Despite Tough Times for PBS, KEET Lives On!
If you’ve enjoyed KEET’s local programming like “What’s on Your Bucket List?” and “Studio Space,” as well as the national PBS programming as much as I have over the years, you’ve likely been aware of how very challenging 2025 was for our small but mighty PBS station.
At times it seemed like everything that could go wrong did. Public funding cuts hit hard; 47% of KEET’s revenues vanished with the rescission of federal funding. Much of the station’s aging technology continued its slide into obsolescence. Last October, a power surge took KEET off the air and the backup systems didn’t work; for many people on the North Coast, KEET is the only free television service, so losing the signal meant losing an important community connection. And longtime executive director David Gordon retired.
At that point, it would have been too easy for the station’s staff and management to simply throw up their hands and walk away, and who could have blamed them? But Humboldt resilience kicked in and KEET took a long, hard look at what needed to happen for them to survive as the voice of public television on the North Coast.
Step one: take a step back and review what viewers were watching, what programs should be provided and then comparing that to what KEET could afford.
The board also commissioned a comprehensive operational assessment and brought in expert help to guide them toward a sustainable and state-of-the-art KEET. What emerged wasn’t a list of repairs but a blueprint for organizational transformation to address both immediate operational challenges and long-term financial sustainability.
The station is now actively discussing plans for more local programming, with ideas like:
• Collaboration with local schools and colleges
• Tracking different local career paths, like forestry and fishing
• Community- and tribal-focused shows Rather than commit a lot of money to hiring full-time staffers to create programming, KEET is evaluating the possibilities offered by a greater emphasis on programs developed by folks in the community for the community. You want to see programs about local birding hotspots? Maybe a local birding guide with a video camera could create them — and if you’re a birder, you could be a participant or even a sponsor! I don’t know about you, but I’d find that kind of approach a whole lot of fun.
Making programs this way holds the promise of attracting local underwriting tailored to the topic at hand, meaning that such programs could be more easily produced in partnership with local content creators.
December’s well-timed $535,000 award from the Public Media Bridge Fund has enabled long-deferred technical upgrades to ensure future resilience, and enabled new programming directions to be explored. But it won’t replace viewer support, so keep that support coming into KEET in 2026! Visit keet.org/donate.
Pat Bitton, 75, is a member of the KEET Community Advisory Board.
