Two years ago, Slate‘s Mark Oppenheimer said PBS wasn’t worth saving because its audience is mostly aging Baby Boomers and cable has taken its place for programming. I wouldn’t know about the former yet the recent ad campaign with the New York affiliate has proven the cable argument to be bullshit.
We cut the cord years ago but whenever I catch TLC, History or Discovery in the break room at work, it’s always some show featuring rednecks in a pawn shop, rebuilding motorcycles/cars or killing gators. The worse stuff involves paranormal crap. None of this is educational. Then comes the excuse I’ve heard for why SyFy shows wrestling, psychics and ghost chasing (none of which is science fiction, hence the name change); the garbage pays the bills.
All the more reason to keep PBS afloat.
Personally, PBS should be allowed to regain its national feed like when we had Dish TV. This went away once we had to go with the local channels package for KLRU.
I wouldn’t sweat its current swerve to the older demographic. PBS has adapted in the past, it can again. There’s a ton of its content on Netflix streaming.