Our theme for the month of June is “confessions.”
Before every episode on PBS Kids’ Wild Kratts, Dinosaur Train, or Martha Speaks, a quiet message would appear on the screen:
“This program was made possible by contributions to your PBS station by viewers like you. Thank you.”
Had I contributed? No.
Did I feel, deep in my bones, that Elmo only got to hear Chris’s advice at the general store on Sesame Street because of my being there?
Absolutely.
We had an ancient TV with PBS as the one reliable channel that wasn’t ancient Western films or weather radar. I watched PBS after school with my siblings long into my high school years. We would collectively groan when WordGirl’s theme song started up and secretly memorize Wild Kratt facts so we could regurgitate them to our parents at our next zoo visit, acting as if we’d always known that otters could be up to six feet long.
To little me, those shows were where my love of animal facts, big words, and beautiful art was normal. I was seen and safe. Mister Rogers Neighborhood, Reading Rainbow, and Zoboomafoo felt like the apocryphal stories from my purple children’s Bible: overflowing with kindness to earth, neighbor, and villain, full of gentleness that encouraged you to be who you were and then aspire to even greater.
I assumed my experience was unique, but I shouldn’t have. After all, I confess my siblings and I each bought thirty-dollar tickets to go see Wild Kratt’s Live.
Here, I’ll give you an excerpt of my brother’s college admissions essay he wrote:
Unlike most hockey players who started at age three, I would trade in my hockey jersey for a Creature Power Suit like Chris Kratt in a second. Seeing the PBS Kids animated magic of the Kratt Brothers slipping that blue disc into the slot on their vest, watching them transform into a new being complete with the unique adaptations of that animal, only to be able to change into a completely new animal the next minute…I wanted that power more than anything. And part of me still does want it.
I’d watch as my classmates played on multiple club teams together, learned new instruments, or thrived in the theater program as I packed up at the end of the school day five minutes early so I could get to my hockey practice. I tried to convince myself “I’m not missing out.”
But I would go home after a long practice and watch the Kratt Brothers transform effortlessly on the PBS Kids channel, from a giant squid to a cheetah in seconds, and think, “I wish I could be more than my sport.”
Then my high school theater program needed a cellist for their “Fiddler on the Roof” performances, but I laughed when my orchestra teacher signed me up to fill the spot. I thought he knew who I was. I was a hockey player, I didn’t accompany theater productions. My orchestra teacher handed me the sheet music anyway.
…When the performances ended, I didn’t want to take the Creature Power Disc of “theater kid” out of my suit.
The crazy thing is, once you’ve found you have all these unique adaptations, you start exploring them. And you start realizing that everyone around you has these incredible, powerful superpowers that make theater so moving and hockey intense and animated kids’ PBS shows so impactful. I know I can step into more shoes than just skates and become a better hockey player and human because of it.
As soon as today, the House is considering eliminating $1.1 billion in already-approved public media funding. That’s over fifteen percent of the budget that allows PBS and NPR to reach ninety-six percent of U.S. households, including mine—and maybe yours. If passed, local stations could shut down. Educational programs would disappear. Emergency alert systems would falter. Layoffs have already begun.
The Ready To Learn grant has already been abruptly terminated. That’s not just a loss of content. That’s kids—especially in underserved communities—losing access to culturally-relevant, research-based learning. That’s teachers without tools. Families without trusted help.
My grandpa and I don’t have much in common. He’s tall, he doesn’t like Christmas parties, and his advice to young people is to “play the field” before you’re old. But I found we had a shared love of PBS’s reruns of Bob Ross and his painting tutorials at 11:30am. My grandpa has never, ever asked me about my art degree. After watching Bob Ross, he turned to me and asked:
“Now, can you take that little dumb brush and make a painting like that? Gee, I watch that guy on TV and I think he’s about ruined that painting. And then somehow, he does a little of this—” I watched in fascination as my grandpa mimed whipping a brush around. “—and he hasn’t. And it looks just like a photo.”
It was like PBS had created a portal for me to connect about what I loved to do.
Some say we’re beyond saving PBS now. That without Fred Rogers to speak for it like he did back in 1969 when former President Nixon wanted to cut funding, it doesn’t stand a chance. But that just doesn’t feel true when I think about the “viewers like me” that entertainers like Mr. Rogers and LeVar Burton taught. They showed us something crucial: that we were each empowered to make the world a better place. And when you start that work, you’re introduced to the light bulb factory worker down the street, a refugee’s story, or the struggles of someone trying to learn English. It stands in the educational gap for parents who can’t be home, or for ones who are doing their best but need a trusted friend to sit with their child for half an hour a day. For my brother, it helped him mitigate the pressure of elite hockey and find out what else he was capable of. And I’m still getting to tentatively test the bridge it’s building between my grandpa’s burgeoning love of art and me.
It costs about $1.60 per American viewer per year to keep PBS running. That’s less than a coffee for the very thing that once taught me to love the English alphabet, introduced me to the scientific method, and whispered “you matter” in my lonely moment through talking dinosaurs.
I don’t know if we’re beyond saving PBS. But if you’d like, you can join me in calling your representatives today. I’ll probably email them—they’re fairly used to receiving emails from me these days—because I don’t often have such clear answers when I ask myself what would Mr. Rogers do in this scenario? I’ll be telling them a story about a group of siblings that think the worth of public media isn’t in ratings or revenue—it’s in the quiet, irreplaceable ways it shows us who we are and who we can be.
After all, this too could be made possible by viewers like you.
Gabrielle Eisma graduated Calvin with a BFA in studio art and writing in 2022. She’s from Grand Rapids, Michigan, where she now works as a writer and illustrator for books for (mostly) children and middle grade readers.
Very informative!