#public broadcasting

[hamstersinagraveyard]

A reminder with PBS being defunded that it is SO MUCH MORE than PBS Kids. It broadcasts educational shows about science, history, current events, nature, art and so much more, instructional television for cooking and home improvement, British shows that might not be available in the states if it wasn’t for PBS, theatre productions, indie productions that PBS gives an opportunity to broadcast they might not get otherwise, and all that’s not even mentioning NPR!!!!! Losing PBS would not only be losing nostalgic shows like Sesame Street and Arthur, but shows for teens and adults who might not be able to afford other channels as well, and THAT is one of the many reasons why it’s so important to fight for it. The link below is a form that lets you send a message to your lawmakers to not defund the extremely important resource to millions that is PBS!!!!!

[my-midlife-crisis]

[hellspawnsparks]

cats and dogs who taught me everything <3

[redsnerdden]

House GOP Passes Bill To Take Back Funds from Foreign AID, NPR, and PBS

[mesopelagic-zone]

PROTECT Educational Resources for the Under-served. Protect PBS and NPR.

Signing this petition is FREE and it takes LESS THAN 2 MINUTES.

"The Trump administration has proposed eliminating all federal funding for National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS)."

To protect public broadcasting is to protect underprivileged groups for which programs like PBS were designed to serve. Public broadcasting is crucial to empowering the accessibility of education.

Public educational broadcasting is incredibly beneficial for childhood development of social, emotional, cultural, and academic skills outside of the classroom.

Personally, PBS and NPR taught younger and current me a wealth of information spanning a wide range of topics from how many arms an octopus has to the Black Panther Movement to so much more.

Protect educational programming for all.

SIGN AND SPREAD THE WORD.

!!! Below Are Some Cool Ways to Share !!!

REBLOG this post with your favorite program on PBS as a kid!

POST this link to Bluesky or Twitter or your dating app profile or whatever media you use most frequently! Increased visibility for this issue is super sick and cool!

SEND this petition to the family group chat! Or your Discord server! Or by mail! Or by any communication platform you enjoy!

And for my poor disheartened American brethren! No matter how small you might feel in this political climate, remember: COLLECTIVE ACTION MAKES CHANGE!

[the-bookworm-cafe]

[martian-marco]

Support Public Broadcasting and Media Funding!

Have you ever accessed publicly funded local news, watched PBS for anything from news to Sesame Street to their YouTube programming, or listened to or read articles from NPR? Then you have benefited from public broadcasting.

I don't have the energy to spell it all out here. But I want to encourage you to contact your representatives and voice your support for public broadcasting, from which the current administration is trying to steal back $1.1 BILLION in funding that was already approved and pledged to their budget.

This website has an easy interface to allow you to email your reps and comes with a pre-written email script if you want to use it. It can also help you call your reps, and has a few key talking points outlined that you can use as a script! Calls are better than emails, generally, but ANYTHING HELPS!

[alyfoxxxen]

White House asks Congress to codify DOGE cuts to USAID and public broadcasting

[soul-our-punk]

*taps microphone*

Business exists to serve stakeholders

Not to make money

Making money is only a necessity as a matter of existing in a capitalist society, and it being the means of maintaining business operations. Yet, it is not the purpose of business. It is not the end goal

You want an example of a business that expressly serves stakeholders? Libraries. Hear me out. Again, making money is not the purpose of a business, so the fact you don't have to directly pay to check out a book or other borrowable media should not be a consideration as to whether libraries qualify as a business. We're interrogating the definition of the word here.

Libraries have to deal with logistics, have to help guests in a similar way customer service does, have to maintain accounting of what they have in stock or not--a library provides goods and services. A library is a business. A business that lives and dies on public investment and private donation. You know what else is like this? Public Broadcasting Stations.

The fact is, if money disappeared as a concept, we have models for how business can operate without it and the purpose of a business would remain unchanged. This is why libraries and public broadcasting are quick to be targeted by conservative groups, along with a bias against an educated public and anything that has a whiff of socialism (re anything that isn't expressly to the benefit of private Rich interests).

[saturnesmeralda]

Actually sickening how good Jack Wolfe expressing a lot emotions in one look AND ALSO LOVE THIS MUSICAL SO MUCH!❤️

[deepbreakfast]

[my-midlife-crisis]

[polaritydisturbed]

Now feels like a good time to mention that if you're in the U.S.—and you're a Doctor Who fan—you probably owe more PBS more gratitude than you might think.

Because while the BBC might’ve birthed the show, PBS raised it here.

