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Soon You’ll be Able to Watch PBS on YouTube

posted by martyb on Thursday August 01 2019, @06:41AM   Printer-friendly
from the no-more-rabbit-ears,-right-Doc? dept.

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Fnord666:

Soon you’ll be able to watch PBS on YouTube

PBS and YouTube have announced that PBS and PBS Kids will join YouTube TV’s channel roster. The two partners made the announcement this week at the summer Television Critics Association’s (TCA) press tour. Three hundred and thirty member stations will be available to users, based on their markets.

PBS already offers a robust on-demand streaming service of its own at video.pbs.org, with content tailored to individual markets. And PBS launched a channel on Amazon Prime Video with special on-demand content earlier this year. But this will be the first time viewers will be able to stream live programming from PBS through a digital service, excepting some anomalies over the years like the now-defunct Aero service and the like.

[...] Given the PBS goal of reaching "as many Americans as possible," it makes sense to bring the stations to a platform like this. That said, though, YouTube TV pricing starts at $49.99, and a key part of the PBS pitch has always been to make quality content freely available to users regardless of their location or socioeconomic status.

We're in a strange limbo period where live PBS is still free on broadcast TV, but broadcast TV is declining. So that means PBS is coming to Web streaming, but not for free. That might change in the future, but this is an awkward position for PBS to be in right now.

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  • (Score: 1) by hwertz on Thursday August 01 2019, @04:25PM

    by hwertz (8141) on Thursday August 01 2019, @04:25PM (#874098)

    So, PBS is available for free over the air; but people (who still have cable or a dish) are paying like $100 a month for a package that includes PBS. So, here people can pay $49.99 for YouTubeTV and get linear PBS, but it's not true that streaming PBS is not available for free, since (as said in the very article), video.pbs.org has streaming.

    Iowa Public Television actually does have a "IPTV Kids 24/7 live stream" on their site. It'd be easy to stream the main PBS here, the stations are identical statewide, as opposed to some states where the PBS stations are all a little different.