Dear Friends,
June is here, bringing with it triple-digit temperatures, LGBTQ Pride Month, Flag Day, Father’s Day, Juneteenth, and summer vacations. As we approach the end of our fiscal year, I am deeply grateful for your ongoing investment in public media. I hope you will join me in making an additional fiscal year-end gift to help AZPM end FY25 on solid financial footing.
2025 Edward R. Murrow Awards
Your support helps us continue to deliver award-winning, trusted content. Our flagship television program, Arizona Illustrated, was recently honored with seven regional Edward R. Murrow Awards for outstanding achievements in broadcast and digital journalism—the most awarded to any public television station in the country! These awards recognize reporting excellence in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, Innovation, Investigative Reporting, Writing, Video, Hard News, and Feature Reporting. A standout winner was Arizona Illustrated en Español, a collaborative project with the University of Arizona's Department of Spanish and Portuguese and translation student Daniela Gonzalez, whose efforts brought culturally relevant stories to broader audiences. Since 2016, AZPM has been recognized with a total of 49 Regional Murrow Awards. Learn more about the Murrow Awards and see our recent award-winning projects here.
AZPM has an exciting summer lineup on PBS 6. Our end-of-fiscal-year schedule will feature concerts and specials, including an insider look at some of MASTERPIECE’s most popular mysteries. The Cozy Mysteries of MASTERPIECE explores what makes popular mysteries such as Grantchester, Moonflower Murders, Marlowe Murder Club, Magpie Murders, and Miss Scarlet so engaging. Go behind the scenes Sunday, June 1 at 7 p.m. on PBS 6 to discover what makes a mystery “cozy” – and why people love them.
New specials include The Underground Railroad: The Paths & Places of Refuge on Tuesday, June 3 at 9:30 p.m., followed by an encore presentation of Ken Burns’ The Civil War at 10:30 p.m. Music specials abound, from Peter, Paul and Mary to Andrea Bocelli, Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band, Carole King and James Taylor, Tony Bennett, and Barbra Streisand. Rick Steves, Jacques Pepin, Lidia Bastianich, and other celebrities will take you on journeys of culinary discovery around the globe. Please check the television program schedule to find your favorites.
AZPM, in partnership with Clean Elections and the Arizona Media Association, will host the Arizona Congressional District 7 primary debates live on Monday, June 9 and Tuesday, June 10, each at 6 p.m.. These debates will be offered to radio and television stations across Arizona and will air locally on PBS 6 and NPR 89.1. This special election is shaping up to be a highly competitive contest, with candidates to fill the seat of the late Congressman Raúl Grijalva. Early voting in the July 15 primary begins June 18; the primary winners will face off in a special election September 23.
The PBS 6 summer dramas begin Sunday, June 15 with the debut of a new program, a season premiere, and an encore presentation. At 7 p.m., meet Patience, an autistic police archivist whose unique gifts help the York police solve the most mystifying crimes. Patience is an English adaptation of Astrid, the French-language mystery available on AZPM Passport courtesy of Walter Presents. The key difference is that the actor who portrays Patience is herself autistic, lending a new level of authenticity to the plot and the dialogue.
Stay with PBS 6 for the premiere of Season 10 of Grantchester at 8 p.m. Grantchester’s newest vicar, Alphy Kottaram, has really found a home in Grantchester and his intellectual equal in police detective Geordie Keating. At 9 p.m., AZPM revisits Atlantic Crossing, an 8-part miniseries inspired by the real, World War II relationship between US President Franklin Roosevelt and Norwegian Crown Princess Martha. Kyle MacLachlan (Twin Peaks, Sex and the City) stars as Roosevelt, opposite Swedish actor Sofia Helin (The Bridge) as the beautiful Princess Martha, who flees the Nazis with her three young children and lives under Roosevelt’s protection in America.
Paleontologist lovers and dinosaur enthusiasts alike, mark your calendars for the premiere of Walking with Dinosaurs on Monday, June 16 at 8 p.m. on PBS 6. Twenty-five years after its original broadcast, the critically acclaimed television series Walking with Dinosaurs is back with a new season. Using the latest discoveries from dinosaur digs across the globe and paired with showstopping state-of-the-art CGI, this series brings these magnificent giants back to life. The team of world-leading experts and paleontologists help unlock the secrets of how many dinosaurs once lived. Told using stunning VFX, these are tales of struggle, love and survival – the ultimate ancient drama. Broadcast in two-hour blocks over three nights (June 16-18), the new season will also stream on AZPM Passport.
