public television news stories on Newser

SpongeBob Hurts Kids' Brains

Matt Cantor — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 08:37:05 CDT

He lives in a pineapple under the sea, and apparently he poses a threat to your kid’s attention span. Researchers showed one group of children a nine-minute SpongeBob SquarePants segment; another group watched a clip of the same length of an educational PBS show called Caillou ; a third spent the...

PBS Is a Dead Man Walking

Kate Schwartz — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 10:24:44 CDT

Between Juan Williams , James O'Keefe , Vivian Schiller , and that whole defunding thing , NPR has had a rough couple of months. But here's the thing, writes Mark Oppenheimer for Slate : NPR is thriving on FM radio while the rest of FM radio withers. Oppenheimer argues that it's time to shift our...

Public Broadcasting Can Afford to Go Private

Evann Gastaldo — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 13:48:05 CST

Republican Sen. Jim DeMint has one simple reason why public broadcasting should go private: Because the presidents of such broadcasting companies "are making more than the president of the United States"—and if PBS can afford to pay its president $632,233 per year, "surely it can operate without tax...

Pledge Boom Helps Public Stations Ride Out Recession

Rob Quinn — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 10:07:33 CDT

Loyal viewers and listeners have stepped up to help their local public broadcasters make it through the recession, the Washington Post reports. Public stations say their appeals to the public are meeting a warm response despite the recession, with donations staying steady and, at some stations, even rising to record...

French Public TV Goes Ad Free; Not All Are Pleased

Jason Farago — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 08:39:00 CST

In France last night, television viewers were treated to something they'd never seen before: prime time programming without commercials on the country's five state-run public networks. It's the first reform in Nicolas Sarkozy's proposed "big bang" transformation of France Télévisions, and eventually all advertising will be banned. But the scheme...