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Old 03-26-2017, 12:33 PM
crt89 crt89 is offline
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PBS and independent channels

I've wondered who PBS' core base is as far as viewers. When I was a kid, I watched the kid's programming every afternoon when I got home from school and in the mornings during the summer. Also the Saturday morning cooking and house shows.

These days, I mostly watch the British comedies.

I always felt like PBS was catering to a high-falutin base of intellectuals and wealthy people. Often the pledge ads between programs will say to include PBS in your will. Or they will have ads that congratulate certain endowments or charitable trusts for providing funding and the names sound like wealthy patriarchal families.

I know PBS also has a lot of political programming and news programs. I always felt like people were probably more likely to watch the network and cable news shows than the Newshour or Washington Week.

I would guess also that PBS focuses on an older audience, with their Lawrence Welk programming, and the fact that often the Pledge Drive programs feature older music from the 60s-70s such as The Carpenters.

I don't know who really watches the Pledge Drives, although I have seen my mom watch for a few minutes when channel surfing, but mostly because she recognizes the music. Then there's those peddlers of stuff like "The Whole Enchilada" or "Power of Now" that they get on to promote their book or product.

On another note, the independent channels like UPN/WB. Those seem to be mostly to the younger set. They used to show a lot of science fiction programming, but then moved on to shows like Moesha or Seventh Heaven. I admit some of current shows look interesting, but I never think to look at that channel since it's so low in the lineup.

I can recall that those channels sometimes air political shows and it seems I recently saw an ad for a morning show. I can't imagine who would watch WB affiliates for the news though, seems network would be much more likely. I can remember my grandmother used to watch some of their shows which I thought was strange as I couldn't imagine her watching a show for young people. But she has always liked TV-movies and stuff like some of the PBS series.

I recall as a kid getting lots of 'low channels', mainly the TBN network, which would air low budget kids programming on weekends with puppets, though they did end up with PBS' The Reppies.

And of course there was HSN which did air over the air for a while in the late 90s/early 00s. I used to watch them sometimes as I liked the blonde Mrs. Scanlon lady when she was on. I do watch QVC from time to time now if there's an interesting item for sale.

And what of the other independent channels that only show infomercials all day? What's the point of those? Are they just utilizing 'dead' channels that at one time had real programming?

Oh, and I almost forgot PAX. They mostly showed religious programming, and older more family-oriented programs at first, but later had their own programs like Early Edition. I mostly just watched them, because they got Diagnosis Murder for some reason, not sure how, as at that time it was still produced by CBS and not in syndication yet IIRC. And they would get lots of shows like Supermarket Sweep and others like Unsolved Mysteries and Candid Camera. They turned into ion television which used to have the slogan positively entertaining, but don't hear it called that anymore.

Last edited by crt89; 03-26-2017 at 12:42 PM.
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Old 03-26-2017, 02:51 PM
centralradio centralradio is offline
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i used too watch PBS all the time.Now they just keep repeating everything.The indies used too be good before Fox came to life back in the mid 1980's and the other indies got gobbled up from the other so called networks"WB.CW,UPN,PAX and others I cant remember.

TBS and WGN kept to themselves.

I used to enjoy watching .WPIX,WWOR,WNEW,WSBK,WLVI, and the local indies on cable.Thank goodness the memories live on Youtube and in my video tape collection.These stations used to run all the off network syndi series and other first run syndi shows all the time which now available on those DTV sub channels,Hulu ,Youtube and DVD.

Indie TV was great before all that happen.

Network TV was great before all these late night talk shows besides Johnny Carson.I missed the late movies on CBS ,The current CBS Saturday late night is great to watch.Also the station signoff.Nobody does that anymore unless they have to work on the transmitter or antenna.
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Old 03-26-2017, 03:22 PM
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I guess I'm high fallutin - I watch PBS, 'cept during the beg-a-thon. We have a schedule, and I'm notified on my smart TV when my shows are airing - Nova, Frontline, Nature, This Old House Hour, a Chef's Life, Secrets of the Dead, Antiques Road Show and any of the Science specials. As to Masterpiece, I hate Downton Abbey, but like the Durrells in Corfu, Victoria, and I've been a watcher of Sherlock from day one.

