Yes, they had to have paid. Below is the response from CPB (who owns PBS), regarding the show:
Behind the Scenes with Laurence Fishburne
Hello,
I'm contacting CPB to ascertain whether you have ever heard of or aired educational programming entitled "Behind the Scenes with Laurence Fishburne,"
https://behindthesceneslf.com. I'm asking because we're a small business designing innovative public infrastructure, and we've been contacted by this company (BSLF) and asked to film a segment about our products. They tell us that Public Television airs these segments from time to time. It all sounds legitimate, but they want a lot of money from us up front for production costs, and we want to ensure that they are a legitimate entity before we engage with them -- or send them money.
Can you please tell me if you've heard of this company and if CPB has aired any of their programming?
Thank you, Susan Altenbach President DezignLine
Susan@DezignLine.com 612-850-0760
Note from CPB: Thank you for contacting the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB). CPB, PBS, and NPR are independent of each other and of the local public television and radio stations across the country. CPB does not produce or distribute programming and each local public broadcasting station makes its own programming choices, as CPB is prohibited from interfering with editorial decisions related to programming on local public television and radio stations. After contacting PBS and NETA, it was determined that Behind the Scenes with Laurence Fishburne is not distributed by or associated with either national public media distributer. Further, public media stations do not engage in commercial advertising for private entities and the Federal Communications Commission regulates the nature and scope of underwriting for noncommercial educational licensees.
You can read it at:
https://www.cpb.org/your-feedbackAdditionally, Dave wrote that the Xtrabytes commercial on Fox Biz was broadcast to potentially 84 MILLION viewers. While, yes, the channel does reach 84 million viewers (meaning they have the ABILITY) to watch the channel, the average number of viewers for the time slot the commercial was shown is a little over 200,000. Yes, that’s THOUSAND. Source:
https://www.thewrap.com/fox-business-network-lou-dobbs-marks-ratings-win-cnbc/