
Over 100 PBS local stations start streaming on YouTube TV - samaysharma
https://techcrunch.com/2019/12/17/over-100-pbs-local-stations-start-streaming-today-on-youtube-tv/
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pkamb
Two Apple TV apps I have recently discovered and love using:

Pluto.tv: replicate the cable guide experience. Endless episodes of things
like This Old House, MST3k, and vintage game shows. I _much_ prefer Pluto
content to modern HGTV-type cable shows, and it scratches the same itch of
"just watch whatever's on".

\- [https://pluto.tv/](https://pluto.tv/)

Kanopy: use your library card or university ID to stream indie movies and
documentaries. Free kids programming. Lots of PBS.

\- [https://www.kanopy.com/](https://www.kanopy.com/) \-
[https://www.kanopy.com/kids](https://www.kanopy.com/kids)

~~~
stallmanite
I have to chime in with another recommendation for Pluto. The app is
noticeably snappier than anything else on my 3 different models of Roku.
(Weird since it’s free and Hulu, HBO, Sling et al should have plenty of money
for development.). Sling especially has dark patterns selling DVR space and
loses audio sync constantly. Pluto is rock solid by comparison.

~~~
taurath
Roku tends to have poor quality (outsourced) apps when companies have invested
in a multiplatform system - brightscript doesn’t interoperate well with
anything else so its usually an outsourced project.

~~~
organsnyder
Funny. The Roku MLB.tv app blows every other platform out of the water.

~~~
pkamb
You think the Roku version of MLB is significantly better than, say, the Apple
TV version of MLB? Why?

~~~
organsnyder
Never used the Apple TV version. But I have used the web and Android versions,
and the Roku player blows them out of the water.

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shantly
I still just want one simple place to stream all (most, or half, even, would
be great, for that matter) of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood and pre-Elmoization
Sesame Street for my kids. Anything else would be a welcome bonus but I mostly
just want those.

~~~
shitloadofbooks
What is "pre-elmoization" Sesame Street and why do you think it's better?

~~~
Spellman
For a reference essay on the shift from Big Bird to Elmo:

[https://kotaku.com/how-elmo-ruined-sesame-
street-1746504585](https://kotaku.com/how-elmo-ruined-sesame-
street-1746504585)

Major thesis: "It started in small ways. A lot of stories used to be based
around Big Bird, who was psychologically characterized as a six-year-old. And
in a lot of ways, this was ideal—six years old was on the older end of Sesame
Street’s age demographic, and Big Bird served as both a role model and a peer
to his audience. Big Bird’s comparative maturity also meant that he could
project a wide range of emotions—he was ‘old enough’ to understand mature
concepts, such as the permanence of Mr. Hooper’s death."

"Elmo stories, on the other hand, tend to affirm and celebrate the child’s
perspective. Rarely, if ever, is Elmo’s innocence challenged, or is he forced
to think about someone’s happiness other than his own. He spends most of his
time hanging out with Zoe, Abby, Telly, and Baby Bear—Muppets who share his
emotional maturity, and unlike Grover, Kermit, and Ernie, do nothing to push
him. In fact, he is the de facto leader of his group—the dialogue lowers to
Elmo’s level, rather than rising to an older character’s. And while this is
cute and fun, it gets old fast, and it doesn’t really go anywhere. Elmo is
learning about counting to four and different shapes, but he’s not learning a
whole lot of life lessons."

~~~
40four
I grew up watching Big Bird as the lead character, and I think this analysis
is spot on.

I don’t have kids of my own yet, so I’m out of touch with how the show is
being run these days, but if Elmo is the lead now, this definitely sounds like
a step back in quality level.

I guess it makes sense from a business perspective for the creators. I’m sure
it helps the bottom line. Kids go nuts for Elmo.

Regardless, it makes me happy to see PBS expand their reach. The quality level
across the board is astounding! If it was the only network I had access to I
would be happy.

Nova science is unreal! ‘Nature’ episodes are best in the business for nature
docs. Many of the Masterpiece series are great... and don’t sleep on all the
cooking shows. For a publicly funded organization, it’s absolutely mind
blowing the quality of product they put out.

A real treasure.

~~~
balls187
> I don’t have kids of my own yet, so I’m out of touch with how the show is
> being run these days, but if Elmo is the lead now, this definitely sounds
> like a step back in quality level.

My (at the time 2 year old) referred to Seasame Street as "Elmo."

The shift in content aligns with the shift that has happened in Early Learning
Education in the US--mainly less emphasis in academic subjects, and more
emphasis on social and emotional skills.

Modern Seasame Street broaches social topics, with a small amount of academics
(mainly letter and number of the day).

