2016 PBS Annual Meeting Recap
Family Ingredients director, Ty Sanga, recaps his experience at the 2016 PBS Annual Meeting.
From Hilo to Chicago. I was excited to travel to the 2016 PBS Annual meeting with the Family Ingredients team to learn more about the PBS system and get a better understanding of what to expect as our food travel show rolls out later this year. I have never been to Chicago.
The day before my flight I was in Hilo to congratulate the new batch of graduating Pharmacists from the University of Hawaiʻi. The day was filled with smiles, tears and leis as their arduous academic career came to a close and they enter a new chapter in their lives. I left rainy Hilo, swapped out my slippers and shorts for pants and a jacket, and braced for the cold chill of the Windy City, which I discovered the nickname doesn’t refer to its weather. A quick layover in Honolulu where Ed Kenney, our show’s host and Hawaiʻi’s best kept secret, joined me and we made our way to Chicago.
Ed and I weren't sure what to expect on this trip. I knew that the Annual Meeting was where station programmers, producers, and community partners gathered to share the latest industry tips and screen highlights of the new PBS lineup. This was going to be my first PBS experience, a juggernaut in public broadcasting, and I was starting to get butterflies like the first day of school.
The theme of this year’s meeting was “America’s Storyteller”. The first thing on our agenda was to present our show to the Public Television Programmer’s Association Annual Meeting held in conjunction with the annual PBS Conference. Ed has made his fame as one of Hawaiʻi’s top chefs, but what people don’t know is that he is a wonderful storyteller. He was a natural as he introduced our series in front of a room of 200 programmers.
As the session ended, the rest of the Family Ingredients team (which included producers Heather Giugni and Renea Veneri Stewart) and members of PBS Hawaiʻi and Pacific Islanders in Communications, shared a little bit of the aloha spirit by handing out leis. Many of them were stunned to receive one of 200 leis, shipped by the Oʻahu Visitors Bureau for this occasion.
A programmer held a lei in surprise and said, “Oh my god, this is real!” I smiled thinking, what do you expect? It is our mission to share the authentic Hawaiʻi with the world.
The rest of our days were filled with inspiring sessions, networking, and of course, food adventures (we had to try deep dish pizza and the Bourdain endorsed ʻōkole [buttocks] burning Sze Chuan Cuisine). The Annual Meeting felt like a reunion where programmers and producers from across the nation reconnected. Many of them have been working in public broadcast for decades. Our conversations were deep and meaningful and their passion and desire for quality programming reminded me that there is a place for independent filmmakers.
After the closing reception, we had one last dinner in Chicago with a group of programmers and producers, many of whom I now consider close friends. It was a long, difficult journey to get Family Ingredients onto the screen, but we are now preparing for the next chapter, the national premiere. As Betsy Gerdeman, PBS Senior Vice President of Development Services put it, “I do believe that our service in public media has never been more essential and more relevant. I remain convinced that our best days are still ahead of us.”
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