NEW YORK, NEW YORK – DECEMBER 01: Raney Aronson-Rath attends the 35th Gotham Film Awards at Cipriani Wall Street on December 01, 2025 in New York City. (Photo by Dia Dipasupil/WireImage)
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Next to perhaps its lineup of kids programming, when the average person thinks of PBS, they likely think of the network’s impressive lineup of documentary series, including Frontline, American Experience and Nova.
Raney Aronson-Rath is the editor-in-chief overseeing GBH’s documentary programming, which includes American Experience, Frontline and Nova. She is also an Oscar-winning producer and has been executive producer and editor-in-chief of Frontline for the past decade.
American Experience recently announced several new projects, including the three-part documentary series Lindbergh, which premieres in May 2027. Ken Burns will be the executive producer of the project, teaming up with acclaimed director/writer Stephen Ives.
The other major documentary coming from American Experience is a four-part series The Bureau: A Secret History of the FBI, directed by Sharon Grimberg and Sarah Colt, “charting the rise, weaponization, and survival of the nation’s most powerful law enforcement agency.”
I recently spoke with Aronson-Rath about those projects, as well as what to expect from Frontline and NOVA. We all discussed the impact the federal funding cuts had on the shows and how she has learned to lean into the new digital audience for the shows.
The interview has been lightly edited for clarity:
Let’s start with the big part of your job. You’ve been an EP at Frontline for more than a decade. Now you’re overseeing three shows, and how does that change your day-to-day workflow? I mean, obviously, it’s more complicated, but the shows are also very different and I suspect require very different approaches.
Raney Aronson-Rath: Yeah. It’s definitely different. I think it’s actually been an intellectual reorganizing moment for me.
So to think about it, I do oversee Frontline. Still. I’m the executive producer and editor-in-chief.
I’m very passionate about current affairs and investigative journalism. But I think when Susan Goldberg asked me to take on the other shows, I started to think about the importance to our democracy of factual, science-based information and fact-based history. And so intellectually, I was sparked and inspired.
And I think that’s really where I’ve taken the three factual shows: to think about how can we think together? How do we dream together? How do we think about big areas of intellectual pursuits for us that Americans in the global community really need to know and work together collaboratively? That’s where I get excited. So it is more work. But the other thing I need to say is we have really talented teams at NOVA and American Experience and Frontline.
So it’s not just me doing everything. We have incredible filmmakers and collaborators and contributors. And so together, we’re really working across the three shows.
That’s really intellectually very exciting to think about how all these different ideas can fit together. Now, how in the weeds do you want to get with any particular episode?
I mean, obviously, as you said, there’s a whole crew. They’re doing it regardless of whether you’re there. But how close attention are you paying to this is what the episode looks like, this is how the reporting out across the episode?
Raney Aronson-Rath: So for Frontline, I’m very involved. I’m very much in the edit room because I am its editor-in-chief. And I’m very hands-on with the films.
I’m involved with the commissioning. I’m involved with who’s going to be on camera. And I have a very strong senior team at Frontline as well.
At NOVA, I’m much more involved from an exec level. So I’m weighing in on the cuts. I’m talking to them about their ideas.
But we have very talented executive producers at NOVA. And then at American Experience, I’m very involved with thinking through what are the big tentpole editorial projects. So we’re doing Charles Lindbergh, as you know, and we’re doing a big film about the FBI. Those are ideas that I’m really deeply involved with.
On the digital side, we have a great digital team. So with American Experience and Frontline, I’m very editorially involved. But with NOVA, I’m involved more at a studio exec level.
I love the show, and I’m very helpful. I give notes. But we have really excellent people running NOVA.
One of the things that struck me is that I’ve watched these programs forever. For American Experience, you’re talking about typically topics that aren’t going to change. Ten years from now, you look at an American Experience documentary, and it’s probably not going to be that different fact-wise.