Photo by John Lavalie

Try being a Doctor Who fan in 1980s America, surviving off fuzzy VHS tapes recorded off late-night reruns of Tom Baker episodes aired on a local PBS station that doubled as a pledge drive hotline. The merch? If you had any, it probably came from one of those pledge drives—limited edition posters, mugs, tote bags, or imported goodies sent out as donor thank-yous. No streaming. Just vibes, static, and maybe a newsletter if you were lucky.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s rewind a bit:

The U.S. was the 34th country to air Doctor Who. Thirty-fourth.

Canada had already started showing it in 1965. American distributors tried to sell it to studios through the late ’60s and early ’70s, but none picked it up

Between 1972 and 1978, a handful of stations experimented with Doctor Who—most notably WPHL in Philadelphia, which aired Jon Pertwee’s first three seasons in color starting on August 21, 1972. But it wasn’t consistent, and it certainly didn’t spark a national movement.

Then in 1978, something clicked. WTEV in Massachusetts—channel 6—aired its first Tom Baker episode on August 28. And from there, PBS at large started picking it up.

Quirky, local, underfunded PBS stations across the country took a gamble: “Why not show this odd British guy in a scarf and his blue box to American audiences?” And it worked. In the most beautifully chaotic way possible.

What followed was less a formal launch and more a scrappy, DIY cultural uprising.

PBS stations across the country—each operating semi-independently—started airing Doctor Who, mostly Tom Baker's era, and often out of order. Didn’t matter. Fan clubs formed. People mailed each other cassettes. Some fans drove across state lines to record episodes from stations with better reception. It was fandom forged in static and stubbornness.

Peter Davison arrived in 1982, and with him came conventions, cosplay, and local fan zines. In 1983, some PBS stations even aired The Five Doctors before the BBC did. Wild. Illegally bold, even.

By 1985, depending on where you lived, you could catch episodes featuring three different Doctors, sometimes in black and white, sometimes edited strangely, sometimes with intros recorded by volunteers in a broom-closet studio. Audiences had no idea what they'd get, and the loved it anyway.

Then came the Doctor Who USA Tour (1986–1987)—a full-on traveling exhibition with props, costumes, and meet-and-greets. Imagine a Renaissance fair, if everyone there was obsessed with Gallifrey instead of jousting. (Peter Davison on 1986 Dr. Who Tour of United States)

Eventually, most PBS stations dropped the show in the early ’90s. The Sci-Fi Channel picked it up later, but by then, the seeds had already been planted. Deep. Generations of American fans had been raised on late-night public access, and they’d grown up to build forums, launch conventions, and keep the fandom alive through the dark years.

And that’s why this matters.

PBS didn’t just broadcast Doctor Who—it believed in it. It made space for something weird and wonderful at a time when traditional stations passed on it for not being 'profitable.'

It gave American kids—especially the quiet, the nerdy, the curious—something strange to hold onto. Something brilliant. Something that said, “You belong in this universe, too.”

Without PBS, the U.S. Doctor Who fandom wouldn’t be what it is today.

So if you're a U.S.-based Whovian? Maybe give PBS a little love. They showed up when no one else did.

Ways to help PBS:

http://foundation.pbs.org/ways-to-give/

http://protectmypublicmedia.org/

https://www.pbs.org/about/about-pbs/support-pbs/

Public television matters. It makes room for the strange, the wonderful, and the wildly unexpected. Kind of like the Doctor.

Massive thanks to BroaDWcast for their timeline of U.S. airings (they also have a list of those conventions in the United US and a whole page dedicated to that DW USA tour), and check out the TARDIS Wiki entry for the full chaotic saga of the weird way they often chose to air those episodes. For a real-time account of what it was like to be a fan back then, read this brilliant personal account.

P.S. If you did grow up watching Doctor Who on PBS—or were part of that fan scene back then—I’d genuinely love to hear your stories. I wasn’t around for it myself, but my dad was one of those late-night viewers, and when I eventually got into the show it became a fun bonding experience for us. And from the deepest reaches of my heart, thank you.

[patheticblorbloscholar]

Donate to PBS. We need public broadcasting.

"From viewers like you, thank you."

[redsnerdden]

This Post is Brought to You by the Letter I, for Idiocy: Trump Administration Stops Grants Used For PBS Kids' Education and Animation

#Politics #PBS #PBSKids #animation #Education

[kuiperoid]

The latest episode of Monstrum of PBS's Storied discusses the Beast of Gévaudan, a large, wolflike creature that killed multiple people in 1760s France. This discusses both the hypotheses about what it actually was as well as the more sensational folklore that developed.