CONWAY, Ark. – Three months after Friends of Arkansas PBS formed to try to preserve PBS programming in the Natural State, it now looks like a legitimate possibility. After a whirlwind few months, Carlton Wing, CEO & Executive Director of Arkansas TV, is ready for any outcome.

Wing, since taking over the role around six months ago, has spearheaded a rebrand and the disaffiliation from PBS, which was set to take place at the end of June.

The dues cost Arkansas TV $2.5 million a year, and with that cost, they felt they couldn’t stay afloat after federal funding cuts, while retaining PBS programming.

In turn, they became the first state to say they’d end the partnership.

“Whatever politics happened, happened way above us in Washington D.C., we have to deal with the financial realities of how we keep public television alive,” Wing said.

He said they immediately entered into emergency budgeting, attempting to get the network out of the red. A grim financial outlook at the time from his perspective.

“The financial realities are there, and we have to deal with that financial reality regardless of one of our providers of public television content,” Wing said.

When the announcement gained traction, a group, spearheaded by former first ladies of Arkansas Barbara Pryor and Gay White, formed to try and keep PBS alive.

“We recognize that there’s a lot of emotions tied to anything that we like,” Wing said.

Friends of Arkansas PBS gained enough eyeballs to bring top PBS executives, including CEO Paula Kerger, to the state.

“Well, you have to understand what they’re doing when they come is they’re trying to protect that paycheck that has come from Arkansas for decades now,” Wing said.

The momentum was enough to get the Arkansas Public Television Commission to vote to pause the disaffiliation until their next quarterly meeting, creating a window for funds to be raised in the meantime.

Since a pledge of $1 million a year for the next three years coming from an anonymous donor, along with the Arkansas TV Foundation creating a separate dues fund, that’s allowed them to commit to $1.5 million a year as well over the next three.

While Wing has helped the station plan to increase local programming from 5% to 30%, that won’t change, but things may have to be arranged now that they’re closing in on the funds needed to retain PBS.

“People recognized this is a very real situation and stepped up to be able to make that happen. We’re not quite there yet, but everything is heading in the right direction. There’s still money that needs to be raised,” Wing said.

He has maintained his stance throughout, while conversations may be political above him, this decision is strictly fiscal on his and the station’s end.

“I have said many times that people have tried to make this a red vs blue issue. It’s all about green and about whether you operate in the black or red,” Wing said.

Wing has said that despite being painted as his opposition, his relationship with Pryor and White is far from that.

“My wife and I went and had lunch with them just a couple of weeks ago, and they’re so excited to be involved with a cause,” Wing said.

He was also adamant that he doesn’t have some form of vendetta against PBS; in fact, it’s played a pivotal role in helping his own daughter, who’s set to graduate with an MBA from the University of Chicago soon.

“PBS played a very vital role in her enthusiastically learning how to read. Yes we absolutely want that, we just have to be able to afford it because I can’t jeopardize the whole network to be able to pay for one provider of public television,” Wing said.

Still, the commission would need to vote to approve resuming the partnership, a vote that would be held at the next quarterly meeting on June 4th.

“I’m hesitant to predict because I don’t know what’s going to happen between now and that meeting,” Wing said on the vote.

The University of Arkansas-Little Rock’s William H. Bowen School of Law began as UA-Fayetteville’s night division (yes, in Little Rock) in 1965. A decade later, the Legislature created UA-Little Rock’s law school; transferred thereto Fayetteville’s night program; and added a full-time component.

In 2023, Colin Crawford became Bowen’s dean. Shortly thereafter, he suggested killing Bowen’s in-person night program and replacing it with yet another online law school. When confronted with a buzzsaw of opposition in Arkansas’ legal community, Crawford paused this misadventure.

Today, Arkansas-based part-time law students have the option of either attending the state’s only in-person night law school or enrolling in one of several existing online schools. If Bowen’s night program goes online, Arkansans lose this choice.

Last week, I wrote about state Sen. Dan Sullivan’s efforts to curtail new attempts to replace Bowen’s night program with an online one and his delivery of Ten Commandments posters to Bowen for display.

I relayed Crawford’s unexpected public inquisition of Sullivan, wherein Crawford charged: “So you brought those 19 [framed Ten] Commandments to the law school. You could have gone [elsewhere] . . . but you came here to the law school, and I believe, haven’t gone elsewhere . . . [And] you also then submitted a piece of ‘special legislation’ that would have had the effect of tying up the university budget if, if the law school did not, was, was not prohibited from having an online program. So the question is, because I’ve been asked it many times, what’s [your] beef with us. Why [are you] singling out the school of law?”

Sullivan answered, correcting Crawford’s misrepresentations: “First of all, I’m not singling [the law school] out. I took [the posters previously] to Jonesboro schools. I think I had 400 that I took–close to that–[and] I took [several of] them to Arkansas State University . . . [And] why did I take the position of putting a hold on the [university’s] budget? [I did so] because I had a number of people in the law school and outside of law school, former graduates–people who are attorneys that went to school here that are now in the profession–[raise concerns]. People talk[ed] about retaliation; they were afraid to–if they brought [concerns]–they’d be retaliated against.”

