PBS Annual Meeting 2024 — Day 1 Highlights
We began Annual Meeting this year celebrating proud moments from this year where we knit our communities together through difficult times. PBS President & CEO Paula Kerger lauded the incredible moment when FRONTLINE “20 Days in Mariupol” won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature and thanked everyone in public media for their unique role for bringing this film to the public and continuing our strong legacy of distributing content of the highest standards of journalism.
Paula Kerger also shared how we are marking the coming year with excellent programming that further affirms our commitment to serve the public with content that reflects our collective stories, whether in arts, history, news & public affairs, science, or PBS KIDS shows.
We also heard from the Chair of the PBS Board of Directors, Larry Irving, about PBS’s role in providing trusted programming that reaches beyond our legacy and looks into the future to educate, inspire and entertain our audiences.
Paula Kerger acknowledged the incredible service of dedicated public media members we lost this year, and honored Molly Phillips, former General Manager of Iowa PBS, with the Dan Miller Station Leadership Award.
We ended the opening session with Mare Mazur, General Manager of Vegas PBS and Nevada Congresswoman Dina Titus welcoming us into the land of possibilities that has a rich, storied past captured by the shows made by Vegas PBS.
Chief Programming Executive and General Manager Sylvia Bugg took to the stage to provide an overview of our multiplatform programming strategy, focusing on how we can support innovative storytelling in an array of formats and deliver trusted, quality content to our audiences. Sylvia Bugg also previewed upcoming shows in news & public affairs, history, drama, and arts & culture, including DISCO and upcoming PBS Digital Studios series.
Following Sylvia Bugg’s presentation, Dr. M. Sanjayan, featured most recently in PBS’s CHANGING PLANET “Coral Special,” shared his story of becoming a conservationist and his journey to television. Then, we celebrated the historic anniversary of NOVA 50th year of television with a panel of scientists and science communicators who spoke about engaging audiences as we explore the frontiers of science, NOVA’s impact of inciting curiosity, and what each panelist thinks will be big breakthroughs in the next 50 years.
After a preview of NATURE’s upcoming shows, the talented chefs and judges of THE GREAT AMERICAN RECIPE closed out Day 1 of Annual Meeting by sharing how the home cooks bring their heritage and home to the show (along with delicious flavors), how they helped each other along the way and the intentionality they took in picking the recipes they brought to the show.
