PBS

Univision and PBS will host the final Democratic debates, now set for Feb. 11 in Wisconsin (PBS) and March 9 in Miami (Univision). The Democratic National Committee announced the dates Thursday, finalizing the party’s series of six debates that begin next week, with CNN’s Democratic debate in Las Vegas.

PBS and CBS led the winners at the 36th annual News and Documentary Awards, held Monday night at Lincoln Center. But lifetime achievement honoree Ted Turner stole the show with an emotional acceptance speech that recounted his “firing” in 2001 from the company he founded.

Renard T. Jenkins, the public broadcaster’s senior director of operations: production, media and distribution, talks about why PBS is converting to the Interoperable Mastering Format for delivering programming to OTT services. While the move was spurred by a Netflix requirement, Jenkins says that because of the format’s many advantages “I think IMF makes sense. It is the right thing for television broadcasters to be looking at right now.”

Wayne Dyer, the self-help author and speaker whose inspirational pledge shows raised millions of dollars for public television stations, died in his sleep of a heart attack Aug. 29 at home in Maui, Hawaii. He was 75. Dyer’s 10 fundraising specials for public TV brought in more than $200 million for stations, making Dyer “one of PBS’s most successful fundraisers,” according to a statement from Hay House, his publisher.

The Aug. 13 announcement that HBO will premiere new episodes of Sesame Street, which will then be made available to PBS after nine months has prompted soul-searching among public broadcasters and others who recalled Sesame Street’s groundbreaking role in using free over-the-air broadcasts to teach preschoolers from low-income families the basic skills they need to succeed in school.

In a surprise move, the kids’ series heads to HBO. New episodes will air on longtime carrier PBS nine months later. The most significant part of the deal: Streaming rights.

PBS will discontinue the long-running one-hour version of Sesame Street this fall, it announced to stations Wednesday, and will continue airing new half-hour episodes that premiered last year. The new schedule, which takes effect Nov. 16, will feature the 30-minute version at 10 a.m.

It will soon to be a time of transition for PBS: Its biggest hit, Downton Abbey, begins its final run Jan. 3, and after it’s done the show’s absence will leave a void, which PBS President Paula Kerger was quick to acknowledge during the PBS portion of the TV critics summer press tour. However, she added, she doesn’t believe the hit show will be the “last great drama.”

PBS’s venerable documentary franchise Frontline is expanding into multi-part investigative series, exec producer Raney Aronson told reporters Sunday during PBS’s portion of the Television Critics Association’s press tour.

Donald Thoms, VP of general audience programming at PBS, is leaving at the end of the year. In a memo to colleagues Wednesday, chief programmer Beth Hoppe said Thoms is leaving to resume work at his production company ThomsMediaGroup. No decision has been made on a replacement.

PBS is ramping up its efforts to attract a new generation of media buyers as program sponsors, rolling out a campaign that promotes its brand and audience through Web-based marketing and traditional paid ads. The response so far has been promising.

Quality drama — or at least TV shows with an aspiration to be quality drama — rules the TV, cable and online streaming worlds. So it’s understandable that PBS, riding the success of Downton Abbey on Masterpiece, would want to up its drama game, too. And there’s no reason to begrudge PBS’s efforts but it does derail one line of defense of PBS’s existence.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — PBS put its Finding Your Roots series on hold Wednesday after determining an episode that omitted references to Ben Affleck’s ancestor as a slave owner violated its […]

PBS has brought its mobile app to Android, giving Android users access to full episodes of shows like Frontline,  PBS Newshour, Masterpiece, Nova and Call the Midwife. The new app also comes with Google Cast support, allowing users to beam their shows to their TV, provided it’s equipped with Google’s Chromecast streaming stick or any Android TV streaming device.

PBS this coming TV season will boast an unvarnished look at entertainment entrepreneur Walt Disney, a revival of Ken Burns epic documentary The Civil War and something that has been a rarity on the network in recent years: a drama financed by PBS set in America.

WASHINGTON (AP) — NBC’s Brian Williams has withdrawn from hosting a broadcast honoring those who support U.S. veterans and military families, and first lady Michelle Obama is stepping in to […]

PBS and WNET are investigating Henry Louis Gates Jr.’s decision to censor his celebrity-genealogy series Finding Your Roots after getting a request from Ben Affleck that the program not reveal he had a slave-owning ancestor. Affleck has expressed regret for seeking to have the information omitted from the episode that featured the actor and aired last October.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — PBS says it will air a newly restored version of Ken Burns’ “The Civil War” this fall, 25 years after the documentary’s debut. The high-definition “Civil […]

The annual IRE Awards recognize outstanding investigative work and help identify the techniques and resources used to complete each story. This year’s winners included WVUE New Orleans and KHOU Houston. Other TV winners included Telemundo, The Weather Channel and PBS Frontline.

Cancer is perhaps the most-feared of all diseases — which is exactly why Ken Burns sees it as a vital topic, if never a welcome one. The three-part, six-hour Cancer: The Emperor of All Maladies, premieres on PBS stations on Monday. It traces the story of the disease from its earliest accounts in ancient Egypt to the latest scientific breakthroughs and their impact on real-life patients.

Producers of the popular British period drama on Thursday confirmed it will end after its sixth season, scheduled to air in the United States in early 2016. The series, which airs earlier in the U.K., will have its finale on Christmas Day, 2015.

PASADENA, Calif. (AP) — The late actor Edward Herrmann’s final project before he died of brain cancer last month was narrating an upcoming PBS documentary on the disease. The six-hour […]

PBS is pushing further into original scripted programming with the addition of an untitled Civil War drama from Ridley Scott, which has been ordered to series with an initial six episodes.

The public broadcaster said Barzilay, a former executive at ABC, CBS, FLO TV and the Ford Foundation, will be “charged with developing innovative and collaborative strategies that safeguard the health of the public broadcasting system, and for ensuring that resources are allocated effectively to meet business objectives, system priorities and marketplace challenges and opportunities

In a move to bring more visibility and impact to PBS’s news and public affairs programming, the network has added a new VP to its roster of programmers — Marie Nelson, a journalist who brings executive-producer credentials and experience with engaging diverse audiences.

Downton Abbey, the most popular drama in PBS history, returned to a near-record audience Sunday night. According to Nielsen preliminary estimates, the fifth-season premiere averaged about 10.1 million viewers from 10:15 to 11:15 p.m., just a smidge behind the show’s fourth-season opener a year ago (10.2 million). Among all networks, only CBS drew a larger audience during the time period.

PBS said it would continue a strategy of scheduling shows with similar themes on the same evening in 2015 while expanding its Sunday-night drama lineup.

PBS has named Marie Nelson as its new vice president news and public affairs. Nelson most recently served as executive producer of national programs at PBS member station WGBH Boston, where she oversaw production of eight-part docu-series America After Ferguson, exploring the impact of America’s changing demographics.