In November 1967 the Public Broadcasting Act was signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson. This Act established the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) as an independent, non-governmental body formed to serve as the umbrella organization for public broadcasting in the United States. Over thirty years, PBS has produced hits and changed broadcasting, while being charged with both elitism and middlebrow, safe tastes.

After the Second World War, the FCC had ensured that a certain number of stations would be reserved for educational broadcasting, but securing the money to run these was difficult. Initially, stations were usually affiliated to universities and other large institutions. In the 1960s, 125 educational television stations reached 6 million viewers.

Notable stations included WQED in San Francisco, CA, which had begun in 1950; in 1955 it came up with an innovative form of fundraising—the on-air auction. This became a mainstay of both its programming and fundraising schedules and is used by other local public stations that remain reliant upon donations, especially after recent government cutbacks.

With the 1967 Act, a place on the broadcast spectrum for educational non-commercial television was secured. Within the decade, the number of public stations doubled and 30 million homes would enjoy access to public broadcasting. Today 99 percent of Americans have access to public broadcasting. The CPB was authorized to develop educational broadcasting and finance facilities to link the independent public television stations, but was restricted from owning stations, systems, or networks. The CPB established the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) in 1969 to manage the interconnection of independent public and educational broadcasting facilities. PBS is owned by its member stations; each member station is accountable to its local community Programming originates from a local station and is shared by member stations. For example, Electric Company, the award-winning children’s show, was produced by the Boston station WGBH, but shown nationwide. The related production company Children Television Workshop, produced Sesame Street for New York. Each station within the umbrella is free to produce and buy its own programming, but increasingly stations’ programming mimics that of other stations, so that PBS resembles a commercial network.

Commercial networks never registered any protest to PBS; they quickly realized that PBS was appealing to a different segment of the market. PBS showed dynamic fare such as Eyes on the Prize, a groundbreaking documentary on the Civil Rights movement, and An American Family, an innovative show that followed the life of a California middleclass white family. It also became the venue for many Ken Burns documentaries—from baseball to radio. Shows like Nature and Nova made it popular with educators just as Sesame Street and Mr Roger’s Neighborhood made it a must-see with kids. English shows were imported via the programs Mystery and Masterpiece Theatre, while opera and ballets were telecast live as ways to appeal to the high-brow population. At the same time, some more daring programming was also produced, such as Alive from Off-Center, which showed work from avant-garde artists and performers. Both, however, redefined public as elite rather than popular (or even local). Although commercial advertisements are not broadcast on PBS, stations and programs are allowed to announce the corporations and foundations who have underwritten particular shows. This has increased as government cutbacks (spurred on by the right wing) have eroded the financial structure. Corporations are able to portray themselves through PBS as interested in the arts, concerned about the environment and involved in the technological future without having to resort to anything as gauche as a traditional advertisement. Some fear that this corporate patronage has hindered the stations’ ability to develop programming free from censorship and to produce innovative shows as the system did in its first few years.