PBS - General Discussion

[mvcg66b3r]

I thought I’d create a thread for each network rather than clutter up the forum with one-sentence, meaningless stories like RadioSpider, etc.

This thread is for rational general discussion about PBS. Please try not to rant.

Remember that you’re encouraged to create a new thread for “big” events (i.e. The Roosevelts, funding cuts, etc.).

 

[Unregistered]

My market has three PBS affiliates: WGBH-TV 2 and WGBX-TV 44 of Boston and WENH-TV 11 of New Hampshire. How about yours?

 

[RyanHoward]

My area has a slew of PBS stations: WHYY-12(Wilmington DE/Philadelphia), WLVT-39(Allentown), and NJTV(WNJS-23 Camden and WNJT-52 Trenton).
WYBE-35(Philadelphia) used to be PBS, but now it's an independent public station known on the air as MiND(which stands for "Media Independence," hence its owner, Independence Public Media).

 

[ssetta]

My market has three PBS affiliates: WGBH-TV 2 and WGBX-TV 44 of Boston and WENH-TV 11 of New Hampshire. How about yours?

Don't forget to add WSBE-36 of Rhode Island. Its technically in the Providence market but a majority of Comcast and Verizon systems south of Boston carry it now. This could be posted in that thread about stations in another market.

 

[sdwulfdawg]

In San Diego, KPBS (which is run by San Diego State University) has fought tooth and nail to make sure that it is the only PBS affiliate in town. When Cox Communications wanted to run KCET (formerly a PBS affiliate) on its system, KPBS screamed bloody murder.

What is the market rule for secondary PBS stations?

 

[Avid Listener]

Are all of these network threads going to degenerate into nothing more than simply listing the calls of our local affiliates?

 

[ShawnHill1]

That's what it's looking like. Moving on...

 

[thomwim]

It seems like every major metro area (except Los Angeles) has a PBS station between channels 2-13 (the old VHF).

If my mind isn't screwing with me, I have vague memories of a short cartoon called "My World" that I posted search help for on countless websites in 2011. It aired on my local PBS on a weekday afternoon (Thursday at 5:30 PM?) when I was 4. I've contacted the station (which is no longer a PBS member station); and several likely copyright holders (Porchlight, HiT, Nelvana, DreamWorks Classics, DHX Media); but I never got any answers. Is this toon my imagination?

 

[FredLeonard]

While public radio (APM, NRP, PRI, PRX...) offers a unique news and information format in many markets and music formats not otherwise heard in many markets, public television does not. We no longer need public television.

(1) PBS produces nothing. It's a distribution service only. Content comes from independent producers (like CTW) and from various member stations (WGBH, WETA, WNYC). PBS is a bureaucracy, a building and a satellite dish. Today's technology offers better, cheaper ways to distribute shows.

(2) Public television programming is redundant. Types of programming once unique to public television have become whole cable channels. Kid's channels. Channels devoted to history documentaries. Channels devoted to British shows. Channels devoted to pretentious talking heads. Originally, public television and PBS were envisioned as a fourth network, in a world of three networks and their affiliates (plus a few indies) with each of them doing lowest common denominator programming for the largest mass audience possible. That world has ended.

(3) Public television has totally debased itself. It began with pledge drive begathons. Now the process has expanded with Lawrence Welk and other old music nostalgia shows and informercials with somebody hawking "solutions" for health, diet, exercise, financial planning...

There's no longer a need for public television, in general, and even more so for PBS specifically. All any broadcaster needs is a high-speed commercial Internet connection to download programming. PBS' satellite is no longer needed.

For the record, PBS does not have "affiliates." Nor O&Os for that matter. It was deliberately set up with a completely different structure than commercial networks. Same for NPR. And read the credits on public television shows. You might be surprised at how much does NOT come via PBS.

Not every major metro area has/had a "PBS station" on VHF.
LA, Chicago, Washington, Detroit, Tampa, Miami, Orlando, Cleveland, Pittsburgh and Charlotte in the top 25 markets have/had public television on UHF. Go further down the list and it's mostly UHF. Not that this distinction means much any more. When public television was thought up (to replace "educational television") in the late 60s, public television was an after-thought.

For information on local public television shows, probably best to go to the local TV board.

 

[Unregistered]

It would be really funny if Pokémon joned PBS Kids, even though it isn't E/I.

 

[Avid Listener]

"PBS" is on the verge of being to public television what "aspirin" is to acetyl salicylic acid, "kleenex" is to facial tissue, or "band-aid" is to self-adhesive bandage. Those latter three are all brand names that either became, or are in the process of becoming, generic terms. I can remember a long, long time ago when the brand name that was becoming the generic term was "National Educational Television" or "NET".

 

[FredLeonard]

NET continues to operate the public television station in New York and other stations in Long Island and New Jersey, and is one of the major program producers for public television. It just isn't the program distributor now.