~~~
lonelappde
That's a strange claim since the primary complaint abut Elmo was the
_elimination_ of Big Bird's social-emotional learning.

Sesame Street is for pre-schoolers, which was never academic outside of a
cadre of upper class dog-eat-dog New Yorkers

~~~
shantly
I wouldn't immediately dismiss the claim that the Elmo stuff has more
_explicit_ social-emotional teaching, as in "here's the thing we're teaching
in this skit and exactly what we want you to learn!", while Big Bird's was
more implicit and role-model driven (though I don't want to claim it was
always subtle and didn't ever just come out and _state_ what it was trying to
get across, of course—there was plenty of that). I haven't sampled enough
Elmo-street lately to know whether that's true, but it could be.

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itgoon
PBS Digital Studios is one of the best things on YouTube.

I particularly like SpaceTime, Eons, and Crash Course. There are many others,
too.

[https://www.youtube.com/user/pbsdigitalstudios](https://www.youtube.com/user/pbsdigitalstudios)

~~~
milkytron
They have a lot of great history shows as well. I catch myself watching Rocky
Mountain PBS and Wyoming PBS as late night TV on occasion.

They're more dry than the ones you mentioned, but pleasant to nod off to.

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pryelluw
About two years ago I did some work for PBS that might be related to this. The
objective was to turn their catalog into a static feed that could be consumed
by table top boxes.

An interesting aspect of the project was that their catalog was fairly well
normalized. I was expecting the usual mess of data structures.

It was built with vanilla Django. No rest framework because the feed was
rendered to static files served by S3. During our discussions I brought using
Go for its performance and resilience. That was (correctly) decided against
and we went with Django. Why Django? It's easy to wrap up periodic jobs as
commands and runnning them with django celery.

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gtirloni
I would expect PBS, of all TV stations, to be less constrained by distribution
contracts and to be able to stream their content worldwide. Instead, they
choose Youtube TV which is US-only.

~~~
aguyfromnb
> _Instead, they choose Youtube TV which is US-only._

I'm an avid PBS Frontline viewer (some of the best documentaries out there).
As a Canadian, I can watch most of them on the PBS website, but the odd time
an episode will be rights restricted. I assume this is because of footage or
music that they are unable to clear the licenses for outside of the US. And
really, as a publicly funded broadcaster, why should they care about me in
Canada?

~~~
II2II
I was sifting through the comments hoping to discover that this is available
in Canada. It is disappointing that it is not because PBS was available over
the air or as part of basic cable service in many Canadian communities. Border
stations were quite active in soliciting funds from Canadian viewers, and many
Canadians grew up with their programming. I don't know what the current state
of affairs is with PBS since I have not watched television for over 15 years,
but would be interested in seeing PBS extend its reach into Canada for others
to benefit from.

~~~
aguyfromnb
> _but would be interested in seeing PBS extend its reach into Canada for
> others to benefit from._

I'm with you. But I think you'd run into the 1-2 combination of the American
public not wanting to fund free TV for Canadians (though obviously the
marginal cost is ~$0) and the Canadian public not wanting to "pollute" our air
waves with American media.

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jdkee
The Sunday night lineup: Masterpiece, Monty Python, The Two Ronnies (or Dave
Allen At Large), Doctor Who for an hour and a half until 12:30 ensuring you
were tired for school the next morning.

Thank God for WTTW 11.

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droithomme
So, it's part of tv.youtube.com, which costs $49.99 per month plus tax?

~~~
electriclove
Not sure why you are getting downvoted. PBS has always been free to watch over
the air. The article talks about how great it is to have PBS available for
streaming on Youtube TV. But it doesn't mention YouTube TV is a subscription
only service starting at $50/month. This is similar to a cable provider
offering 100+ PBS channels to its $50/month subscription. Call me cheap, but I
don't want to pay $50/month to be able to stream PBS.

~~~
Jaymoon85
\- PBS Passport : $5/month

\- PBS Kids* : $4.99/month

\- PBS Masterpiece* : $5.99/month

\- PBS Living* : $2.99/month

$19/month for all of these, is still better than $50 for Youtube TV, if all
you care about is PBS programming.

* Requires Amazon Prime

~~~
droithomme
Sure that's cool, but without a rooftop antenna, I get 2 different PBS
stations, each which have 3 digital channels, so I get 6 PBS channels. Most
programming is in full HD and higher resolution than streaming which always
seems to add extra levels of compression. These are the ONLY stations I get
without rooftop because PBS transmitters have more geographical coverage than
any other network in the US. With my super big-ass gigantic antenna on a 50 ft
tall pole, I get a bunch of other networks as well, again with higher
resolution than typical cable or streaming. But the point is that even without
any antenna, most people get at least one PBS station, which typically will
have at least 3 channels multiplexed in their band.

