{"id":892041,"date":"2026-06-25T15:31:12","date_gmt":"2026-06-25T15:31:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/892041\/"},"modified":"2026-06-25T15:31:12","modified_gmt":"2026-06-25T15:31:12","slug":"pbss-geoff-daniels-reflects-on-the-broadcasters-very-difficult-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/892041\/","title":{"rendered":"PBS\u2019s Geoff Daniels Reflects On The Broadcaster\u2019s Very Difficult Year"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\t\u201cThe idea of a public space is at risk of disappearing,\u201d said Boris Razon, Arte France\u2019s Editorial Director, speaking to international non-fiction marketplace Sunny Side of the Doc<\/a> earlier this week. Another guest speaker at the same event knows this all too well from bitter personal experience; in May of last year, the White House announced the end of \u201ctaxpayer subsidization of biased media\u201d, a crackdown specifically and calamitously directed at National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS<\/a>).<\/p>\n

\n\tThe axe came down swiftly and brutally, but, speaking candidly, Geoff Daniels, PBS\u2019 Vice President, Programming & Development, was gracious about it, thanking the audience of mostly media industry people for their camaraderie. \u201cThe outpouring of support that we\u2019ve experienced has been so inspiring,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s been the wind behind our sails to help us navigate a really uncertain and challenging time that I know many of you have experienced, too.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThat said, the Trump administration\u2019s actions clearly still rankle. \u201cI think what happened at PBS is very well documented, in the fact that we effectively lost our government funding overnight,\u201d he said. \u201cThe rescission defunding that happened basically about a year ago, it really hard hit. You don\u2019t replace millions and millions of dollars easily overnight. The way I would describe it for PBS is that, initially we went through what I would describe colloquially as the five stages of grief, where you\u2019re trying to really figure things out: What does this really mean for the system, for our stations, for our strands, for the national organization that is there to serve our members and support the programs that we all do?<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAnd what\u2019s happened since, which has been absolutely incredible, is the [outpouring of] viewer support from the individual viewers that have been supporting PBS member stations and us, that grassroots love and affinity. \u00a0We knew that there would be a moment where we were in the news, and that an existential threat to the system was present. But what we\u2019ve seen over the last year is that the sustained giving from individuals. I mean we\u2019re talking about families, mothers, children that were holding birthday parties that were fundraisers for PBS. And then also with our foundation efforts, there was an uptick in what I would describe as larger gift donations specifically for our programming.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe combination of moral support and hard cash proved vital as Daniels struggled to course-correct the ship. \u201cThe first six months of that was really just triage,\u201d he recalled, \u201cand figuring out what the shape of things. Now, we have what I would describe as a more stable base, one that is giving us the ability to move forward in ways that will allow us to make a transition and ultimately begin to transform what PBS can be.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tMoney-wise, Daniels was cautiously optimistic. \u201cWe might have a little bit less than we did,\u201d he said, \u201cbut we have more than you think, and we have different ways now. We\u2019re becoming much more nimble, much more entrepreneurial, in the way in which we work with producers upfront to proactively look at the needs of a project\u2026 from early-stage R&D development through late-stage gap funding and completion money. Obviously, there\u2019s nothing new under the sun there. It\u2019s just more complicated.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIronically enough, one of the more interesting side-effects of the US government\u2019s decision is that PBS has been forced to become even more rigorously ethical than it was before: \u201cAny dollar that comes in is going to have to pass our standards and practices. We\u2019re a public broadcaster. We have a very strong mission in terms of our independence so we have to be careful about the strings that are attached to money. So, when we talk about NGOs, and when we talk about any large gift donation, it\u2019s going to have to pass a very rigorous standards and practices approach that sometimes can be a little bit daunting.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe try to make it as quick and as painless as possible, but we\u2019re vetting every single dollar. We\u2019re not an advocacy organization, we are independent media, and what we want to do is deliver culturally impactful programming that is going to move and inspire and inform audiences. That\u2019s what we do, that\u2019s what we\u2019ve been doing forever. So, we have to make sure that when we\u2019re talking about the financial plan, there isn\u2019t that one dollar that potentially could be seen either directly or \u2014 and this is always the tricky one \u2014 perceptually as a conflict of interest or [a problem] that could compromise our editorial integrity.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tDespite the company\u2019s inclement fortune, Daniels maintained a dry sense of humor throughout: \u201cWhat I will say, having worked in some organizations where budgets were being cut, is that when you lose a certain percentage of your programming budget, it has a curious way of sharpening the mind\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cThe idea of a public space is at risk of disappearing,\u201d said Boris Razon, Arte France\u2019s Editorial Director,…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":892042,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[30],"tags":[171,23967,349787,173,67,132,68],"class_list":["post-892041","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-entertainment","tag-pbs","tag-sunny-side-of-the-doc","tag-tv","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/892041","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=892041"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/892041\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/892042"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=892041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=892041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=892041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}