After a 60 year partnership, Arkansas PBS has rebranded to Arkansas TV due to many financial restraints. 

On Dec. 11, 2025, Arkansas TV announced its split from PBS and rebrand to Arkansas TV. 

 “We announced our intention to split on Dec. 11 at a commission meeting, ” Arkansas TV CEO Carlton Wing said. 

“We had to give them a 180 day notice before the next fiscal year began, and so that’s why that decision had to be made in December, ” Wing said. 

Although Arkansas TV announced their decision to split in December, the partnership won’t end until July 1. 

Wing said that one of the reasons Arkansas TV split from PBS is because the broadcaster raised its dues. 

“We asked, please lower the dues or give us menu pricing, you know, allow us to just buy what we can afford. And every time we ask, they said no,” Wing said. 

“They were still going to charge the dues, in fact they are going up next year. And so it became very apparent that  in order to save public television, we were going to have to forge a new financial path,“ Wing said. 

Wing said that another reason for the split was due to the loss of federal funding cuts in July 2025. 

“When I got here, my first day was Sept. 30, and the first order of business was to really look at what our financial picture was like,” Wing said. “With the loss of the federal funding cuts that happened back in July, that took away $2.5 million from our budget.” 

Wing said that the budget to begin with was just under $13 million overall. 

He said that 20% of the overall budget would be cut, and about 31% of the television operations budget was also cut due to the $2.5 million federal funding cuts. 

“It was a big chunk, and we had to figure out how to replace that money, and still pay the dues that PBS was charging us,” Wing said.  

“The federal funding cuts were the money we used to pay for our dues. And with that gone, we had to figure out how to make up that deficit,“ Wing said. 

The split from PBS will also cause many changes in the programming. 

“What they (PBS) were providing was a little over half of the programming that you see on Arkansas TV, so we will obviously have to replace that,” Wing said. 

“But that’s where the savings comes in, because we can replace that for much less than what we were having to pay PBS,” Wing said. 

Wing said that in a recent commission meeting, the commission voted to pause the split with PBS. 

“The commission voted to pause, but the motion itself was a little bit hard to decipher,” Wing said. 

“In fact, just recently, the chair of the commission addressed that issue and said they’re going to have to have another meeting to determine how to implement what the intent of the motion was versus the actual verbiage of the motion,” Wing said. 

There are no details about when this next meeting will take place. 

Since Arkansas became the first state to end its affiliation with PBS, two key figures in Arkansas history have tried to save PBS programming in Arkansas. 

Former first ladies Gay White and Barbara Pryor recently created an organization called “Friends of Arkansas PBS” in order to try and save Arkansas PBS. 

“I think it’s great what they’re (White and Pryor) doing because they’re highlighting the fact the funding mechanism for public television has changed completely, and so they’re helping raise awareness to the fact that the money is not there in the way that it used to be,” Wing said. 

“A lot of folks didn’t realize that it was taxpayer dollars that are paying for public television — And so, what the first ladies are doing is helping to let people know, [just] by the virtue or by the nature of their status as being former first ladies of Arkansas,” Wing said. 

“One of the things that’s an interesting statistic is that this station last year produced 5% of the content we aired, and one of the things that we have heard from Arkansans is they want to see more local programming. That used to be a hallmark of what this station provided, “ Wing said. 

“We are going to go from 5% to 30% of local content in our first year, and that’s really going to help us meet the needs of Arkansans with what true public, educational television was meant to be from the beginning. We’re getting back to our roots, and we’re all very excited about that, “ Wing said.