 

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

There was a time.... way, way back there, when I drove across the country, it seemed you could tune in AM stations and before you had listened long enought to figure out their programming, you could simply tell by the hum, the "room tone", the assorted noise that was part of the signal what kind of station it was. The background noise was revealing, and to some extent, you could even tell something about the town. (Towns with crummy radio stations with some frequency turned out to have a crummy set of characters running the town.)

I have always... in past years... found it interesting to tune in the local outlet for PBS. It didn't take long to begin to get a feel for the nature of the town/community where it was based. Community TV, Public TV, whatever the case, tends to be a reflection of the movers-and-shakers at the local level who form the organization and then find ways to FUND the organization through the years. A community with a crummy community social make-up would give birth to a pretty crummy TV programming and engineering set-up.

But, it is a two-way street.

Sometimes the movers-and-shakers of the local public broadcasting outlet (both volunteers and paid staff) turn out to be the focus of behind the scenes co-operation for not only running the broadcast outlet, but to make the entire community function like.... like... function like a REAL COMMUNITY.

A hundred years from now when people write books about the history of our nation (will there sill be books?) they will not only talk about how libraries helped build our unique American civilization, and how church founded colleges and universities helped shape our nation, and how the wealthy from the Robber Barron era put a lot of funding into strong beneficial foundations, I suspect the arrive of public broadcasting will get a paragraph or two on what they did to enhance our lives.

 

[TheBigA]

We no longer need public television.

In fact, we no longer "need" ANY kind of television, if that's the game you want to play.

(2) Public television programming is redundant.

As is NBC, CBS, and ABC. Reality shows, comedy shows, occasional dramas. So what? The fact is that the cable channels originally devoted to serious documentaries, such as History, A&E, Bravo, and Discovery, are now filled with silly reality shows. So the redundancy that existed five years ago has gone away.

Uniqueness is not a qualification for a network. Even The Weather Channel is losing its uniqueness.

 

[FredLeonard]

In fact, we no longer "need" ANY kind of television, if that's the game you want to play.



As is NBC, CBS, and ABC. Reality shows, comedy shows, occasional dramas. So what? The fact is that the cable channels originally devoted to serious documentaries, such as History, A&E, Bravo, and Discovery, are now filled with silly reality shows. So the redundancy that existed five years ago has gone away.

Uniqueness is not a qualification for a network. Even The Weather Channel is losing its uniqueness.

Yes, terrestrial TV is obsolete. So is the broadcast model. But public television is a waste of tax dollars - not just spectrum - and that makes it an even more egregious waste.

And, yes, cable channels have been dumbed down. So has public television to the point that when one of those begathon pitch persons uses the phrase "quality television," they should choke on the words.

 

[TheBigA]

And, yes, cable channels have been dumbed down. So has public television to the point that when one of those begathon pitch persons uses the phrase "quality television," they should choke on the words.

OK...you don't like it. Fine.

 

[FredLeonard]

OK...you don't like it. Fine.

If you consider infomercials to be quality, Ragnarok, you're welcome to them.

 

[TheBigA]

If you consider infomercials to be quality, Ragnarok, you're welcome to them.

Did I say that? No.

 

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

Yes, terrestrial TV is obsolete. So is the broadcast model. But public television is a waste of tax dollars - not just spectrum - and that makes it an even more egregious waste.

And, yes, cable channels have been dumbed down. So has public television to the point that when one of those begathon pitch persons uses the phrase "quality television," they should choke on the words.

Have you really looked back at this message and realized how you have tripped and stumbled over your own logic. (I do it all the time, so I have practice in recognizing such events. )

If terrestrial TV is obsolete,
If the broadcast model is obsolete,
then the use of obsolete, useless spectrum may not be so egregious.
Who is deprived of making productive use of the spectrum?

If ANYONE were doing something constructive with spectrum, maybe we could chide the stations of the world of public broadcasting for being wasteful.

The "waste of tax dollars" in this case is something of a canard is it not? What is the GRAND TOTAL of all the tax dollars consumed by Public Television in any given year? I know: the standard answer is "ONE dollar is too much". Thanks to Right Wing Talk Radio, we have a significant population today that has a mind-set that all government expenditures are some kind of mortal sin worse than sexual abuse of children and worse than abortion. And if we can tie any kind of human enterprise to "the public dole" then we have proven it to be illegitimate. Conversation ended. GAME OVER.

There are some people who watch nothing on TV other than maybe Public Broadcasting, C-SPAN and a handful of other granola sources. Are these people less important to society than people who only listen to Electronic Dance Music.... or watch Duck Dynasty?

 

[Avid Listener]

NET continues to operate the public television station in New York and other stations in Long Island and New Jersey, and is one of the major program producers for public television. It just isn't the program distributor now.

Nor is it the pseudo-network affiliation that TV listings use to identify stations. Look at almost any television listing, whether it's a print magazine or online, and public broadcasting stations get the PBS logo just like CBS stations get the eyeball, NBC stations get the peacock, ABC stations get the ABC in a circle, etc. Technically, that is as correct as calling any facial tissue a kleenex.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to take an aspirin.