From Executive Producer Bradley Cooper, CAREGIVING is the story of paid and unpaid caregivers navigating the challenges and joys of this deeply meaningful work.According to recent reports, it is estimated that between 53 million to over 100 million U.S. adults provide unpaid caregiving for family and friends, while an estimated 5.4 million children and adolescents in the U.S. are direct caregivers for family members. Caregiving, actor Bradley Cooper’s documentary collaboration with PBS, centers on the personal experiences of unpaid caregivers providing for loved ones and the challenges and triumphs they face each day. Caregiving premieres on PBS 6 Tuesday, June 24 at 9 p.m.
Earth has never experienced anything like us: a single species dominating and transforming the planet – for better and for worse. Biologist Shane Campbell-Staton travels the globe to explore our human footprint and to discover how the things we do reveal who we truly are. Season Two of The Human Footprint, premiering on PBS 6 Wednesday, June 25 at 9 p.m., explores the impact supermarkets, fashion, dams, and other human innovations have had on our lives and on our planet. Watch all six episodes on consecutive Wednesdays at 9 p.m. – or stream with AZPM Passport.
AZPM original Hollywood at Home returns to PBS 6 on June 14 with the time-traveling rom-com Kate and Leopold at 7 p.m., followed by the Oscar-winning classic Western High Noon at 9 p.m. Featuring expert commentary by film historian and host Victoria Lucas, Hollywood at Home brings you a double feature of classic films every Saturday night. Please see the television program schedule for this month’s offerings.
Classical 90.5 has come a long way since 1975, and AZPM will be celebrating with special events over the next year.Join NPR 89.1 for remarkable stories of LGBTQ+ rights, told by people who were there during Witness History: Pride Month from the BBC on Wednesday, June 25 at 10 a.m.
This year marks the 50th anniversary for Classical 90.5. One of the country’s few remaining 24/7 classical music stations, KUAT-FM launched in 1975 on a brand-new frequency at a time when most local radio stations still broadcast on the AM band and was licensed to broadcast 18 hours a day (6 a.m. to midnight). AZPM Music Director James Reel, who started working at KUAT-FM as a student in 1976, recalls how much has changed since that time: Announcers played LPs from a turntable mounted on a cabinet that housed the studio phone; vibrations from the phone could be heard on the air over the music. Classical 90.5 has come a long way since 1975, and AZPM will be celebrating with special events over the next year.
AZPM’s new home, the Paul and Alice Baker Center for Public Media, is rapidly becoming a reality. Interior construction continues as internal physical infrastructures are finished in preparation for the installation of broadcast and radio and television production systems. This entire project would not have been possible without the generosity of many leadership donors. The capital campaign to support the project is 95% complete, but we still need your help to raise the last bit of funding to wrap up the project without incurring debt. Please consider making a fiscal year-end gift to the Bridging Communities Capital Campaign.
Visit protectmypublicmedia.org for the latest on the status of federal funding for public broadcasting and AZPM.Finally, many of our supporters have expressed concern about the future of federal funding for public media. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) acts as a distributor of federal funding to public broadcast organizations across the country, many of which rely on that funding to remain operational. AZPM directs 100% of its CPB funding to the production of the local, original content you rely on – local daily newscasts, original programming like Arizona Illustrated, Arizona Spotlight, The Press Room, New Frontiers, Arizona Science, and our growing array of podcasts and digital content. To learn more, please visit protectmypublicmedia.org.
Thanks to you and generous members like you, AZPM is able to produce award-winning local content as well as provide the very best in trusted news and information, high-quality entertainment, educational programming for all ages, K-12 educational resources, and on-the-job training for University of Arizona students. Thank you for your continued support.
Sincerely,
Jack Gibson
AZPM Chief Executive Officer
By submitting your comments, you hereby give AZPM the right to post your comments and potentially use them in any other form of media operated by this institution.