(NYT previews the new Moyers show) He’s Back, Just as Curious as Ever
Last edited Sun Jan 8, 2012, 03:37 AM - Edit history (1)
THAT didn’t last long. Just 20 months after retiring his PBS series “Bill Moyers Journal,” Mr. Moyers was back in the studio on a Wednesday morning in December, deep in conversation about moral political psychology with the author Jonathan Haidt.
The interview veered from Manichean thinking among baby boomers to the social conservative understanding of karma, all as it related to the roots of the country’s political divide. Mr. Moyers worked his way through a sheaf of notes, as the scheduled 90 minutes stretched a good hour longer. (“This is fun,” he said to his guest during a pause.) Emerging from the studio, he said he had decided mid-interview that the discussion would probably take up the entire hour on his new weekly program, rather than be a 20-minute segment.
(...)
In an odd twist, however, “Moyers & Company” is not being distributed by PBS, but by American Public Television, a separate distribution service. Viewers will find it at a hodgepodge of times, but Mr. Moyers is so popular that many stations are scheduling multiple broadcasts. In New York WNET will run it on Sundays at 6 p.m. starting on Jan. 15, with a rebroadcast Mondays at 10 p.m.
Mr. Moyers said he was unsure why PBS, where he has spent most of his career since 1971, declined the show for its main schedule. Some public television executives, who would not publicly comment on a sensitive issue, said they believed that PBS did not want to realign itself with Mr. Moyers, a longtime target of some conservatives, as it was fighting to keep its federal financing.
full: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/08/arts/television/bill-moyers-returns-to-tv-but-not-with-pbs.html
(ETA) some stations will premiere the show on Saturday, including my local KQED.