The announcement above seems to be an ad for youtube's $50 streaming service.
Anyone who has that service already knows what it carries. Anyone wanting to
sign up for that service based on PBS alone should just turn on their TV and
see what happens.

It's useful though for Americans living out of the country.

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hooande
90% of what I watch on tv is PBS. I could see myself switching to YouTube TV
just for this. Granted PBS is over the air for free and all of their shows are
online for $5/mo. but I like my local station's lineup selections, etc

~~~
lucky_cloud
The $5/month (or more) will get you more than what's currently free to stream,
and you'll support your local station.

(for disclosure, I work for a PBS station)

~~~
anderber
I pay $5 a month to my local PBS but it ticks me off that if I want to stream
the live channel I have to pay YouTube TV. I'd gladly pay $10-$15 a month for
just my local PBS channels in HD. My antenna isn't always reliable to pick
them up, which puts me in the spot of paying my local PBS vs YouTube TV.

Aside from that, I love PBS.

~~~
lucky_cloud
From my understanding of the distribution infrastructure, this would actually
not be very hard to implement. That's not my area of focus though, so I could
be wrong. If enough people were to ask for it, it would probably be
considered.

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systematical
I watch PBS NewsHour everyday on YouTube. It's great!

~~~
adultSwim
Another news show you may want to check out is Democracy Now. I always watch
or listen to the first ~10 minutes, where they do headlines.

~~~
systematical
I've caught it on occasion through the local PBS affiliate channel and feel
its high quality like the News Hour. I just never think to check it. Is that
available on YouTube?

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sjg007
This is awesome and really seals the deal for me wrt to youtube tv. It was the
one missing channel for me.

For local cable operators I think there is a big opportunity though to develop
their own apple tv apps to stream IPTV so that the remain relevant. I have
pretty fast local internet and youtube tv for less than the bundled package.
They are already streaming IPTV to small boxes connected to a TV so it seems
like apple tv integration should be easy.

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crazykatz1997
It's great to see PBS finding new ways to reach out to audiences through
different streaming services. This is a very smart and strategic way to grow
it's audience.

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aluminussoma
It will be interesting to see what changes these streaming services bring to
TV consumption and the Internet in the next decade. Comcast and other
providers are losing subscribers to YouTube TV and Hulu. I suspect this will
cause internet prices in the US to rise since these companies will want to
make up the shortfall.

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cable2600
The local PBS station in my area has a weak signal but has three to four
different channels, one for kids by the way PBS Kids. I'd like to watch it on
Youtube instead.

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jdlyga
YouTube TV is nice, but is missing all the Viacom cable channels that are on
the other streaming services (Comedy Central, MTV, etc).

~~~
cgy1
As far as I am aware, having Viacom channels is the exception rather than the
rule for streaming cable providers. Along with Youtube TV, Hulu TV,
Playstation Vue, and Fubo TV also do not carry Viacom channels.

~~~
judge2020
Yep, the only carrier is AT&T TV which only comes from AT&T's negotiating
weight with U-Verse and DirecTV.

~~~
throwaway1777
Sling also has Viacom.

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mister_hn
Do you know if is there any Kodi Plugin for YouTube TV?

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werber
What are great local shows in your area on PBS?

~~~
lucky_cloud
There are lots of good local food/cooking shows. They are cheap to produce and
popular with viewers.

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fiftythree219
Man, say what you want but YouTube was just a damn brilliant invention.

~~~
bblpeter
Would have to agree

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johnklos
That's all fine and dandy until they get some copyright infringement
complaints, Google takes away all of their money, and they have nobody to
complain to since Google doesn't have people.

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larnmar
Can anyone explain why PBS television stations are local rather than
nationwide? I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a local program on one, but they
seem to have a huge extra layer of bureaucracy in order to broadcast the same
programs in a hundred different locations.

~~~
reaperducer
_Can anyone explain why PBS television stations are local rather than
nationwide?_

The stations are locally-owned. Usually by a college, school district, or
local government entity.

 _I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a local program on one_

Almost all PBS stations have local programming, even in small markets. Some of
them award-winning programs.

And a lot of the "national" shows are actually productions of local stations.
For example, Masterpiece is WGBH/Boston (in partnership with other
broadcasters). Sesame Street started out as WNET/Newark.

Some PBS stations do a good job of providing unique programming to small
markets. For example, in the 90's WVIA/Scranton aired Star Trek reruns because
they weren't available in that market.

~~~
lozaning
Cant let you leave my boy Huell Howser and his California Gold program
produced at KCET off this list.

