-Hello, this is Tom Britt.

West Tennessee PBS is working hard to bring you more local shows and quality PBS programs.

They need your financial help because they don't run commercials.

They rely on your support.

It's easy to donate.

Go to their website, westtnpbs.org, and click on the donate tab.

Your donations to Channel 11 stay local and help WLJT TV continue their mission to be as local as possible.

-It's been in the news headlines lately, the funding of PBS.

How exactly is PBS funded, and how will changes impact WLJT Channel 11?

Hello, I'm Don McCrory.

Straight ahead on Tennessee is Talking, everything you wanted to know about how exactly Channel 11 is funded here in West Tennessee.

Find out what possible changes could mean to Channel 11.

Let's get the conversation started.

-We are rolling.

Confirm record.

Can we get a mic check?

Check.

Check.

Standby camera two.

Take two.

Standby announcer in three, two.

West Tennessee PBS presents Tennessee is Talking.

Let the conversation begin.

-Hello, I'm Don McCrory.

Welcome to Tennessee is Talking.

Today, we're turning our cameras inward to Channel 11 itself as we look at how WLJT is funded, and possible changes in Washington, D.C., could impact Channel 11.

Joining us today is WLJT General Manager and CEO, Peter Noll.

Welcome, Peter.

For complete transparency, I want to let everyone know I currently serve on WLJT's Board of Directors.

Let's start with the basics, Peter.

Can you give an overview of where WLJT gets its funding and how it pays its bills?

-Sure, Don, and thank you for taking this time to let me just explain about Channel 11's funding.

I've been getting calls every day from viewers and donors, and when I'm out in the community, people come up and ask me, "Oh my gosh.

What's going to happen?

I'm hearing headlines in the news that they're going to defund PBS."

Channel 11's funding comes from a few main sources.

One, we get grants.

One of those grants is a federal grant, which is what the news headlines have been about.

One is from a state grant we get, and we c.. Then it's from individual donations, from viewers and donors who write us out a check or send us money every month.

Then local businesses and corporate support that underwrite programming and help with sponsorships at the station.

That's the main way that we're paying the bills.

-Your operating budget currently is covered by all of that income, correct?

-Yes.

With that, we're able to do what we do with that funding.

The big headlines has been about the federal grant going away.

That makes up a large portion of our budget, but not everything.

-Okay.

This is the big question I'm sure on everyone's mind, is could PBS, WLJT Channel 11, exist without that federal grant?

-Yes, with an asterisk.

the station has reserve funds that we'll call upon if there is a budget shortfall as we look for new funding sources.

That's a short-term- -That's a short-term solution?

--for several years.

Are we going to go off the air right away if that grant from the federal government goes away?

No, not right away, at least.

There's other changes that we can make with our budget.

Will it impact us?

Certainly, but we're not going to be going off the air immediately.

-I've seen this phrase a lot, which is the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

What is that, and how does it play a role in any of the federal grants you might get for WLJT?

-Good question.

When they say defund PBS, every year, Congress gives money.

They approve money from the federal government that goes to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

That was created, I want to say, back in the late '60s by President Johnson.

It was educational television.

They make the federal money available to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which then distributes that to PBS stations and NPR stations, public media stations across the country.

Anyone who has paid taxes or worked with the federal government, there's a lot of hoops to jump through, and they just don't give money out willy-nilly.

We have to be audited every year.

There's so many checks and balances to make sure that money is being spent appropriately and on the ways that you should be spending that money.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting they get the federal grant, and then they distribute that to public media, television stations like Channel 11, and public radio stations, which we are not a public radio station.

-Every station that actually applies for this money from the Corporation, they all don't get the same amount?

-No.

There's a-- I don't want to say a convoluted, but it's a pretty sophisticated system to determine how much your grant will be from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Everything from the population to how much local support you ha.. there's just a lot of questions and stuff that goes into that formula.

-This is a tough one, but does the Corporation set the guidelines, or do they get guidance from an outside entity?

-That's a good question.

I think it's a little bit of both.

I think they get general direction from the law, from Congress, and then it's interpreted through them.

You've heard about general inspectors.

They have one.

They'll audit and make sure that everything is being done properly when they start looking into things.

-How does WLJT differ than, I guess, traditional television?