My colleague Josh Silverstein elaborated on the retaliation: “The dean castigated me in my annual review for my opposition to moving the part-time program online and, surprisingly, for criticisms against the online proposal leveled by others whom I don’t control. He later accused me of resisting the change in bad faith, even though much of the Bowen community is similarly opposed.”

The saga continues.

In August, I wrote a column–which this paper nominated for several journalism awards–stating:

“Why put the Bowen night class online in the first place? At a recent faculty meeting, an administrator stated that the purpose is to enlarge the night class. She highlighted that the incoming night class has 38 students. But that’s not the whole story. Here’s the rest:

” m Both the forthcoming day and night classes have been closed for some time, because they’re completely full.

” m The night class has 38 students in it simply because the school capped the class at 38–not due to lack of demand. Earlier in the year, the class was capped at 40, and it had–you guessed it–40 students. The administration then reduced the size of the night class to 38. If you want the night class to be larger than 38, then allow it to be larger than 38.

” m If the school wants to enroll a larger night class with, say, 50 students, we could do so with qualified folks ready to attend.

“    m Finally, the school’s admissions policy states: ‘The Law School will enroll each academic year an entering class of approximately 140 applicants to its combined full and part-time divisions.’ The current incoming class has 158 students. Call me old school, but I don’t understand this new math in which having 18 extra students reflects under-enrollment.”

That column remains 100 percent correct, because this paper and I painstakingly verify our information. That column’s source: Bowen’s then-admissions dean. (She also confirmed the information presented today.)

Nonetheless, in my annual evaluation at Bowen, Crawford took issue with the contents of that previous column, which I wrote as a journalist for this paper. (My Democrat-Gazette boss assures me that he won’t be evaluating my law-school performance–nor my cooking, for that matter!)

Crawford wrote: “I write to offer observations about certain activities of yours during the evaluation period that were disruptive to the School of Law community. Specifically, in summer 2025, you publicly stated that the School of Law had ‘excess demand’ for its part-time program that the administration has capped enrollment in the program. However, as reported to the faculty earlier in the Spring by the then Assistant Dean of Admissions, many of the students admitted to the part-time program preferred to be in the full-time program, for which there were no available spaces. There was no excess demand for the part-time program and that was announced at a faculty meeting. Moreover, as the Associate Dean of Academic Affairs has reported on many occasions, the number of any class is dictated by our faculty capacity to cover the labor-intensive research and writing classes–each to a section of no more than 20 students. Inaccurate references to an excess of demand and administrative caps on part-time enrollment were harmful to the work of your colleagues, who, earlier in 2025, voted overwhelmingly in support of a proposal to develop a hybrid part-time program; some of them spent their summers developing courses to that end.”

Crawford is wrong: Bowen did cap the night class, and there was excess demand.

Bowen admitted 38 students to that night class. The admissions dean stated that Bowen easily could’ve enrolled 50 qualified applicants. So why only 38? As Crawford confessed: because of a lack of supply of faculty. Fifty qualified applicants, but only 38 admitted, equals excess demand (by definition).

Bowen’s math further confounds. In a faculty meeting, the associate dean stated: “[W]e have 38 students coming into the part-time program . . . [and] nine of them expressed a preference for the full-time. So if we had space in the full-time, that would have been down to 29.”

Uh, no. The school admitted 38 applicants. If nine vanished, Bowen would just admit the next nine.

Moreover, whether nine students preferred the day program is irrelevant. Maybe some favored attending Yale. Wanting to go elsewhere doesn’t diminish demand for Bowen’s night school–when the alternatives aren’t available.

In fact, the day program routinely cannibalizes the night class by exceeding the school’s written-policy goal of 90 students for the former by–wait for it–30-plus students. Wanna guess where that overage should’ve been offered admission? Yep, the night school.

Finally, like with Silverstein, Crawford bizarrely criticized me for the contents of a student column that opposed Bowen going online, because those authors thanked us for our input. Even worse, the dean was explicitly informed that I never reviewed the substance of the students’ article and Silverstein recommended written changes to the very items Crawford whinged about. Sigh.

The proposal to put online Arkansas’ singular-historic night law school didn’t fail because disfavored interlocutors contradicted the party line or had “beef” with Bowen. Rather, that effort collapsed because it is an awful idea (and justifiably reviled by Arkansas’ legal community).

So, rest assured, I will continue to inform you Dear Readers about this topic and others–threadbare false claims of inaccuracy, harm, or disruption notwithstanding–because facts matter.

This is your right to know.

Robert Steinbuch, the Arkansas Bar Foundation Professor at the Bowen Law School, is a Fulbright Scholar and author of the treatise “The Arkansas Freedom of Information Act.” His views do not necessarily reflect those of his employer.