The Historical Challenges Of Documentary Making
But with NOVA, science changes all the time. With Frontline, it could be a very topical story that three years from now seems like ancient history. So given how important the digital side is, given the importance of things like Passport, how do you balance that thing of “We want to do something topical, but we don’t want to just burn through show after show that won’t have any value in two years?”
Raney Aronson-Rath: I think I ask a question over each of the different fact-based strands. So I’ll start with Frontline. For Frontline, we are current affairs.
But what I’m always trying to think about, and why our films do have staying power, is I’m thinking about what absolutely needs to be told right now as a record. I very much have a this-will-be-here-for-the-long-term mindset. And the reason for that is because, as you know, Frontline‘s a big streamer now.
We’re on YouTube. And so we’re there in perpetuity. We’re there for the long haul.
Let’s Take 20 Days in Mariupol is a great example. That is the only record of what actually happened in Mariupol in Ukraine that was captured and filmed. So now it’s 2026.
Is that still relevant? I would argue absolutely, right? So Frontline is not a news show. We’re not breaking news all the time. But we’re telling investigations that really have credible records that will be there for the long haul.
For American Experience, interestingly, I’m taking a different approach. I’m thinking about what is the history that needs to be told right now that we need to know currently.
So it’s almost like the inverse. What do you and I need to know right now about our democracy, about our global community, about what’s happening today? And what’s the history that we can tell that will help you understand today? And that has to do with things like the FBI. Very helpful to understand the history of the FBI today.
It’s very important for us to understand our future through a historical lens. And with NOVA, you’re absolutely right. Science is evolving all the time.
That’s why that show is so exciting. They tend to take on topics that have staying power as well, so that we can think about it with a long tail in mind. That’s where we’re different from a breaking-news ecosystem here.
We’re thinking longer term. We’re thinking about what is the value proposition for somebody who watches this month, next month? I mean, I’ve been educated by the stream environment, right? Sometimes people find us on YouTube two years later, and you see millions of people surrounding a documentary two years later because something in it is capturing them. So that’s just also who I am as a person.
You know, I’m a books person. I’m a documentary person. And I love a narrative.
I love stories. I love stories that can live with us forever.
How does that digital long tail impact the production of these shows? Where you have the opportunity of deciding, “Look, don’t just discard that footage because it doesn’t fit in the completed thing. We can use it elsewhere.”
We can pop that on YouTube. We can do a short and put it on TikTok. For example, how does that change your production flow for Frontline, which you’re probably the most intimately involved with?
Raney Aronson-Rath: So one of the big changes for Frontline has been that we started to share our underlying interviews. We did that as an act of transparency. I did that as a trust-building exercise to bolster our democracy. It was a high-minded idea.
However, what we found is millions of people love to watch the uncut, unedited versions of interviews. And that’s just like, who knew about that community? Then we have the micro shorts that we’re really all pushing into so aggressively.
So basically, everything that you film is now important. Everything that you film actually needs to be archived, has to be shared. And it just is amazing how much you can get out of a single documentary process now across social, across digital, across text.
So it’s actually an exciting time for filmmakers. Who are really used to gathering materials and making a bespoke version of what they’ve gathered, fact-based and fair, but they’ve really spent a lot of time in the edit room making it that story. That was a little disruptive for my filmmaking team at Frontline, but I would say most everyone has embraced it because they see the upside. We’re reaching a younger generation.
We’re reaching millions of new people. We’re now 60% global at Frontline, which is amazing. And that’s because of our reach across the YouTube landscape with all these new properties in addition to our films.
How The Digital Audience Is Different From The One For Linear TV
As this digital stuff has rolled out over the last few years, is there something that surprised you – where you found yourself thinking, “I can’t believe that the viewers like this or this was something that they resonated with?”
Raney Aronson-Rath: I have two teenagers, mind you, so I’m educated by my own teens, right? I was so surprised that long-form documentary films were actually the biggest achievers in the YouTube landscape. And I share this often because what we see is our long-form, most serious work, the serious work about Mohammed bin Salman and MBS, the serious work about the platforms like Facebook or Amazon. When you see that work do so well, it is so encouraging.
