A rural PBS station wrestles with pandemic constraints
Despite stay-at-home measures, the creative director for Basin PBS, the smallest of the service's 330 member stations, finds herself working harder than ever. The only relief is the temporary suspension of her job as "mom taxi for a 9-year-old" who isn't going anywhere these days.
The COVID-19 “lock down,” for lack of a unified definition across all 50 states, has collided many peoples’ personal lives with their work lives.
Earlier, we wrote about how PBS employees at headquarters — more than 600 of them — kept the service running from their homes, along with a team of essential engineers and producers who staff key functions within the company’s walls. We wanted to know how the pandemic scenario was playing out for one of the more than 330 member stations. We were curious about how a small organization, where people sometimes serve in more than one role, is coping these days.
Basin PBS, named for the oil-rich Permian Basin that comprises much of West Texas, serves the sparsely populated expanse of that region as well as the cities of Midland and Odessa, a 4-hour drive from El Paso. We caught up with the station’s creative director, Alyson Trevino, to get a sense of life after lockdown in her area.
After wryly noting that “life after lockdown” would be a good book title, Trevino said, “For me personally it didn’t really change much — I’ve worked from home for almost 11 years and with the exception of not being the mom taxi service for our 9-year-old… it’s life as usual,” adding, “For me, not our 9-year-old.” Driving duties have been suspended because no one is going anywhere, she said.
Trevino went on to describe how Basin PBS has responded as a community-owned non-profit media organization serving southwest Texas. A priority concern for Trevino is the considerable hardship the area is suffering because of its dependence on the health of the oil industry. Oil futures took a nosedive shortly after governments began keeping people at home.
Dan Macy: Now that we know you’re OK, what about the station?
Trevino: As for the station, we had a staff member with potential exposure early on. That caused the real lockdown/work from home for the rest of the staff for at least two weeks. After that, unless you had to be at the station, everyone worked from home. Luckily, we are so small that everyone who physically works at the building can stay away from each other fairly easily. Our admin would get the mail and come in in the evenings, wipe down on her way in and on her way out, and do what she needed to do to keep things moving — opening mail, bank items, etc. We are just about to complete the move of our master control from one location into (a) new building so our engineers would come do what they needed to do and leave.
DM: How many employees do you have?
AT: There are six employees plus me; I am contracted. We are the smallest (PBS member) station in the country.
DM: The pandemic amounted to a massive change for most people and businesses, we hear over and over in the media. Is that true for you and Basin PBS? Has the pandemic disrupted your schedule or inspired you to do anything new or different?
AT: While it felt fairly normal, it was anything but, really. We were in the planning stages of our new annual event. This would have been the second year of Main Street Live, a street dance/party with food, live music and dancing. We (normally) shut down the block the station is on and host (the event) as our main fundraiser of the year. We didn’t cancel, but we did need to reschedule and it will now take place in the fall — taking and planning on all the necessary precautions to help guests stay a safe distance from one another and feel safe.
Other events such as IndieLens Pop-Up screenings have been virtual. Partnering with others in the community or other stations around the country has made it fun and sustainable.
DM: How did the station react as a news and public affairs source for the community?
AT: We hosted a live town hall called We're Prepared: Keeping the Permian Basin Safe During COVID-19/Coronavirus. The public could submit their questions via social media or text. We hosted, in small group segments, local mayors, county judges and medical leaders to inform the public about the virus, what their plans are and advice and of course answer questions form the communities.
We reached over 23,000; had engagement of over 6,000; 12,000 views; 125 shares and countless questions.
This was also where Midland broke the news of its first confirmed case to the community.
DM: And outside the news and public affairs arena, did the station take on new roles — ones you might not have considered before the pandemic?
AT: As graduation ceremonies have either been cancelled or been altered and seniors have had to miss out on so many traditions of graduation, Basin PBS decided to put together and air a program featuring area valedictorian speeches and some senior messages so that everyone would have the opportunity to see these amazing kids and celebrate their hard work as they move into the next phase of their lives. That will air Thursday, June 4, at 7pm (CMT).
And since things clearly aren’t going to be back to “normal,” we have decided to begin our new music series, Main Street Unplugged. This will be a quarterly program that features local and national music artists that will perform live in the studio for on-air and possibly a small studio audience.
DM: And, not to overlook one key public broadcasting mission, how about education?
AT: And of course, Basin PBS through our partnership with Ector County ISD (Independent School District), will continue At-Home Learning throughout the summer and into the fall to help students Pre-K through 12th beat the summer slide and stay on track for the next academic year.
DM: And going forward, you must be looking to adapt to changed circumstances, even though we don’t know exactly what they’ll look like, right?
AT: We’ve got ideas about turning our Basin PBS Café series of events into virtual events. The series brings varying topics to different groups within the community. For example, in the past we have hosted working with clay with two local potters, we hosted a kids’ space day with the education director from the University of Texas McDonald Observatory and others. These would work well as virtual events, but there is some concern about digital burnout so while we can plan, we may wait to implement and see how things go.
Most of all we want to be here for our Permian Basin communities, in ways that they need us most. So, we are looking into the communities and listening to what they are hungry for and do our best to deliver in ways that follow our mission.
DM: The first time you and I spoke by phone about the pandemic situation, you decided to send out an impromptu Facebook survey that simply said, "Mask or no mask?" You predicted it wouldn't get a whole lot of responses, but the next day you emailed me and said you were surprised. You had 65 replies, and counting. Did the response grow beyond that?
AT: Yes! I took the poll on May 14, thinking that we wouldn’t have a big response and boy was I wrong! We reached 1,758 and had 792 engagements with 113 comments of varying degree. We had everything from “MASK!” to “I’ll wear it but don’t like it,” to “no way!”
I couldn’t have possibly answered the question of what the community as a whole was thinking and there was no better way for me to even get a glimpse.