Dean Ernest J. Wilson III (pictured) described the “critical moment” that public broadcasting faces today, as he spoke to the Federal Communications Commission on April 30. Wilson, who also serves as chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, delivered a special address to the panel at the opening of its workshop, titled “Public and Other Noncommercial Media in the Digital Era.”

“We are at this special moment. We are at what some of us have called 'a 1967 moment.' And the future is ours to grasp. We simply have to step forward with – as (Ford Foundation President) Luis Ubiñas said – the innovation and the imagination to seize that. This is a critical moment in the life of public service and public service media. And the challenge is for us to move beyond public broadcasting… We’re at a moment when we have to move beyond public broadcasting as it’s traditionally defined into something else – public service media that we are still in the process of defining. We’re between the old and the new. We have to challenge ourselves with the imagination and the energy to become public service media.”

Watch Dean Wilson’s full address here.