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Yesterday, I sat down with Sarah DeWitt, the head of PBS Kids, to talk about children’s media. Sesame Street. Daniel Tiger. Wild Kratts. Work It Out Wombats. We’d planned the interview ahead of time. And then, of course, breaking news hit: Trump’s team is planning to send a $9.4 billion rescissions package to Congress, and guess what’s in it?
Over $1 billion in cuts to public broadcasting.
That is on top of the existing cuts to PBS Kids, including their Department of Education Ready to Learn grant, a $23 million chunk of funding that makes up a full one-third of the PBS Kids budget.
These are not just numbers. The funding included summer camp programs for kids in low income communities. It also included important educational content that is free and available to kids all across the country.
I don’t know about you, but I grew up with Mister Rogers. And I think there’s probably a direct line from those cardigans and words of affirmation to the work I do today.
PBS Kids programs have been shown to improve literacy outcomes the equivalent of 1.5 months of classroom instruction. Their broadcast signal is uniquely important to the one million American television households that lack access to cable or the internet.
And now the Trump administration wants to kill it. Why? They say it’s because PBS is “biased” but we know what that means. It means PBS celebrates diversity.
This administration doesn’t believe in public goods that will benefit all Americans. They believe in private markets. Unless, of course, we’re talking about Starlink or SpaceX or any of the other ways we funnel taxpayer money into Elon Musk’s ambitions. That’s fine. But Big Bird? Suddenly that’s socialism.
Some people say: “Why not just partner with Netflix? Why not find a corporate sponsor?”
And PBS is doing that. Sesame Street is headed to Netflix and already available on Hulu and Prime. But without public funding, that content goes behind a paywall. You get Sesame Street if your parents can afford it and that has never been the mission. The mission has always been to reach as many kids with early education as possible.
What’s under threat here isn’t just content. It’s values. The value of early childhood education. The value of giving kids a shot regardless of their ZIP code or their parents’ socioeconomic status.
Public media is one of the last places in American life where that promise is still being kept.
So what do we do?
If PBS matters to you, or your kids or your siblings or your sanity, you have to say something. Here’s what Sara asked for:
Go to ProtectMyPublicMedia.org and send a message to your member of Congress.
Tell your story. Did Daniel Tiger help your kid learn to use their words instead of hitting? Did it help you finally finish potty training? Did Dinosaur Train turn your niece into a dino-obsessed science nerd? Write it down. Send it to your local station. Email it to your rep. Post it on your socials. These stories matter.
Public television shaped us. Now it needs us. Big Bird can’t do this alone.
Let’s show up for him.
The following interview was edited and condensed for ease of reading, you can watch the full interview in the video!
Emily: Trump is about to send a $9.4 billion rescissions package to the Hill requesting that Congress approve the over $1 billion in cuts to the corporation for public broadcasting. The Trump administration is really, really pushing their agenda to defund PBS & NPR. What has PBS Kids been experiencing?
Sara: On May 1st, there was an executive order calling for the corporation for public broadcasting to stop funding PBS and NPR. And the next day on May 2nd, the Department of Education terminated a grant that cut off $23 million immediately for the PBS Kids budget. It's put some content into jeopardy, it has affected staff and it's affected our member stations all across the country. A lot of them do camps and programs for kids in the summertime and they've had to cancel those, or postpone them. So, we really are feeling the effects just across the board. This one grant was about a third of our funding.
Emily: Can you tell us more about the summer camps?
Sara: In many cases, these were camps that were gonna be focused on computational thinking, the early building blocks of computer science. This grant was focused on kids who live in Title 1 areas, so areas that are more likely to have free and reduced lunch. And so it's doing free summer camps for kids to teach them things about coding, building blocksfor computer science, things that we felt like would be really useful for them in the future.
Emily: I know you guys have had a lot of partnerships with Hulu and Amazon Prime. Is "Sesame Street" moving to Netflix?
Sara: Netflix has the worldwide rights for "Sesame Street" and we will also be releasing it on PBS Kids platforms and on PBS member stations on the same day on our streaming platforms in the US. We feel like it was great news that "Sesame Street" is gonna be able to remain in production and continue to be on PBS Kids stations.
Emily:Why is public funding important?
Sara: Well public funding is what's going to allow "Sesame Street" to be free to everyone. Netflix is investing in "Sesame Street" but that's just for people behind the subscription wall. Federal funding is what is able to bring it to everybody. One of the things that I think really differentiates PBS in the market is that we are really focused on the best interests of kids. What are the things that are gonna help kids thrive the most? How can media, this incredibly powerful tool, help kids be ready for school, help them really understand literacy and math concepts? We aren't driven by an algorithm. We aren't driven by commercials. We aren't being driven by the bottom line. We're being driven by what's best for kids. And I think that's really important for us to have in this country because it isn't always commercially viable to have something that's really educational and positive for kids.
There are a lot of kids who still don't have access to broadband who don't have really great reliable internet. They consume a lot of over-the-air television and we are providing a stream of content for them that is going to help them with skills for school. There's been a lot of research that PBS Kids content can actually move the needle for kids who watch our literacy program, that's equivalent to 1.5 months of classroom instruction. Our streaming services, we do them in such a way that kids who have a device when they're in an area with Wi-Fi, they can download the content, they can also download our games on the PBS Kids Games app, and then they can access it when they're somewhere where they don't have a connection.
Emily: Something my audience cares a lot about is civic education. You guys have a civic education series called "City Island," which I'm so excited about.
Sara: I'm so glad you asked about this. We were hearing from a lot of educators and parents that not as much civics education was happening in schools. And we knew that there were lots of things we could do with media that would help introduce some of these basic concepts to kids. So "City Island" is one of the shows that came out of that. It's a short form series focused on who are you in your community and how you engage with other folks? It's really fun and has an amazing illustration style. So I really encourage you to go to the PBS Kids video app and take a look. We've also launched some "City Island" games and have a show called "Rosie's Rules" that's focused on social studies.
We worked with our advisors to ask, "How does civics matter to a preschooler?" And really what they came away with is that kids start to learn early on what their role is in a household. How do they engage as a brother or a sister, or a sibling? How do they engage with their neighbors and with their neighborhood? It goes back to Mr. Rogers, it's about being a good neighbor. How do you resolve a conflict? How does food get to your refrigerator? How does mail get across the country? And so with “Rosie’s Rules”we were able to get deep into some of those concepts and then "City Island" kind of picks up as kids get a little bit older. We also worked with Sesame Workshop on a live action series that was music-centric called "Together We Can," that also gets into civics concepts.
Emily: Okay, I'm going to ask one personal question to finish out our talk, can you tell us more about what you are doing on your commute and why you started doing a silent commute?
Sara: I realized that there was just so much noise in my life all the time. When I was a kid, I lived kind of far out and took a city bus into downtown Nashville and I realized early on that that long commute was really good for getting my thoughts together. And so now with a smartphone, with two kids of my own, with a really busy job, it just hit me that I was missing that time to think, contemplative time to kind of get my thoughts together. And so I decided to institute a silent commute. What would happen if I don't turn on that radio, if I don't try to entertain myself, but just give myself time to really think? And I have to say, I do some really good processing and I come away with some good decisions and questions on this commute. So, I highly recommend it.
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