Happy Birthday, PBS. Please Save Us.
'Next month will mark 50 years of television that aims to educate and unite.
NASHVILLE — On Oct. 4, 1970, the Public Broadcasting Service entered the airwaves with an episode of “The French Chef.” I was not quite 9, too young for Julia Child and too old for “Sesame Street.” PBS became the television constant of my life anyway.
I was still a child when I watched “The Six Wives of Henry VIII” on Masterpiece Theater and developed a lifelong love for British period drama. Shows like “Downton Abbey,” “Call the Midwife,” “Last Tango in Halifax” and “Wolf Hall” are still my favorite form of escape, public television’s version of a guilty pleasure. When “All Creatures Great and Small” airs next year, it will be appointment television for me.
My conservative father had no use for Tudor bedroom drama, but he loved the political drama of “Firing Line” and could do a fair imitation of the show’s longtime host, William F. Buckley Jr. This was the sardonic voice Dad deployed to question political pronouncements he disagreed with. At our house there were many: All three of my father’s children grew up to be liberals, and just as inclined to fierce debate as he was.
But “fierce” never meant disrespectful. It was founded in a conviction that the person voicing the opposing view was neither stupid nor mean. Perhaps that was the real gift of “Firing Line”: It set a standard for civil debate, for engaging rather than dividing.
During the summer of 1973, when the United States Senate investigated the Watergate break-ins, PBS aired the complete hearings, all 250 hours of testimony. The television at our house was tuned to PBS for every one of them. My parents had voted for President Nixon, but Dad saw the Watergate committee’s Republican co-chairman, Howard Baker of Tennessee, as a true hero: a Republican unafraid to seek the truth about a Republican president and protect the rule of law.
PBS’s unprecedented complete coverage of the Watergate hearings was anchored by the journalists Jim Lehrer and Robert MacNeil. Two years later, the station began airing “The MacNeil/Lehrer Report,” and Dad never missed it. Today the show is known as “The NewsHour,” and my husband is the one who never misses it. From the very first notes of the show’s theme music, a feeling comes over me that thrums of safety. Of home itself.'>>>
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/27/opinion/pbs-50th-anniversary.html?
= new reply since forum marked as read
