Elmo is probably not any older than he was a decade in the past, and the Cookie Monster should be hungry, however many different issues have modified at Arkansas PBS since Courtney Pledger took over the community in 2017.

We’re not speaking about Elmo’s new pet, Tango, both. We’re speaking about academic media instruments developed to assist youngsters be taught at dwelling after the coronavirus pandemic compelled faculties to close down throughout the state in 2020. We’re speaking podcasts, and we’re speaking prep sports activities on stay tv. And far more.

Pledger turned govt director and chief govt officer of Arkansas PBS in 2017.

“We now have … actually raised the bar over the previous couple of years,” Pledger mentioned throughout an interview in her workplace on the College of Central Arkansas campus in Conway.

“There’s been an incredible quantity of change right here since 2017.” For one factor, the community expanded its media attain from tv to digital in what Pledger known as “an enormous transformation.”

The community’s channels will be livestreamed on-line or watched with a telephone or laptop. And, in contrast to Netflix, there’s no cost to entry that content material. A set of rabbit ears will do the job.

Born in Arkansas and raised in Mississippi, Pledger introduced a three-decades-long profession within the arts to the job. Her appearing and producing resume took her from Scorching Springs to Hollywood and London, and now to Conway, the place Arkansas PBS is predicated.

She appeared within the TV sequence “Strolling Tall” and produced numerous packages, together with the Emmy-winning “A Killing in a Small City” in 1990.

She has labored for Hearst Leisure, Rastar and the IndieProd Firm and has held senior management roles at movie and tv organizations, together with Common’s Illumination Leisure, the place she targeted on mental property rights for family-friendly movies. She’s labored on the London-based Jigsaw Movies/Miramax, Radical Photos and the UK’s Aardman Animation. She obtained the Girls in Movie’s Lillian Gish Producing Award.

From 2012 to 2016, Pledger was govt director of the Scorching Springs Documentary Movie Competition and helped rebuild “the oldest documentary movie competition in North America.”

One of many extra seen adjustments Pledger delivered to Arkansas PBS is the addition of highschool sports activities match protection — a transfer that appeals to individuals throughout the political spectrum, together with a number of the most conservative Republican legislators who oppose state funding of the community.

Of us can now watch their youngsters and grandchildren hit dwelling runs and rating touchdowns on stay tv. There’s no streaming community to affix. Simply flip your tv to your main native PBS station (Channel 2 in Little Rock and Conway) and watch.

When Arkansas PBS started airing prep sports activities, it additionally “dedicated not solely to producing and airing the video games, but in addition to producing brief documentary tales and profiles of scholar athletes, coaches, legendary groups and the pageantry that surrounds the video games — like the varsity band and cheer groups,” Pledger mentioned.

These tales have ranged from how a Conway soccer participant tackled his mom’s battle with terminal most cancers to the highschool junior “who’s leaving her mark as a play-by-play announcer whereas overcoming Tourette’s Syndrome.” Different figures profiled have included a soccer coach who adopted his one-time participant, and a basketball league for homeschooled youngsters.

In Might, Arkansas PBS launched “The Rising Season” podcast, a month-to-month manufacturing that follows six Arkansas farmers as they work by means of a 12 months on their land.

Farmers, agriculture college students and anybody within the individuals who develop our meals or elevate the sheep that present our wool can discover the podcast at myarpbs.org/thegrowingseason or wherever podcasts are discovered.

Hosted by Arkansas-born musician and actor Ben Dickey and produced in cooperation with the Arkansas Division of Agriculture, the podcast addresses points starting from the rising prices of farming to suicide charges amongst farmers.

Pledger and the community confronted maybe their greatest problem in March 2020 when faculties throughout the state despatched college students dwelling because the coronavirus gripped the nation.

“We went to the Arkansas Division of Training and mentioned, ‘What can we do?’” Pledger recalled. “We proposed faculty on the air — one thing that academic tv initially did.”

Then, “We have been despatched dwelling, too. We needed to work just about. That was … a defining second.”

