies that are necessary for survival in a content-driven world,” Lawson said. “I think Paula’s hiring creates perhaps a unique chance to reconcile those two competing approaches.”
Kerger comes to the post after 13 years at WNET, one of public television’s biggest producing stations. She was first hired to run the station’s fundraising campaign, ultimately raising $79 million, the largest endowment program by a public television station. She went on to be WNET’s station manager and then chief operating officer of the Educational Broadcasting Corp., the parent company of WNET and WLIW New York.
The PBS board unanimously voted for her selection Sunday during a special meeting in Dallas. The decision followed an eight-month search process in which nearly 120 candidates were considered, said Mary Bitterman, the board’s chairwoman.
As the sixth president of PBS, 48-year-old Kerger will be the third to come from a local station. Her three-year contract begins March 13.
“She’s someone who we felt would be a great unifier of the system,” Bitterman said. “Because she knows the system well – knows both newcomers and seasoned participants and brings a respect for the accomplishments of all – she will have a very unifying influence, which will be very constructive.”
Kerger is taking over PBS after a tumultuous period. Last year, congressional Republicans threatened to yank much of public broadcasting’s federal funding, an attempt that eventually was defeated.
The system also was racked by a turbulent debate about political bias instigated largely by Kenneth Tomlinson, then chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which distributes federal money to public broadcasters. After seeking to promote conservatives to counter what he saw as a liberal slant in the system, Tomlinson was forced to resign in November when an internal investigation concluded that his efforts broke federal law.
PBS has had to cope with an aging audience and competition from cable networks that increasingly provide the kinds of documentaries and children’s programming that long have been the mainstay of public television.
The new president said she hoped to make a case for PBS’s value and head off future political squabbles and budget showdowns.
“I think, unfortunately, in public broadcasting we sometimes wait until there is criticism,” Kerger said in an interview Monday. “There is a scope of work that no one does like public broadcasting. We really need to think about that – we need to not only tell the story better, but we need to make sure that we’re putting resources into really doing the kind of work that no one else is doing.”
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