I

n the skinny budget 
proposed in March 
by 
President 

Donald 
Trump, 

the Corporation for Public 
Broadcasting 
would 
be 

defunded. The agency, which 
carries a budget of about $445 
million, would lose all its money 
and, as a result, public media 
stations and producers are 
slated to lose sizable amounts of 
their budgets.

This isn’t the first time that 

the Corporation for Public 
Broadcasting was threatened 
with budget cuts. During a 
presidential debate in 2012, 
Republican Mitt Romney said 
he would cut the agency’s 
funding.

“I’m going to the stop the 

subsidy to PBS,” he said. “… 
I like PBS. I love Big Bird. I 
actually like you (Jim Lehrer), 
too. But I’m not going to keep 
on spending money on things 
to borrow money from China to 
pay for it.”

However, in this round of 

budget cuts, Big Bird wouldn’t 
be directly threatened by the 
cuts. Back in 2015, Sesame 
Workshop, which produces 
“Sesame Street,” signed a deal 
with HBO to help fund the 
show in return for access to 
new episodes nine months 
before they air on PBS.

Still, 
local 
stations 
and 

production 
companies 

would be heavily affected 
by 
the 
proposed 
cuts 
to 

the Corporation for Public 
Broadcasting. One of those 
entities is The Fred Rogers 
Company. 
This 
production 

company started as the home for 
the classic children’s program 
“Mr. Rogers Neighborhood,” 
but in 2010, it started producing 
original programs of its own.

The new flagship for the 

company is “Daniel Tiger’s 
Neighborhood.” 
The 
show, 

which 
features 
characters 

from Mr. Rogers’s Land of 
Make Believe, follows Daniel, 
a 4-year-old tiger who deals 

with similar issues to normal 
4-year-olds. The show focuses 
mostly on teaching kids social 
and emotional skills.

In a phone interview, Ellen 

Doherty, 
the 
executive 
in 

charge of production at the 
Fred Rogers Company, talked 
about how the show continues 
Rogers’s legacy by speaking to 
children at their own age.

“That was what Fred was 

really 
committed 
to 
was 

thinking about what do kids 
know and what do they need,” 
she said. “In producing the 
program, we and our partners 
at Out of the Blue Productions 
are looking at (questions like) 
‘Is this the right thing to say?’ 
‘Is this how Daniel, who’s age 
4, would talk?’ ‘Is this what he 
would be thinking about?’ ”

For Doherty, the themes of 

“Daniel Tiger” resonate with 
children because the show’s 
stories parallel what a young 
child would deal with in their 
lives, too.

“‘Daniel Tiger deals with 

the issues that are tough for 
toddlers. Daniel has to learn 
how to use the potty; he has to 
learn how to get along with his 
friends; he has to learn how to 
deal when he has a brand-new 
baby sister and he’s not the one 
in the spotlight all the time 
anymore. Those are huge issues 
when you are 2-, 3- and 4-year-
olds.”

The Fred Rogers Company 

also produces “Peg + Cat.” This 
program, 
which 
primarily 

focuses on teaching math 
skills, follows Peg and her best 
friend, Cat, as they try and solve 
problems using the math skills 
they use in the episode.

“Each episode focuses on 

one or two themes in math 
and Peg and/or Cat encounter 
a problem, Doherty said. “Peg 
is totally freaking out to try 
and figure out how to fix it 
and then she fixes it and then 
they 
encounter 
something 

else, another iteration of that 
math. So it shows persistence in 

problem solving. Persistence is 
huge with math.”

The other show The Fred 

Rogers Company produces is 
“Odd Squad.” The series follows 
a group of agents who use 
math skills to battle “Oddness” 
in their world. It’s targeted 
at a slightly older age group 
than the other two programs. 
According to Doherty, the spy 
premise connects with the 
show’s viewers.

The Fred Rogers Company 

receives the funding to produce 
these programs from a variety of 
sources including corporations, 
government 
agencies 
and 

the Corporation for Public 
Broadcasting. According to a 
company spokesperson, they 
would be affected by cuts to the 
CPB and would have to rework 
their plan to make up for the 
deficit.