Referred to as Arkansas AMI, the hassle noticed the community broadcasting curriculum-based programming for the state’s pre-kindergarten by means of eighth-grade college students. Academics of the 12 months hosted every section. Mother and father and educators had entry to accompanying bilingual lesson plans and curriculum supplies.

“The workforce took on that constructing of the airplane within the air — and succeeded wildly,” Pledger mentioned. “In the meantime, as a result of demand for our instructional programming throughout COVID, the AR Cares Act Committee unanimously agreed to fund an growth of our transmitter infrastructure to take our [over-the-air television] sign protection from 76% of the inhabitants to someplace over 96%.”

In 2021, the community, once more with the Training Division, launched a summer time program known as Rise and Shine to handle studying gaps for kindergarteners by means of fifth graders in enjoyable methods. They once more used the abilities of Arkansas Academics of the 12 months, in addition to PBS Children packages and dozens of field-trip segments from throughout the state. Energy Packets — English and Spanish workbooks on math, science, social research and literacy — went out to children all through most of Arkansas. Arkansas PBS plans to premiere a second spherical of Rise and Shine in July and August. It’s going to run for six weeks, three hours each day.

The community is attempting to spice up viewers engagement in different methods, too.

In December 2020, Craighead County college students in grades three by means of six talked with astronauts aboard the Worldwide House Station. Arkansas PBS later televised the occasion on the community and on YouTube, with speeches by former President Invoice Clinton and Governor Hutchinson.

The community additionally not too long ago livestreamed Dolly Parton’s go to to the Arkansas Governor’s Mansion, which it’ll quickly increase with an interview about Parton’s Creativeness Library guide donations to youngsters. 

In October the community premiered a documentary it commissioned in partnership once more with the Training Division, “7 Days: The Opioid Disaster in Arkansas,” on the Scorching Springs Documentary Movie Competition. The documentary is out there on YouTube.

Below Pledger’s management, the community moved into domestically produced youngsters’s programming with “Blueberry’s Clubhouse” and an upcoming sequence that teaches social research to 5- to 7-year-olds.

Earlier this 12 months, Arkansas PBS took dwelling 5 main Public Media Awards, the one nationwide awards in public media. Weeks earlier, it gained 5 Regional Emmy Awards.

As for what she would say to legislative foes of Arkansas PBS, Pledger mentioned the community has “pivoted strongly to a spotlight” on “native content material and companies — info that Arkansans can not obtain wherever else.”

She mentioned Arkansas Residents Entry Community (AR-CAN) promotes authorities transparency in our state by means of livestreaming of state authorities conferences.

And there’s a significant security reality many within the state could not know. “Our life-saving towers function the spine of the early warning system in Arkansas, serving to preserve us secure,” Pledger famous.

Regardless of a current flirtation with Louisiana PBS, the place she was a finalist for the director’s job, Pledger withdrew from that job search and mentioned she hopes to remain in Arkansas.

That call got here at the same time as an Arkansas legislative committee delayed on elevating her $152,581.94 annual wage, which features a advantage elevate, to $180,000 as a result of some lawmakers mentioned they detected some liberal leanings in nationwide broadcasting.

Pledger mentioned Arkansans additionally recognize the nationwide PBS programming, “the place they’ll entry every part from youngsters’s programming to historical past, science, artwork and music.

“Arkansas PBS belongs to the individuals of Arkansas, and it displays all of them,” she mentioned.

As for what Pledger most enjoys on PBS, she mentioned, “On the nationwide schedule, ‘Discovering Your Roots’ is one among my favorites.” She additionally loves the Masterpiece reveals, particularly “All Creatures Nice and Small.”

On why she needs to remain in Arkansas, Pledger mentioned, “I like residing on this place. To have the ability to give again to the state the place each my mother and father have been born and raised and my grandparents earlier than by means of public media is so significant to me.”

Pledger mentioned she has no retirement plans. “That phrase shouldn’t be in my vocabulary.”