-Channel 11 is a nonprofit, commercial-free TV station.

We're a community-licensed TV station.

As compared to other stations like Channel 7 or 39, or Channel 6 out of Paducah, those are commercial TV stations.

We are different in that we cannot run commercials.

There are FCC requirements because we're licensed as a community, commercial-free station, that we can't run commercials.

Those commercial TV stations they can run eight, 10 breaks an hour, with all these different businesses.

We have one break an hour.

That's three minutes and 14 seconds on average.

During children's programming, it's a minute something every half hour.

We're very limited on that, and that time is for local station promotion and also underwriting announcements.

We also differ from other PBS stations.

Before we existed in 1968, people could only get Channel 10, WKNO out of Memphis.

They are a PBS station, but they also have a NPR radio station.

They have both.

That's the whole different funding.

They get money for that as well, and they're running radio stations as well as their TV station.

Channel 11 is also different in that we are not just in the Jackson market.

We're also in all these other markets around us.

We have a history in Martin.

We have business offices there and production offices, which the University of Tennessee Martin donates to us.

We don't pay rent there, but we don't get any funding from them.

Technically, Martin is in the Paducah, Kentucky viewing area.

Because of our station's history with being associated with UTM, our reach goes that far.

We're on the cable system in Fulton, Kentucky, in the Kentucky area.

We're up far.

We go down south into Corinth, Mississippi, and that.

We cover a large area that goes beyond just the traditional Jackson viewing area.

We serve a lot of people.

The big city stations, as I call them, the Nashvilles and Memphises, they're not coming to Paris, Tennessee, to do the world's biggest fish fry parade.

They're not coming to these local events that we do because we just don't say we're all about home.

We live that we're all about home.

As I've said before, Channel 11 believes that the future of local television stations is being as local as possible.

The other thing that makes us different, I've worked in TV for over 30 years, and this is the first time I've worked at a PBS nonprofit commercial-free station.

At the other stations, they are usually affiliated with a network, and they have to take the majority of the network programming.

The network sets the schedule.

They only allow the affiliates to preempt a little bit of the network programming.

Our relationship with PBS is very different.

It's about local.

Our agreement with PBS is that any time, we can cover up PBS programming for local broadcast of a local program that we feel is more relevant to the community.

For instance, on the 4th of July, we ran a 12-plus hour local parade of patriotic programming that we produced.

From the Jackson Veterans Program honoring local veterans to all of our local celebrations across West Tennessee.

We have broadcast Retiring Old Glory, West Tennessee's largest leg retirement ceremony.

We'll be airing that, and a tribute to a World War II local veteran he.. Any time that we need and feel that we want to cover up PBS national programming for something local, we have that ability.

That's different than a lot of commercial TV stations.

As far as funding, commercial TV stations, their job, and it's not bad or good, it's just their priority is to make a profit for their owner or their shareholders.

Ours is to serve West Tennessee.

-I want to go back to something you said earlier about commercials.

Would it be a correct statement to say that traditional television that runs those multiple ads makes money when they run those ads, but the one break that PBS has during that hour, you do not profit from it by running anything else?

You don't earn any money .. -It's correct to know during that time, we can do underwriting announcements for companies or individuals that underwrite our programming.

-You want to define that a little bit more about what that underwriting is?

-Sure.

Underwriting is when a business or an individual donates to the station, and we give them on-air recognition for their support.

The FCC really dictates to us what that can look like.

There are certain things you can and can't say in those underwriting announcements.

You can look at it and go, "Oh, that looks like a commercial."

It's really not.

It's about supporting Channel 11, supporti.. and giving a financial donation to the television stations.

The other big difference is commercial television stations get money from all their distribution partners.

If you subscribe to Spectrum or JEA or DISH, or DIRECT, they have agreements with all the commercial TV .. to pay them for each subscriber.

Every month you send a check off to Spectrum for your cable bill, a certain dollar amount goes to each local television station and every cable station.

They all get a cut of that.

There's been disagreements when a channel is blacked out because they're fighting with a cable company over how much they're going to pay every month for each subscriber.

Being a commercial-free, non-profit, community-licensed TV station, we don't have that luxury.

We give our signal away to everyone.

The more that carry Channel 11, the better, and we make no money off of that.

We're on YouTube TV, we're on Hulu Live, we're on Amazon Prime Live TV.

