(upbeat music) - We are honored to be joined by Neal Shapiro, the President and Chief Executive Officer of the WNET Group.

Good to see you, Neal.

- Good to see you, Steve.

- As we put up the website for the WNET group, tell everyone what that group is, because it involves a whole range of media operations.

- It does.

It's three broadcast stations, THIRTEEN, WLIW21, and NJPBS, as well as WORLD, Create and ALL ARTS.

So we do a lot of stuff.

- Talk to us about this.

I'm obsessed, and I think you know this, about the role of public media in our representative democracy.

"Democracy in Danger" is the graphic that'll come up.

How do you see our role in public broadcasting and particularly your role as the leader in this region, of public broadcasting as it relates to promoting, protecting our representative democracy?

- I think it's vitally important.

I think, you know, a democracy depends on an informed electorate, and that electorate can only be informed as places to go where it can get news they can trust and depend on, news without an agenda, news that is in-depth and news that gives you a range of things from international, national and local issues.

And that's, I think, what public media does extraordinarily well in this time when the country's so polarized.

And part of the reason it's so polarized is because it's so easy to surround yourself with news that you agree with.

And I think what makes public media so important is it comes to you with no agenda.

It's job is not to convince you of anything.

If anything, it's job to give you lots of different points of view.

So you make up your own mind.

And the world is such a changing place, that no matter what you may think is right today, it could be wrong tomorrow.

So getting more and different points of view and more interpretations is vitally important.

- So the whole range of programs that you go on the website to find out, and for me, national, international affairs, "Amanpour & Company", which Neal had a huge role in connecting public broadcasting in this region to CNN to make that happen.

Also, "Firing Line" with Margaret Hoover, one of my favorites.

But do this for us locally in our region.

How important is it that that for NJPBS previously NJTV, established in July 1st of 2011, largely 'cause Neal took the lead on this, the WNET Group, to make that happen so we wouldn't go black with public broadcasting.

There's a question here, the balance in your mind between local regional programming and the national international programming of public broadcasting with the WNET Group?

- Well, you know, in some ways they're obviously very different.

As great as "Amanpour" is and "NewsHour" and "Frontline", they can't cover local news and don't intend to, and so much of news is local.

So having important coverage in the state, having what you do, long in-depth interviews, having what "NJ Spotlight News" does every night, incredibly important.

The other thing that is interesting in this time is how often what happens internationally is connected locally.

So there's no better example of what's happening in Israel and Gaza right now, an international story, which has all kinds of implications on college campuses and communities and how people interpret that.

So the world's an interconnected place.

It's important to have trusted sources everywhere you go.

- Along those lines, I was having a conversation with Neal offline.

Like, we're a New Jersey-based operation.

We're trying to understand what's going on in the conflict between Israel and Hamas.

You've got the largest Palestinian population in New Jersey, a huge Jewish population in New Jersey.

To say like, "Well, it's just New Jersey."

It doesn't work that way, which is why also, by the way, check out "NJ Spotlight News".

They do a great job every night trying to understand the bigger picture and how it relates to our state of New Jersey.

Neal, you have a...

There's a public broadcasting special coming up in the new year.

We're taping in the middle of December-- - Yeah.

- 2023.

This is 2024.

Go ahead, please.

- Yeah.

It's around a book that Richard Haass wrote.

Richard Haass, as you know, former head of the Council on Foreign Relations, has advised Democrats and Republicans.

And his notion is there are 10 things that... an obligation or responsibility that every citizen has to each other to preserve democracy.

So he runs us through this thing, and he came forth because he said, you know, "I worked around the world and I never thought democracy would be in danger in our own country.

But I studied, and I've written this book because I worry that it is."

And it sings like reminding us that being civil with each other, finding trusted sources, understanding what's happening, giving back to your communities are things that are very, very important.

And there's things that every citizen can do.

And there's a tendency, I think, as we become so frightened about what we see, not just around January 6th, but the level of intensity of anger and vitriol in this country, that there are a number of ways in which people at the grassroots level can make the difference.

And you know, if you think about it, something like Mothers Against Drunk Driving, that was one woman who was upset about the tragic death of her daughter and changed the country, right?

There are ways in which individuals at a grassroots level can make great progress.

- Along those lines.

And that program, Neal, what, does it have a... What's the working title?

- It's "A Citizen's Obligation".

It's Richard...

It's Hari interviewing Richard Haass.k - Interesting.

You know, but Neal, go back to something before that I mentioned the "Amanpour & Company".

I'm huge fan of Christiane Amanpour and...

But it's not just her.

And that's the thing that strikes me is It's a group of journalists who come in and... And actually, to be super candid about it, it's influenced my thinking about what we do and having more folks with different perspectives, different ages, interviewing people.