Others I occasionally watch: Call the Midwife, Independent Lens (the poverty ones...) and any of the Britcoms - Keeping up Appearances, Doc Martin, the Vicar of Dibley, but NEVER that lame Lead Balloon.

CBS, ABC, PBS, MeTV and Antenna TV are 90% of my watching. SkyTV and BBC for news, along with ABC news in the evening.

Oh, and free......
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Old 03-26-2017, 04:11 PM
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PBS has a strongly split audience age-wise -- kids, and older adults. The ages in between that advertisers love are watching the commercial sources. PBS would love to bring in more, but they won't do it by abandoning their supporters in favor of cheap sensationalism. The second tier commercial guys have gone to types of programming that are the cheapest possible to produce - talk and "reality." There is still good drama writing and production for the top commercial networks, particularly for crime/procedural shows like CSI, etc. And of course, there are occasional blockbuster series on some cable channels. Variety seems impossible to support. And I keep hoping someone will rediscover the Western genre, but it doesn't seem like it will happen.
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Old 03-26-2017, 07:04 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by centralradio View Post
i used too watch PBS all the time.Now they just keep repeating everything.The indies used too be good before Fox came to life back in the mid 1980's and the other indies got gobbled up from the other so called networks"WB.CW,UPN,PAX and others I cant remember.

TBS and WGN kept to themselves.

I used to enjoy watching .WPIX,WWOR,WNEW,WSBK,WLVI, and the local indies on cable.Thank goodness the memories live on Youtube and in my video tape collection.These stations used to run all the off network syndi series and other first run syndi shows all the time which now available on those DTV sub channels,Hulu ,Youtube and DVD.

Indie TV was great before all that happen.

Network TV was great before all these late night talk shows besides Johnny Carson.I missed the late movies on CBS ,The current CBS Saturday late night is great to watch.Also the station signoff.Nobody does that anymore unless they have to work on the transmitter or antenna.
I remember those days too. In Pittsburgh, our PBS stations would go off the air around midnight or so, usually thr last programs was "The Star Hustler.." WTAE-TV, the ABC station would sign off around 12:30 or so after "Nightline." KDKA-TV was always 24 hours, even as WDTV from 1949 with the Dumont Network because of the steel industry, you had a certain number of view who came home from the swing shift. I remember the CBS Late Movies especially in the summer. I remember staying up for the whole "Jim Jones, People's Temple" story when I had swollen glands when I was 15 in 1981 and could not sleep. I also remember seeing Kolchak, Night Stalker and Columbo too. Those were the days.
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Old 03-26-2017, 09:42 PM
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My wife is a big fan of the British mysteries (I think one she watches is actually Australian) and the Britcoms, though they've mostly been re-run to death now. Sometimes we'll watch the cooking shows, especially America's Test Kitchen (made their "Best Beef Stew" for supper tonight!) We do OTA TV only, divided mostly between MeTV, Antenna TV, Decades, CBS, ABC, Fox, PBS & Bounce.
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Old 03-27-2017, 12:37 AM
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Originally Posted by NowhereMan 1966 View Post
I remember those days too. In Pittsburgh, our PBS stations would go off the air around midnight or so, usually thr last programs was "The Star Hustler.." WTAE-TV, the ABC station would sign off around 12:30 or so after "Nightline." KDKA-TV was always 24 hours, even as WDTV from 1949 with the Dumont Network because of the steel industry, you had a certain number of view who came home from the swing shift. I remember the CBS Late Movies especially in the summer. I remember staying up for the whole "Jim Jones, People's Temple" story when I had swollen glands when I was 15 in 1981 and could not sleep. I also remember seeing Kolchak, Night Stalker and Columbo too. Those were the days.
I remember WCBS and WABC used too run the Late Late movie.WWOR ran the crap out of Knightrider which I always enjoyed.WPIX did the same with The Fall Guy along with Star Trek..Now its sad to say its mostly rubbish now on TV.


