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The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is America's publicly-owned TV network, though its history dates back much further than the government's involvement with it. It is not so much a traditional network as a consortium of non-commercial, educational TV stations.
The NET era (1952-1970)[]
PBS' first incarnation was the Educational Television and Radio Center in 1952, originally a private network set up by the Ford Foundation's Fund for Adult Education in order to serve as an educational television service complementing the entertainment programming of the commercial networks. Unique among American networks, content was produced not by the network itself, but by the individual stations—a model similar to that of the (then West Germany-) German public broadcasting, which had been imposed on them at the end of World War II by the Western Allies. This led to content that was very in-depth in its subject matter, but also very dry, academic, low-budget and dull. As a result, ERTC floundered in its early years, earning the nickname "The University of the Air".
In 1958, ETRC changed its name to National Educational Television and Radio Center (NETRC), and then to just National Educational Television (NET) in 1963. Under new network president John F. White (formerly the station manager at WQED in Pittsburgh), it tried to shake off its ultra-academic reputation and become America's "fourth network". It expanded from five hours of programming a day to ten, imported shows from The BBC and other international networks to fill those hours, and became more centralized. It created a slew of programming, such as the adult drama program NET Playhouse, the seminal children's show Mister Rogers Neighborhood, and a hard-hitting, controversial TV Documentary series called NET Journal that frequently explored social issues like poverty and racism. This last program outraged NET's more conservative affiliates, especially those in the Southern US, and despite its critical acclaim would lead to the network's downfall once it became government-funded.
In 1967 the Ford Foundation, having invested over $130 million into a network that was still dependent on their contributions and grants, started to consider pulling its funding, causing many affiliate stations to consider turning to the federal government for financial assistance. As a result, the government passed the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, creating the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a semi-private[1] corporation to fund NET. While it did this for a few years, it soon became clear that NET's documentary programming had not only alienated many of its affiliates, but also infuriated the Nixon administration. As a result, the CPB created the Public Broadcasting Service in 1969 as a new entity to take over network operations, and in 1970 NET was dissolved and merged into WNDT in Newark, New Jersey (which became WNET), ending its existence as a formal network. NET's decentralized system was retained by PBS, largely because the existing commercial Networks and conservatives in Congress did not want an American version of The BBC.
NET is not to be confused with Tokyo's Nippon Educational Television/NET Television, which became TV Asahi.
The PBS era (1970-present)[]
PBS has gone largely unchanged since then. Programming and the stations themselves are sponsored by donations from corporations, charity foundations, and Viewers Like You (Thank You). The federal government chips in, as well, by means of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which also funds NPR and public-radio programs. Instead of interrupting programs with commercials, PBS stations run a sponsor tag at the start and end of each program, and hype their other programs during a five-minute break at the end of each show. For a week or two every however-many months, they also run a pledge drive, during which viewers are asked to donate money to help the station stay on the air. This is usually when they drag out their highest quality programs, such as concerts by the Grateful Dead, David Gilmour and performances from the Austin City Limits festival; it's just a matter of getting through the lengthy pledge breaks or predicting when they will end and put up the next show.
Each PBS station sets its own schedule with a mix of local productions, national programs and foreign imports, but they tend to follow a rough pattern with their scheduling:
- Children's shows in the daytime. Over the years, this block, known as PBS Kids since 1993, has included Sesame Street(though first-run episodes now air on HBO Max, with PBS airing reruns), Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, Reading Rainbow, Word Girl, Bill Nye the Science Guy, The Magic School Bus, Arthur, Dragon Tales, Barney and Friends and The Teletubbies. PBS has generally placed a strong emphasis on education and Aesops with its kids' shows, even when children's programming on other networks started getting more geared towards selling toys. People who grew up before children's programming started proliferating on cable (or even after, if they had parents who objected to the Merchandise-Driven nature of many Saturday morning cartoons) were probably raised on PBS.
- In past decades, many PBS stations would also air lectures and other educational programs designed for use in the classroom, as well as telecourses for adult viewers to watch for college credits. The advent of home video and especially the Internet largely put an end to this, allowing PBS stations to devote most of their daytime programming to kids' programming.
- Early morning programs might also include exercise shows or programs like the long-running A.M. Weather (1978-1995), a Weather Channel-like show aimed at airplane pilots.
- News in the early evening. Their flagship news program is the PBS NewsHour nightly newscast (formerly the MacNeil-Lehrer NewsHour). Nearly all stations also run The Nightly Business Report, and some also run news programs from international broadcasters such as the BBC, Germany's Deutsche Welle, or Japan's NHK.
- Prime Time brings entertainment for mature viewers (such as Masterpiece Theater, Antiques Roadshow, or Finding Your Roots) and documentaries of various types, whether science (such as NOVA and Nature), historical (such as The American Experience and anything made by Ken Burns), or works by indie filmmakers (Independent Lens, POV). The award-winning newsmagazine Frontline (not to be confused with the Australian series) also airs in prime time. There's also issues-oriented talk and discussion programs; Bill Moyers and Charlie Rose were the kings of this genre for years (until the former retired, and the latter ousted amid sexual harassment allegations), and most stations now air Amanpour & Company with CNN mainstay Christiane Amanpour.