It's "Amanpour & Company".

- That's right.

And you say-- - Talk about that.

- It's exactly right.

There are three other great journalists at different... all smart, all accomplished, but at different points in their lives.

Walter Isaacson, brilliant biographer a renaissance man who's an author and a journalist, Michelle Martin from NPR, and of course our own Hari Sreenivasan.

And the three of them always do it.

So at least one interview in the show, and Christiane does the others.

And by melding what Christiane brings and what CNN brings, frankly, a huge arsenal of international coverage combined with what we can do here, I think makes it tremendous programing.

- Along those lines, Neal, do you see this a partnership between the WNET Group and CNN?

Do you see those kinds of partnerships and collaborations between public broadcasting and other entities outside of the universe of PBS coming together to produce programming that would be much harder to produce on your own, on our own?

- Absolutely, absolutely.

I think "Amanpour & Company is a better show for both CNN and for us, because we're all involved and I think we're gonna keep trying to find different partners and ways to bring news and information to people.

But the one thing which is common about, Steve, and you know this well, is we rely on our viewers to help make it happen, right?

We're not a place, we don't have commercials.

It is why we come to you with points and say, "Please support nonprofit journalism," because it's so important.

And it does survive because our viewers support it.

- So Neal, I'm glad you mentioned money, which helps.

People go, "Do you love your work?"

And I say, I love interviewing people.

Don't love raising money.

And Neal doesn't either, but it's his job.

It's our job, any of us involved.

Here's the question.

If you go where to go all the way back, and it's probably an unfair question, Neal, about July, 2011, the creation of NJTV, which turned into NJPBS, again, check out "NJ Spotlight News" every night, You made a decision together with others, but you stepped in and said, "We're gonna do this."

Do you ever realize the impact it would have in terms of the economics of running a station in New Jersey that's largely funded privately?

- It was a bigger challenge than I thought.

It is a big challenge.

Part of that is though, what I always thought was vitally important that New Jersey not be the only state that didn't have its own public television.

- Explain to folks what that really... Like, there'd be nothing, Neal.

- There'd be nothing, right?

And you know, I think people who live in New Jersey know these sort of get dwarfed by what happens in New York and Philadelphia and that those are covered by often big commercial stations who come and go.

And there's so much important in the state that needs its own separate station.

They can do things that are important to New Jersey.

Not just news, but arts and culture and all of that needs to be preserved.

And that's what public media does.

So I thought it was very, very important, and I'm grateful that so many people did step up and help us.

But as Steve said, it is hard work and demanding and requires resources.

And in fact, we want to do more, not less.

We wanna reach people in all different platforms, not just on TV, but digitally in every way we can.

And as there are more challenges across the state, we want to be there to help you deal with those.

- Stay on the digital point, Neal.

You've been talking about this for years with us.

You don't separate broadcast from digital and other platforms to be... to distribute our content.

How much has that changed your view of being the CEO and the leader of the WNET Group and how you view programming and where it goes and who sees it and how we see it?

Not to mention how you raise money for it.

Go ahead.

- Well, the big change is, content is content.

And we didn't use to think about that, nobody did.

In the early days of media, digital was an afterthought.

They put things on the web and thought nobody would see it.

Now what we know is there are giant audiences that often different audiences.

And the way in which some people consume television because they like the linear experience of sitting down and watching it, often watching it live as one audience.

There's another audience who wants to find things and find it when they wanna see it.

And there's an audience which wants to find segments.

And sometimes they overlap and sometimes they don't.

And the important thing is we wanna reach all those audiences and help them in every platform we have.

So it's important to view it as a continuum of content over many different platforms.

- 30 seconds left.

Neal, why is what you do and what public broadcasting is, all that, why is it so personal for you?

- You know, because when I was a young boy, I remember ducking into the school library to watch the Watergate hearings.

And I thought, "Wow, democracy is on the line."

It was really a plan by somebody to subvert the Constitution.

And then we're not for some reports in the Washington Post world would be a different place.

Well, now let's look at what happened in our... where we live right now, an assault on the Capitol.

Democracy is still in danger.

And we still need journalists and we still need an informed electorate and public media has a vital role to play.

I monitor, I can be a part of it, but I so want people to realize how important this is.

As Richard Haass says, "There's no guarantee that our democracy will continue."

It's up to all of us to keep sure, keep it strong.

And that means vital media is a part of that.

- Neal Shapiro, the President and Chief Executive Officer of the WNET Group.

Thank you, Neal.

- Steve, always a pleasure.

- You got it.

Stay with us, we’ll be right back.

- [Narrator] One-On-One with Steve Adubato has been a production of the Caucus Educational Corporation.

Celebrating 30 years in public broadcasting.

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