We give it away everywhere.

-Other than being commercial-free, are there any other differences that PBS has that are not like other television stations?

-I guess it really goes back to our focus.

Their focus is to make a profit, and everything about a local television station, a commercial TV station, has to do with every month they have a sales budget that they need to hit.

They make a lot of decisions based on being able to make money.

How long their commercial breaks are in their local newscast, to how much they charge for commercials, what their sponsorships are for various things.

Everything is about making money.

Not everything, because believe me, I know television stations are really working for the good of their communities.

Most of them, but they do have to make money, and that's a capitalistic thing.

If they didn't make money, they may not be in business.

It really goes back to that.

Also, they're used to doing local newscasts, and that's what they're known for.

Our programming is much longer.

For instance, the West Tennessee Strawberry Festival, it's like a long parade.

If everyone's been to the Grand Floats Parade, it can be long.

I think our program this last year was three hours long.

-That's a lot -I don't know a lot of commercial TV stations that are going to air a three-hour-long parade.

-No.

-They may be used to, but they're not doing that anymore.

We do, because that's important to our community.

We've heard from our community that that's important.

We do take that time to air things longer, to give things a breath.

The TV show we're on, Tennessee is Talking, it's much different than a two-minute news story with a couple of sound bites.

It's one topic for 30 minutes to give context.

-Sticking to the subject of raising money, because this has become such a hot topic, have there been conversations in your office about how to go about raising money differently?

-Yes, we're always looking at how to raise money differently.

I think if anyone had the one answer for that, they would be a billionaire.

I think there's a lot of nonprofits that are struggling right now with cutbacks- -That is true.

--and we're no exception.

Everyone's looking how to make money.

One of the traditional ways that PBS has made money is through the pledge drives, in that you have people on air and break up in the middle of a program to ask for you to donate to the TV station.

As the way people have watched TV has been changing with technology, and a lot of people, myself included, we stream a lot of programming, that old way of doing pledge fundraising has been changing.

Meaning the dollars aren't as plentiful as they used to be for that.

Social media is a new way people have been able to donate, and you can donate to Channel 11 by going to our Facebook page as well.

Before the internet, people just had to send in an old-fashioned check to us.

People still do, and we're thankful for that, but people can donate online on our website.

It's fast, it's secure, and it's probably the easiest way to make a donation to Channel 11.

-And it is local.

-It's local.

All your donations stay local.

-That's great.

-We just recently had attorney Jeffrey Boyd in Jackson.

They had an old car, and they wanted to donat..

He and his wife, he said they watch Channel 11 all the time, and thought, "Let's donate to them because it does stay local."

-Good.

Earlier, you talked about the federal and state grants.

We didn't talk a lot about the state grants that are available.

Can you share a little bit more about that?

-Sure.

The PBS stations in the state of Tennessee have a very unique relationship with our state.

Some of you may know that Channel 11 was built .. and run by the state of Tennessee since we went on the air in '68.

They built us, they ran us.

It was all part of the State Department of Education.

If you come out to our transmitter in Beach Bluff, you can go inside.

You'll see items that still have property of .. State Department of Education, little metal stamps on them, because that's part of our history.

They owned us, they owned Knoxville, Chattanooga, and Cookeville.

Then in the early '80s, for a variety of reasons, budget cuts, whatever, the decision was made to divest the state of these stations.

That's when the West Tennessee Public Television Council Board of Directors which you sit on, was formed to own and run the television station.

That relationship continued because at that time they set up, they started giving a grant to all the PBS stations in the state of Tennessee from the state every year.

Unlike the federal grant which calculates a whole bunch of different things, the state divides it by six.

We get the same amount of the state grant as Nashville, as Memphis, as Chattanooga.

I've only been here about two and a half years, but I've asked some of the other general managers who've been here a lot longer.

I said, "What was the purpose of that?"

They said because WLJT or Cookville may not exist if it was based on population or things like that.

It was important to be able to reach everyone.

We're very rural in West Tennessee.

That's why the station was built is so people in rural West Tennessee could get educational television.

That's why we do go to a lot of rural areas or rural events.

It's important to our viewers, and that's why the station was started.

-Many of the viewers, of course, see you on television reaching out, asking for donat.. Why don't you share a little bit with us about how important those donations are to the station?