Our average watch time is 22 minutes. That means people, younger generations, are coming to watch these really serious films that really contend with nuance and fairness. And there are facts throughout the whole thing.
We’re not dumbing it down for YouTube at all. That’s been so surprising. And inspiring.
And it’s why I still do what I do. And I feel like the future is bright because I feel as if younger people are hungry for this type of authentic, fact-based work, then we’re going to be okay. We’re going to be okay if they’re curious still about this type of work.
I really feel it. The other surprising thing for me is our global community. I am so surprised that people all across the globe now are hungry to watch us in real time and share us in places like the Philippines and India and South America.
I’m very proud of that. And so we’re leaning much more into international storytelling. And I’m talking to American Experience and NOVA about this almost every day.
They’re kind of tired of me saying it. But there’s a whole world out there for our incredibly well-told documentaries to reach people outside of our borders. And what could be better than to have a global community seeing the same thing, understanding the same facts, not having an ahistoric telling of something, understanding how stories can be told from a nonpartisan point of view and still be true.
That’s really, really why I wake up every morning feeling like I’m doing something good here with this work.
The Impact Of Federal Funding Cuts On PBS Documentaries
You’re talking a lot about the future. And I’m just curious if you can talk a little bit about the impact the rescission cuts have had. Because I know earlier in the year, they were talking about, well, there may not be any new American Experience episodes at all this year. And I’m glad to see that that’s not the case, but obviously it’s had an impact.
Raney Aronson-Rath: Well, I think the system’s determination is nothing short of amazing.
And we have seen a huge uptick in people supporting us, and foundations coming forward and individuals who really care about having this type of media, having this forum—the forum’s historical, current, and science, all in the public interest. Because remember, we’re in front of the paywall. This is really important to have this work for the public still.
And we are all across stations in America. So we’ve seen this at all levels. Station giving has increased.
We’ve seen it across the foundations, saying, “Hey, public media matters. We have your backs.”
And I think we’ve seen it in the giving that goes to the shows directly. I think the question for us now is how do we think smartly going into the future together about sustaining our system? Public media matters. We need to have some media that doesn’t have commercial interests, that doesn’t have people leaning into it, that doesn’t have pressures from the corporate world.
And so we’re actually really inspired right now as a system. And I think for us, it’s just being really smart.
So one of the things that we did do, and this took a lot of huge effort, you mentioned it in the beginning, is think about how do we work across the strands in a way and be less siloed? How do we think about our resources differently and really think smartly and strategically about how we can create enough funding for the actual work, but not all of the redundancies of some of the collecting that we were doing?
And I think that’s been a really important thing in the factual unit of science, history, and current affairs. Us thinking together as a collective team—we’re just thinking together, we’re stronger together. And so that’s the upside.
The challenge, of course, is that the money was rescinded. CPB (Corporation for Public Broadcasting), unfortunately, is a thing of the past. But we have so many supporters coming forward.
One of the things I think that maybe is underappreciated is that PBS is a great distribution system for documentaries. As you know, there’s a lot of documentaries made that no one ever sees because, you know, they can’t get it into a theater or not enough theaters, or they can’t get it onto a streamer that’s big enough. And you have that ability to do something and push it out in front of all these eyeballs.
Raney Aronson-Rath: We do have a huge audience, and that audience is growing. That’s the thing that I would say about the PBS audience across the country and the globe: we’re only growing. And that’s because partly we’re really leaning into the digital strategy of making sure everyone can see our work.
I think it’s also the stories that we tell. What we do is so unique now in the media ecosystem.
If you think about Frontline and NOVA and American Experience, there’s not a lot of competition out there, which is also challenging, obviously. But I do think you’re right that it’s really hard to get some of this really thoughtful work onto commercial platforms. And that’s where we come in.
