TV, movie producer picked to lead AETN

Courtney Pledger, a Little Rock native who became a noted television and film producer, will now use her experience to lead the Arkansas Educational Television Network as its executive director, Gov. Asa Hutchinson announced Tuesday.

Pledger has been executive director of the Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival since 2012, rebuilding the national profile of the festival. She will start her new job March 20 at an annual salary of $114,000, an AETN spokesman said.

“I take this job with a great degree of excitement and enthusiasm,” Pledger said during a news conference. “I’m very eager to get to work.”

Less than an hour earlier, the AETN Commission unanimously voted to approve Pledger’s selection. Conway-based AETN, now in its 50th year, is the state’s only public educational television network. AETN is one of 349 Public Broadcasting Service stations in the nation and broadcasts through six stations in the state.

Pledger is taking the job after the death in November of Allen Weatherly, who had been AETN’s executive director since 2001. Weatherly was 64. Deputy Director Tony Brooks, in his 16th year at AETN, has been interim director.

Hutchinson and Pledger thanked Brooks for his “continued commitment” and for leading “a talented team.” Hutchinson also praised Weatherly for serving the state “with passion for more than 20 years.”

While there has been talk of reductions in taxpayer money for public television and radio by state legislators and some within President Donald Trump’s administration, Hutchinson pledged Tuesday there aren’t any planned reductions for AETN. The governor called AETN’s programming “important to this state.”

Pledger said she hasn’t planned on any changes at AETN, nor had Hutchinson alluded to any.

“He gave me no marching orders,” she said.

Pledger said the role of public television and of AETN is vital to viewers, citing research that lists PBS news telecasts as being the “most trusted, thoughtful and truthful coverage.”

AETN Commission Chairman Kathryn Jones of Bentonville said she enjoys hearing from viewers who tell her how much they, or their children, enjoy AETN’s programs and they don’t want its programming to be cut by reductions in government appropriations.

“That’s the way to see the worth of AETN,” Jones said. “Just to have people who value public broadcasting.”

Commissioner West Doss of Fayetteville, one of three delegates from AETN to the National Public Media Conference last month, told other commissioners Tuesday attendees were informed of polls showing 70 percent of Trump voters and 80 percent of people overall support public broadcasting.

In announcing Pledger’s new role, Hutchinson lauded “her vision for this agency” and her “incredible background in television.”

Pledger’s Hollywood experience includes small acting roles and work as a producer for such television films as A Killing in a Small Town, which won lead actress Barbara Hershey a 1990 Emmy and a Golden Globe, and Challenger, about the space shuttle disaster.

Pledger’s work has garnered several awards and honors, including a primetime Emmy Award nomination and the Women in Film’s Lillian Gish Producing Award.