Quote:
Originally Posted by bgadow View Post
My wife is a big fan of the British mysteries (I think one she watches is actually Australian) and the Britcoms, though they've mostly been re-run to death now. Sometimes we'll watch the cooking shows, especially America's Test Kitchen (made their "Best Beef Stew" for supper tonight!) We do OTA TV only, divided mostly between MeTV, Antenna TV, Decades, CBS, ABC, Fox, PBS & Bounce.
I love those britcoms.I used too watch them every Saturday night on WNET Ch. Now I have them all recorded on VHS or downloaded off Youtube for I can watch anytime.Also enjoyed watching This Old House.Austin City Limits and other concerts.
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Old 03-27-2017, 07:57 AM
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Anybody else get TBD TV? One of our stations replaced a sports network with it, and I kinda like it - has a YouTube feel to most shows.
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Old 03-27-2017, 09:45 PM
crt89 crt89 is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by NowhereMan 1966 View Post
I remember those days too. In Pittsburgh, our PBS stations would go off the air around midnight or so, usually thr last programs was "The Star Hustler.." WTAE-TV, the ABC station would sign off around 12:30 or so after "Nightline."
I was going to mention that too. I can recall staying up really late once at the age of 3 or 4, and seeing Star Hustler program and then as it went off PBS went off the air. It may have happened more than once as I recall seeing he Star program at least a couple times.

And I can recall around the age of 7 or so getting up early on a Saturday morning to watch PBS and finding it was still off the air. One of the only times I saw a test pattern, and then quickly they signed back on. By that time PBS was probably the only station that wasn't 24 hours.
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Old 03-30-2017, 01:35 PM
centralradio centralradio is offline
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Probably mention this before.I remember watching WNET late Saturday movie which was uncut with all the F-bombs along with other curse words I cant say here.One time I thought I had HBO on.LOL...........

I dont remember when the FCC 11PM to 6am rule went into effect but it was interesting hearing those bad words on the same channel as Big Bird is on.LOL..
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Old 04-03-2017, 08:41 PM
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dtvmcdonald dtvmcdonald is offline
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I can't stand PBS except antiques roadshow, but even for them ... what they
would do to a CT-100 or a TT-5 or, heaven forbid, a Western Visionette, no NO.

First there is the politics, thankfully a forbidden subject here.

Second there are shows like Nova. Oh my god how absolutely awful!
I usually end up screaming. Its always so totally driven by a "humanities"
feeling rather than a "science" one. Its like ESPN always tries to push
player "personalities" rather than just the game. And they
about 75% of the time actually get things factually wrong, when its a
subject I know the facts of. (I'm a PHD chemist, my PhD boss
and co-worker won the Nobel Prize.) This means I have to assume .. and
you should too ...that they are always 75% wrong. When they show pictures they
are frequently unrelated to the words they say.

So I have to assume that PBS nature shows are equally bad. On one
nature vacation I went on we had a big-name nature show crew along
and they freely admitted that lots of stuff was outright fake.
That is staged with trained animals where possible, if not trainable,
often captives let loose in front of the cameras and a photogenic
background (e.g. wolf catches rabbit.)
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Old 04-16-2017, 10:49 AM
crt89 crt89 is offline
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I do enjoy watching the Nature shows and Antiques Roadshow from time to time. Antiques Roadshow is a go-to on Monday and Thursday nights when there is nothing on.

As a kid almost every Saturday was spent watching Hometime, This Old House and the cooking shows. Back then I wanted to be a chef because I thought all the machinery they used on those shows was too cool.
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Old 04-20-2017, 07:14 AM
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I still like to watch "This Old House" and occasionally "Keeping Up Appearances".
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Old 04-20-2017, 11:55 AM
user181 user181 is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by crt89 View Post



As a kid almost every Saturday was spent watching Hometime, This Old House and the cooking shows. Back then I wanted to be a chef because I thought all the machinery they used on those shows was too cool.


My childhood Saturdays were spent the same way, and I still enjoy Hometime and This Old House.

Your use of the word "machinery" on the cooking shows reminded me of how I sometimes refer to kitchen gadgets & small appliances as "hand tools" & "power tools" to my wife, just so that she'll give me the eye-roll.
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Old 04-20-2017, 01:52 PM
centralradio centralradio is offline
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I still like to watch "This Old House" and occasionally "Keeping Up Appearances".
I love those shows.I got most of them downloaded off Youtube so I can watch any time.
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