public TV

America’s Public Television Stations (APTS) has hired Michelle Shanahan as general counsel, effective today. She will oversee the legal affairs of APTS, including leading the governance, regulatory, contracting, corporate compliance […]

Here’s an interesting transformation: Seattle public TV station KCTS has merged with Crosscut, a local nonprofit site, and acquired a community site, What’s Good 206, rechristening itself Cascade Public Media. Dru Sefton reports on the changes, which won’t see layoffs (but will see some part-timers becoming full-time), and how they’re geared toward extending journalistic reach.

NEW YORK (AP) — The final season of the popular British drama “Downton Abbey” will begin on Jan. 3, leading up to a finale on the first weekend of March, […]

NEW YORK (AP) — PBS’ popular “Finding Your Roots” series, temporarily shelved after an episode omitted references to the slaveholding past of Ben Affleck’s ancestor at the actor’s request, will […]

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.

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.

Montana PBS is about to receive a rare donation: a full-power TV station. Gray Television is giving KMTF in Helena, a CW simulcast channel, to the public TV station, said Eric Hyyppa, GM of Montana PBS in Bozeman. The transaction should be complete by this fall, he said.

JoAnn Urofsky, GM of noncommercial WUSF Tampa, Fla. (DMA 13), will soon add a new leadership role in public broadcasting, as chair of the board of the National Educational Telecommunications […]

The president of the Association of Public Television Stations says the financial outlook for his stations is strong thanks, in part, to funding from a Republican-controlled Congress and contributions from a growing number of states. He also talks about his problems with the FCC incentive auction and subsequent repacking of the TV band and why free, universal broadcasting — in the highest possible picture quality — must remain a cornerstone of public media.

Pennsylvania’s governor has proposed restoring funding for the state’s public TV stations, six years after a previous lawmaker cut all support. Gov. Tom Wolf (D) included a $4 million line item in his proposed 2015–16 executive budget “to increase technology to educate, inform and connect the citizens of Pennsylvania.” If approved by the legislature, the proposal would restore funding cut in 2009.

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.

That Sesame Street still exists at all says a lot. In 1973, it was one of two TV shows for preschoolers. Now it’s competing with 84 kids’ shows on TV and countless others online. Yet Sesame Street still holds its own, ranking 20th among kids ages 2 to 5 with 850,000 viewers per TV episode, according to Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit organization behind the show.

CPB will spend $3 million to give public television executives access to expert advice on the upcoming broadcast spectrum auction. The extremely high value of spectrum as appraised by an Oct. 1 FCC report created a “considerable amount of confusion” among managers, said Michael Levy, CPB EVP. Previous estimates had been much lower.

WNET, the New York City public television broadcaster, says that it will return a $3.5 million grant it received from the Laura and John Arnold Foundation to sponsor an ambitious project on public pensions in the face of charges that it solicited inappropriate underwriting for the series