This interview originally aired on 10/23/2026 on South Texas Midday.
ROB BOSCAMP: Joining me is the President and CEO of PBS Austin, Luis Patiño. Thank you for joining me.
LUIS PATIÑO: Well, thank you for having me.
ROB BOSCAMP: Tell me a little bit about what brings you to Corpus Christi.
LUIS PATIÑO: Myself and other colleagues from across the state of Texas are all here for a convening that we do once a year. Last year, we were actually up in Amarillo, and we're really happy to be here this week and enjoying the beautiful weather. But really, why we're here is for some really important meetings that we're having as part of a Texas PBS collaborative that we have. All the Texas PBS station leaders gathered together once a year to try and talk about potential programming opportunities that we have for new content distribution, new ways of working together. And in this particular meeting, we have some really big topics to discuss about future collaborations, especially around content, how we work together to make sure that we take full advantage of our app, which is becoming more and more important. We all know that people still listen to the radio, they still watch television the way they have for many years. But more and more people are streaming their audio and their radio stations on their devices, and the same goes for television. More and more people are watching PBS programming on their devices and through apps, sometimes on their television, what we call OTT [over-the-top media services]. And so all of those conversations are really important for us to have as a group, as a collaborative. We're really fortunate that here in Texas we all get along, and we're very friendly with each other, and we want to make sure that we help each other in any way that we can.
ROB BOSCAMP: And PBS Austin is one of the stations that make up Texas PBS. If you're able to share, is anything that you're looking at in particular in terms of programming?
LUIS PATIÑO: Sure, sure, sure. Just speaking specifically on behalf of the station in Austin, you know we're pretty blessed to be in a major market that has a lot of content creators, a lot of documentarians. And for the 60 years of our existence, we've focused a lot on educational content and services. But then there's also this little music show that some of y'all may have heard about called Austin City Limits. And we just celebrated our 52nd year of Austin City Limits, and we're getting ready to start programming and gearing up for Season 53 of Austin City Limits. We don't have an NPR radio station, so most of our focus is on television, Therefore, we do a lot of content development creation. We have another program that comes out of there that we partner with the University of Texas on called Live from the LBJ Library [with Mark Updegrove. That is a sort of an interview show. We have another one called Overheard with Evan Smith. We do a gardening show called Central Texas Gardener, and then we sort of copied Corpus Christi and some other stations. And we just launched our own high school quiz show. I think you guys call it something else.
ROB BOSCAMP: We call it Challenge! down here.
LUIS PATIÑO: Yeah, and [KEDT has] been doing it for many years. This is barely going to be our second season. It was a huge success, and the type of collaborations that we talk about in these meetings are: “Imagine if we can do it in all the cities in Texas and do a statewide "Challenge!”
ROB BOSCAMP: I like that idea!
LUIS PATIÑO: Right? Wouldn't that be cool?
ROB BOSCAMP: Yeah.
LUIS PATIÑO: Yeah.
ROB BOSCAMP: I'm sure one topic that y'all hear about a lot is: how important it is for that community support for stations like PBS to have. We've experienced that here in Corpus Christi. Of course, being from Austin, you're familiar with the NPR affiliate KUT.
LUIS PATIÑO: Oh yeah.
ROB BOSCAMP: Home of the Texas Standard.
LUIS PATIÑO: That's right.
ROB BOSCAMP: How important is it for public radio? How important is public radio for Texas listeners?
LUIS PATIÑO: Yeah, I think your listeners, for one, they need to be commended, right? Because at the end of the day, we are now 100% community supported, right? So without the support of our respective communities, whether it's here in Corpus Christi, whether it's in Austin, whether it's in Amarillo, Midland, Odessa, El Paso, Lubbock, you name it, we all are 100% reliant on the support of our respective communities. And we're all really blessed to be in markets and cities where we have huge support for public media. It's something that we talk about frequently. It's something that we try and make sure that the content that we provide, the services that we provide, are very focused on our own respective markets. That's the other beauty of public media; is that the PBS and NPR station in Corpus Christi are not going to look like or sound like the stations in Austin or Dallas and Houston, and they shouldn't. They should be unique. They should be hyper-local. They should focus on news and topics of the day that are happening in your city. And unlike the commercial media, that is one of our huge benefits: is that we have a responsibility to be more localized and to create content and services that are very focused on our local communities, as different as they are. Yes. Are there areas where we can create synergies across the state? Absolutely. But when it comes to content, when it comes to services and serving our community with events, I heard you guys just had a wonderful kids celebration. We did the same thing this weekend in Austin; but again, the beauty is, I bet our event looked different than your event, and it should. The partners are probably different. Types of engagement opportunities should be different. And again, we do that all on behalf of our communities because we are here to serve the community and to serve the entire community.
ROB BOSCAMP: At the time of this interview, we are in the middle of our KEDT-FM membership drive, how would you encourage listeners to support public media, radio specifically?
LUIS PATIÑO: Absolutely. Well, I think if you listen to the station and you have for many years, then you have received an enormous benefit by being a listener. By being informed, by being educated in a way that is unlike what you're going to get if you turn the dial. And because of that, if you think that that support, that that empowerment, that that knowledge, that that insight has helped you, your family members, your kids in some way, then what a better way than to support it financially, right? As you know, and I know, any amount is a huge help to this station, like it is to other stations. And knowing that we are 100% community supported, I think that I, in many ways, take a lot of pride in that because we no longer have any federal funding. Right, wrong, or indifferent, it is what it is; and we now rely on our community for their support and for their input, for their willingness to also talk to us about the things that they want to hear more about, and that is our responsibility to make sure that we cater our content for what is most needed here in Corpus Christi, as long as and as well in the rest of Texas. So your support is always, always felt with the enormous amount of gratitude the employees at all of our stations appreciate it. We don't take it for granted, and we thank you.
ROB BOSCAMP: Was there anything else that you'd like to add?
LUIS PATIÑO: Well, I think I'll add with really that reemphasis of the support. Right, public media was founded in 1967 when LBJ signed the Public Media Act, and it was always meant to inform, to educate, and to inspire. And one of the things that we try to do as a collaborative around Texas public media, Texas PBS stations, NPR stations, is to make sure that we live those values, and that we never forget that mission to inform and to inspire and to educate. It's embedded in everything that we do, so we just feel that it's a huge privilege to be able to operate in the public media space. And we're also so hugely grateful to our communities. So thank you once again.
ROB BOSCAMP: And thank you. That is Luis Patiño, President and CEO at PBS Austin. Luis, thank you very much for your time.
LUIS PATIÑO: Thank you for having me.