For the people in public 

media, these shows reach out to 
children, as well as parents. The 
Fred Rogers Company released 
an app this year called “Daniel 
Tiger for Parents.” It’s meant to 
give parents access to materials 
to help guide them through 
helping their child through a 
difficult moment like a temper 
tantrum.

Detroit Public Television, 

Detroit’s 
public 
television 

station, uses the characters 
and 
resources 
created 
in 

conjunction with Fred Roger 
Company’s shows in local 
events on its own.

Tara Hardy, an education 

specialist 
at 
the 
station, 

discussed its role in a phone 
interview.

“When we bring a Daniel 

Tiger character to an event, it’s 
like bringing a rock star to a 
concert for 5-year-olds.”

“Peg + Cat” also played a big 

role in one of Detroit Public 
Television’s key educational 
initiatives. It receives funding 
through a grant the Department 
of Education called the Ready 
to Learn grant.

“The Ready to Learn grant is 

designed to go into classrooms 
and into schools. We were able 
to bring in iPads and tablets to 
classrooms and were able to 
train teachers on how to use 
their smart boards. There’s a 
few smart board activities that 
“Peg + Cat” put out that the kids 
just ate up. I mostly worked 
with kindergarten classrooms. 
... “Peg + Cat” was one of the 
favorites.”

According to Hardy, this 

grant would go away in the event 
that the Corporation for Public 
Broadcasting is defunded. The 
full impact of the defunding 
for the station isn’t yet known, 
but a station spokesman wrote 
in an email to the Daily, “It will 
prevent us from expanding our 
work in that space and offering 
early-childhood 
education 

programming to those who 
need it most.”

Detroit Public Television also 

tries to reach out to parents 
through a series of interstitials 
between programs on its new 
24-hour PBS Kids channel.

“A lot of the times we’re 

leading them to PBS resources 
or we’re saying ‘it’s a gorgeous 
day outside today. Why don’t 
you take the child to the park?’ 
to help empower parents,” she 
said. “Those are the parents 
who don’t have their kids in 
preschool or are not active if 
their kids are school age at the 
school. We’re able to talk to 
them and that’s a really unique 
position in the field of early 
childhood.”

Also, there are kids in the 

Detroit metro area who don’t 
have access to a preschool 
education.

“What we’ve found in our 

work in Detroit and around 
the areas is there’s not enough 
slots in preschools for every 
child that’s four to be in,” 
Hardy said. “We like to see 
ourselves as a supplement to a 
quality preschool program, but 
we also like to see ourselves as 
providing the content as best 
we can without that social piece 

to families that really don’t 
have the access to a quality 
preschool.”

For Hardy, the possible 

defunding of the CPB is 
frustrating.

“I’ve been working here for 

roughly three years. I have 
really in those three years 
discovered how powerful and 
impactful public media can be, 
especially working with young 
children and working with 
parents. Kids are watching TV 
no matter what we do. ... Public 
media has the chance to put 
quality in front of those kids.”

For 
Doherty, 
the 

noncommercial nature of PBS 
allows for the ability to create 
different kinds of shows that 
wouldn’t otherwise be on 
television.

“Public broadcasting is really 

unique. … Public media is a 
great safe zone for kids,” she 
said. “Fred (Rogers) literally 
helped get it funded through is 
testimony to Congress and what 
he called the expression of care 
for children and families. That’s 
really what’s kept me working 
in public media for most of my 
career is knowing that’s it’s 
really helping, making content 
that really helps kids and that 
reaches a lot of kids who don’t 
necessarily have other ways to 
get TV content.”

After many years of working 

in public media, Doherty has 
seen how the shows she has 
made has changed the lives 
of the children who watched 
them.

“You’re 
going 
to 
hear 

from kids in 10 years talking 
about how ‘Daniel Tiger’s 
Neighborhood’ had a lasting 
influence on them,” Doherty 
added. “That’s what’s unique 
about public media. We want 
to make sure that we’re making 
shows that people watch, but 
we want to make shows that 
are good for kids and give 
them valued stuff but without 
the pressures that commercial 
channels face.”

3B
Wednesday, April 5, 2017 // The Statement 

On Threatening the Land of Make Believe
BY ALEX INTNER, DAILY ARTS WRITER

