PBS Faces Crisis After Government Pulls Plug on Kids TV Grant
Current reported that the move was announced by PBS President Paula Kerger during her keynote speech at the 2025 PBS Annual Meeting in Atlanta, just days after the Department pulled the plug on the Ready To Learn grant program for 2020–2025. That decision halted federal funding to PBS and 44 local public media stations mid-cycle.
'We've been forced to furlough really talented members of our staff at PBS as we figure out how to continue to advance the PBS Kids service,' Kerger said. 'We are going to keep fighting.'
The Ready To Learn initiative has historically supported the creation of educational programming aimed at underserved children and families. Its unexpected termination now threatens the production of beloved PBS Kids shows and the jobs behind them—including freelance writers and producers whose contracts rely on episodic production orders.
A PBS spokesperson confirmed the scale of the layoffs, citing the funding loss as a critical blow to the network's ability to deliver high-quality, accessible content. 'This decision removes a critical resource that for over 30 years has enabled us to create high-quality, educational PBS Kids content while opening up worlds of possibilities for millions of children across the country.'
The Writers Guild of America East called the cuts 'an attack on children and families' and urged Congress to fully restore federal funding for public children's programming. "Our children deserve no less," the union said in a statement.
Other grantees, including Minnesota-based TPT, have also cut staff as a result. TPT had received $4.6 million in Ready To Learn funds for the current grant cycle to support its animated series Skillsville.
While PBS Kids remains a staple in homes across America, its future—at least in its current form—now hangs in the balance.
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After Johnson's landslide triumph, Moyers served as White House Press Secretary from 1965-67 — a media darling, he was on the covers of Time and Newsweek during his first year on the job — before resigning to become publisher of Newsday in 1967. The Long Island newspaper hired columnist Pete Hamill and won two Pulitzer Prizes during his three-year tenure, which ended when Newsday was sold to the Times Mirror Co. (Moyers had put together a higher offer to buy the paper but was rebuffed.) He then traveled around the country for Harper's magazine for four months in a 'swing of rediscovery,' from which he wrote 1971's Listening to America, which became a best-seller. From that, New York public TV station WNET hired him to host a weekly half-hour that would become Bill Moyers' Journal. The program included the first major interview with Jimmy Carter before he was known outside of Plains, Georgia, as well as an acclaimed 'Essay on Watergate' in 1973. Moyers had a 'five years and out' philosophy, considering that for people to 'renew' themselves, they should move on every five years. That philosophy originated when he persuaded Congress to make that period of time the maximum for volunteer employment in the Peace Corps. He held that policy for public broadcasting, too. 'It's very important for [it] to open itself constantly to new people, to renew it,' he said. 'And that's not going to happen unless us old-timers move on.' He also worked for NBC and MSNBC in the mid-1990s. Moyers married North Texas State classmate Judith Davidson in December 1954 — she went on to serve as president of Public Affairs Television — and they had three children, William, John and Alice. Best of The Hollywood Reporter 'The Studio': 30 Famous Faces Who Play (a Version of) Themselves in the Hollywood-Based Series 22 of the Most Shocking Character Deaths in Television History A 'Star Wars' Timeline: All the Movies and TV Shows in the Franchise