- During pledge weeks, stations will often offer music programming (such as the My Music oldies concert series, or documentaries like The Carpenters: Close to You or ABBA Forever: A Celebration), or motivational finance- or health-related lectures from personalities like Suze Orman.
- Prior to the advent of cable networks like Turner Classic Movies, many PBS affiliates often also ran classic Hollywood films (especially late at night and on weekends), and were usually the only place to see them uncut.
Some local PBS stations create their own content, but most buy content produced by others. The largest content producer in the country is Boston's WGBH, which has produced shows like the science documentary series Nova and the Edutainment show Zoom. And while we're on the subject, WGBH's ident (which remained unchanged from 1977 to 2020!) happens to be pure Nightmare Fuel (as were some of PBS's own early logos). Some noteworthy programs broadcast throughout PBS' history include many of Ken Burns' documentaries (particularly 1990's The Civil War, which was the highest-rated show in PBS history to that point) and the controversial show An American Family in 1973, which is now viewed as the Ur Example for the entire genre of reality television. (The Irony of a network with a reputation as highbrow as PBS inventing the Reality Show is not lost on some of us.) Long Runners are one of the network's trademarks: Sesame Street has been on the air since 1969, Masterpiece (Theatre) since 1971, NOVA since 1974, Frontline since 1983, and The American Experience since 1988, to name a few.
Many PBS stations also rely on content from the BBC, leading to a joke claiming that the network's acronym stood for "Primarily British Series." For many years during its original run, PBS was the U.S. distributor of Doctor Who. Two other popular British imports are Monty Python's Flying Circus and Are You Being Served, which have been airing on a PBS station somewhere or other since they first acquired the programs in the mid-1970s. The sci-fi sitcom Red Dwarf was also broadcast on some PBS stations, on occasion being the focus of the aforementioned pledge drives. Finally, the long-running Masterpiece Theater (now known simply as Masterpiece) consists mostly of British productions (including some from ITV and Channel 4). Downton Abbey was a big hit for Masterpiece in the 2010s, becoming one of the highest-rated shows in the history of PBS.
Many PBS stations also offer alternative public television services via their digital TV side channels, including PBS Kids (self-explanatory), Create (how-to, lifestyle and travel programs), and WORLD (a full-time news/documentary/public affairs service). V-Me, a Spanish-language equivalent to PBS, was formerly also carried on side channels, but most over-the-air affiliates switched to PBS Kids in 2017, leading V-Me to transition to chiefly cable carriage.
As a government-run television network, PBS has been subjected to fights within the government over funding as far back as The Sixties (Fred Rogers' speech to the Senate in defense of the young network may just be his Crowning Moment of Awesome). The usual cry of public television's opponents is that PBS was created in a time when there were only three television networks in the United States as opposed to over a hundred, and that the public need for it no longer exists in today's world of cable and satellite TV. Supporters, meanwhile, argue that PBS is essential for rural viewers and those who can't afford cable, satellite, or Internet access, that it provides things like science documentaries, hard-hitting investigative journalism and educational children's programming that would never last a day on commercial television, and that commercial educational channels are vulnerable to Network Decay.[2] The large degree of control given to local affiliates is also a point of contention, with some people arguing that this is an outmoded, inefficient structure that should be replaced with something more centralized, and others saying that it's necessary for the community involvement for which PBS stations are known. Also, despite the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 prohibiting political bias in PBS broadcasting, it has been accused of such by both sides over the years (and let's just leave it at that). On at least one occasion, the reverse has happened: In 1982, Congress asked PBS to abandon its official neutral position in order to air the program Let Poland Be Poland, which criticized the Soviet-enforced declaration of martial law in Poland in 1981.
Currently, they have branched out to the internet, creating a well-received informative Web Original show on YouTube, The PBS Idea channel. More recently, they operate PBS Passport, a streaming service for PBS members with archives of past programming both national and local (in addition to the more limited slate of programming on their free app).
In 2011 PBS launched a UK cable and satellite channel, carrying a broad cross-section of its US programming. PBS itself is also widely available in Canada, as most cable TV systems carry at least one PBS affiliate. Some PBS stations in border areas, such as Buffalo, Detroit, Seattle, upstate New York, and North Dakota, derive much of their fundraising money from Canadian viewers; Detroit's WTVS and Seattle's KCTS have served as PBS superstations for much of the nation, carried on cable literally from coast to coast. Some provinces have their own equivalents as well, such as Ontario's TVO (whose Today's Special and Polka Dot Door were seen on some PBS stations), British Columbia's Knowledge Network and Quebec's French-language Tele-Quebec. (Note that CBC Television, although publicly funded, is a commercial operation; the provincial networks are not.)
The radio equivalent is NPR (or CBC Radio, for Canadians).
- ↑ Its board is appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate.
- ↑ The experience of the Discovery Channel, The History Channel, Nick Jr. and TLC in the last several years bears that out pretty well.