You know, some people say we’re earnest. I would say it’s thoughtful and it’s nuanced and it’s fair. Those are the words I use.
Because I see the reach of our work. We’re not just over here in a corner with our little silo of an audience.
We’re actually massive. Frontline has a billion views right now on YouTube. So we’re big because of that effort that we make to be fair, to be fact-based, to be trusted.
And I think that’s going to be our actual secret sauce into the future.
So you’re the Mr. Beast of documentaries.
Raney Aronson-Rath: So we are. We absolutely are. In fact, I have a son, and he really is the one who showed me first Mr. Beast and the YouTube environment. He is now an older teen.
He’s now 20, as a matter of fact. And he started to show me this ecosystem of how these influencers were growing. And this is about eight years ago.
And I really started to look at YouTube with that in mind. And he convinced me at the time, when he was 14, that there was a place for serious documentaries on YouTube. He was sure of it because he saw how people were talking about real issues.
And he’s now impressed with our numbers. The whole way through these eight years, Rick, he’s laughing at my numbers. He’s like, “Oh, my God, that’s terrible.”
But now finally, he’s like, “OK, Mom, you’ve arrived.” And having your teenage son say that to you, it says a lot because he really was ahead of this with me on YouTube.
The Next Digital Frontiers For Storytelling
There’s so many new platforms, new places for eyeballs to see your programming. Where do you see the next frontier?
Raney Aronson-Rath: I definitely think that we’re seeing platforms overall really prioritizing video and a bit longer-form video. So we’re seeing great success on platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and others.
We’re reaching all sorts of new people on those platforms. I think for history in particular. It’s extraordinary to see American Experience‘s reach now that we really shifted their priority to being digital first and to see the hunger for history on these actual platforms is nothing short of inspiring if you think about it.
And the reason I want us to be there is because this is where younger people are getting their news, where they’re getting their information. And so I’ve always believed that we needed to have our work where people were watching. You know, I believe that so much because I do have children and I wanted us to be in their consideration set.
I wanted them to stumble across our work and say, oh, is that right? Is that true? And to think harder, right? So what it means for us is that we have to create more video, more stories, tell more stories, and do it in the native format.
You can’t just take a film and put it on TikTok. You have to think about, how do people watch – what do they consume there? What are they looking at there? And then figure out how to adapt. And that adaptation has been at the heart of the reinvention that we’re all undertaking right now in public media.
Well, let me wrap it up with this question, sort of Frontline-specific. Obviously, when you’re laying out what program you’re going to do, what story you’re going to tell, there are budget issues, there’s all different kinds of things to consider. If someone gave you an unlimited amount of money and said, “Do the story that you can’t tell for whatever reason now,” is there a story or two that you just think, you know, I’d love to do it, but it’d be a hundred-million-dollar project and no one would ever pay for it?
Raney Aronson-Rath: I love that question. Thank you for asking. That’s the best question anyone’s ever asked me.
So first of all, there’s no story, Rick, and I say this earnestly, that I feel we should tell that we’re not telling right now. I have the privilege of funding that allows me to tell the most important stories. That said, because I am ambitious, what I really love to do is I would love to take Frontline, the documentary series and expand it.
I would love to create a shorter-form series that was original investigations, more in the sort of 15-to-20-minute range. And I would love to do that all the time. So right now we’re at 20 films a year.
I would love to double it and be able to tell stories in a shorter length as well because we see our average watch time is about 22 minutes on streaming. And I think that a lot of the stories that we could tell globally could be shorter too, and that we could do more, and that’s what I really want to do. I want to do more.
I want to hire more journalists. Journalists all across the country and the globe are losing their jobs. And I want to hire the best of them and put them to work. And I want to put them to work globally.
So that would be the other thing I would do is I would have Frontline Global, which is just literally having reporters all over the world reporting for us, which we do now, but we do for a documentary. So that’s my dream, you know, everybody has a dream and I’m working towards it.