-They are very important.

As our funding changes, if a federal grant goes away, that becomes even more important.

I don't want to be the only person on TV asking people to donate, but it is a reminder.

You're not going to donate every single day, although that would be nice if you can afford it.

It's when you do need to donate, or it's like, "Oh, we should donate."

We run special announcements during tax season.

"Hey, if you're getting a tax refund, think about donating to the station.

If you've got an old car sitting around, think about donating to the TV station."

It's to keep us top of mind when those opportunities come.

We also have opportunities if maybe you had elderly parents who passed and you inherited their house, and you live somewhere else.

That house is just sitting there, and it's becoming a burdensome keeping that up.

You can donate land and real estate to the television station, and actually, then you don't have to pay taxes on it, and you can donate it and .. as a tax write-off as a donation to a charitable gift, possibly.

There's other people that leave Channel 11 in their will.

You can leave us in your will.

Your life insurance policy part of that could be donated to the station.

Those endowments, that all plays into it too, because that leaves a lasting legacy that you give to the TV station.

-Now, remind me and the viewers one more time where we can go to make those donations.

-Good question, Don.

The easiest way is our website.

It's a safe and secure process, and that's westtnpbs.org.

That's our website, and you just click on the donate tab.

You can give a financial donation, you can donate a car, donate real estate.

You just click the tab and enter your information.

It's simple.

I was talking to a donor from Henderson.

She's like, "I'm 87."

She had a question about her schedule.

This was two nights ago.

She said, "I'm on a fixed income.

I wish I could give more, but I can't."

Every dollar helps.

I know a lot of our viewers are on fixed income, and we appreciate every dollar we get.

-Are there other ways that we can support PBS?

-Yes.

I mentioned financial is great.

Making those donations, car donations, real estate donations, look at leaving Channel 11 in your will or an endowment.

There's ways and there's always, people that want to volunteer.

If you want to volunteer, you can just reach out to our station to contact us at our business office.

-Great.

-We have a lot of ev.. and we can always use volunteers.

-Peter, we're close to being out of time.

Do you have any final words, final thoughts you want to share with our viewers?

-Sure.

We're called West Tennessee PBS, but many people just refer to us as WLJT Channel 11.

That's what we started as, we still are, and we will always be good WLJT Channel 11.

Our call letters actually mean West Tennessee, Lexington, Jackson.

Our call letters represent where we're at, who we represent, and who we operate for.

We're just good old Channel 11.

I've had viewers down in Savannah when we were down there at a meeting, and she was a grandmother, and she came up to me because she saw our branded car and hugged me.

She got very teary-eyed, and she's like, "I just want to thank you for all you do.. a single new mom, I couldn't get any other station but Channel 11.

You helped raise my babies, and now those babies are raising my grandbabies."

-That's great.

-If people want to know what they can do, donations are going to matter to us.

It's not just individual donations, it's local businesses too.

Those that want to support local television.

-Can we contact local businesses directly and have them consider contacting you for their support?

-Yes, you can.

They can reach out to local businesses and just have them give me a call, and we'll discuss what we can do.

Donations from local businesses, whether it's underwriting or just a donation, matter.

We say a lot that we're the only locally owned TV station in West Tennessee, and we are.

Being local is important.

-It's important for us for you to stay, and we're going to do everything possible to make that happen.

-Thank you.

-Unfortunately, we are out o.. We want to thank Peter Noll, the general manager of Channel 11 here, and the CEO for joining us today.

If you want to re-watch this program or share it with a friend, remember it can be streamed anytime on the PBS app, along with all local Channel 11 programs.

You can also watch it on westtnpbs.org.

Keep the conversation going by following West Tennessee PBS on social media.

Until next time, keep on talking, Tennessee.

[music] -When my parents left us their home, we weren't sure what to do with the property.

-Do you have land, residential, or commercial property you're not..

Donate it and support our station.

You may even qualify for a sizable tax deduction.

-It feels good to be able to give back, and they would have loved that too.

-Your real estate donation can make a real impact.

Call us toll-free or visit us online.

-The program you've been watching was made possible through the generous financial support of West Tennessee PBS viewers like you.

Please visit westtnpbs.org and make a donation today so that we can continue to make local programs like this possible.

Thank you.