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Television Youtube The Internet United States Entertainment

Over 100 PBS Local Stations Start Streaming Today On YouTube TV (techcrunch.com) 35

Starting today, you can now stream more than 100 local PBS stations on YouTube TV by way of dedicated live channels for both PBS and PBS Kids, as well though on-demand programming. More stations are expected to be added in 2020, PBS notes. TechCrunch reports: PBS service is available to 75% of U.S. households via YouTube TV, significantly broadening PBS' reach among cord-cutters. Before today, PBS programming has been available through the PBS.org and PBSKids.org websites, as well as the PBS Video app and PBS Kids app for iOS, Android, Roku, Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, Samsung TV and Chromecast. Some of its programming has also been available on-demand via channels offered by Amazon and Apple, as well as through popular on-demand streaming services like Netflix. And of course, U.S. households can also pick up their local PBS station's signal for free via their digital antenna, or subscribe to cable or satellite TV to access PBS channels. But YouTube TV is the first live TV service to offer PBS stations directly in its app.
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Over 100 PBS Local Stations Start Streaming Today On YouTube TV

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  • Slashvertizment?

    • But aren't you happy to learn that you can now pay $50 a month to watch public television which is free OTA?

      • and "supported by viewers like you." I guess public doesn't mean what it once did.
        • by hey! ( 33014 )

          The change you are complaining about happened in the 1950s.

          The very earliest public broadcasting stations were run by state agricultural extensions services in the 1930s to disseminate agricultural information to farmers. In the 1940s the FCC set aside certain frequencies in the FM spectrum for educational broadcasting. In the 1950s, a number of private charities emerged to do public interest broadcasting on those FM stations, and soon they were operating TV stations as well.

          These stations have never bee

        • by gary s ( 5206985 )
          THe B in PBS is begging not broadcast.
      • What's stopping PBS from just streaming 24/7 on regular YouTube?

        • They would lose all of that revenue. I'm sure they are desperate. My local PBS station (WHYY) paid their president, Bill Marrazzo, $842,832 in 2017. (That's over 8428 x $100 pledges in fund drive speak). Considering how few programs are produced by this station, I just have to wonder. And that's ONE person.

          • The local PBS station here plays "sponsored content" sometimes and one of their sub channels plays it non stop.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • by Sumguy2436 ( 6186944 ) on Wednesday December 18, 2019 @06:33AM (#59531448)

    Used to be Youtube was for you, for independent content creators. These days they're moving towards old-school, corporate content. At the same time they put more and more hurdles in the way of independent creators that made Youtube what it is today.

    They're trying to become the very same TV that people where moving away from to go to Youtube. Broadcast yourself my ass.

    • Used to be Youtube was for you, for independent content creators. These days they're moving towards old-school, corporate content. At the same time they put more and more hurdles in the way of independent creators that made Youtube what it is today.

      They're trying to become the very same TV that people where moving away from to go to Youtube. Broadcast yourself my ass.

      Yep. YouTube has become UsTube, the us being Google.

      As evidenced, for example, by how they disappear you if they don't like your content.

    • To be honest, Im getting pretty tired of hearing/seeing these spoiled youtube millennial with their empty houses and their shitty storytelling. They arenâ(TM)t going to be replaced, but at least youtube will have more diversity than

      Reaction Videos
      Funny Vines / cat videos
      Minecraft playing 30yr old virigins
      Second channel of said minecraft millennials doing retarded shit with sone overpriced toys/legos in their empty house
      Kind shows - ie kids being exploited as unpaid actors for their parents to use as cl

      • There are plenty of professional and semi-professional channels on Youtube who provide quality entertainment, education or both. The problem is, their content is more time-consuming and expensive to create so they're hit hardest by the way Youtube is changing. They're the ones to go first and we'll actually have less diversity. See animators for example. They were big before the adpocalypse and now there are barely any left because it's no longer profitable.

        The content you listed will be what survives longe

        • Reality tv is network cable. The biggest reason I stopped playing for cable service. Fuck honey booboo and her fatass mom. I am not contributing to their salary. Nor john and kate, or the duggers and their 42 damn kids. Sew your uterus shut already and stop showing everyone how you force your damn kids to take care of the babies you keep shitting out.

          I just think if there was a iHeart-type component of youtube for liveTV, one where broadcaster and youtube split the advertisement blocks, it wouldn't be so ba

          • Reality tv is network cable. The biggest reason I stopped playing for cable service. Fuck honey booboo and her fatass mom. I am not contributing to their salary. Nor john and kate, or the duggers and their 42 damn kids. Sew your uterus shut already and stop showing everyone how you force your damn kids to take care of the babies you keep shitting out.

            I just think if there was a iHeart-type component of youtube for liveTV, one where broadcaster and youtube split the advertisement blocks, it wouldn't be so bad. Since its live the whole ad would play, no skip feature. It would solve OTA antenna reception issues and allow for faster to market deployments of higher resolutions and other tech. This is assuming they run it like iHeart Radio and not some paid streaming access for the local broadcast stations. Save the paid subscriptions for the network cable channels. Then those assholes who want to keep paying Viacom to air dysfunction families screaming at eachother instead of building the motorcycle they were contracted to build, can pay without forcing the rest of us to do so.

            Yes TV is pure shit now, but fortunately there is an easy solution and complaining about it won't help.
            Just don't watch it.

          • "duggers and their 42 damn kids" Those kids need to be taken away by Child Protective Services. Really. And I think "mom" needs to go to the mental hospital. She's fucking sick in the head. And the producers need to be jailed for enabling this. "12 kids and counting" "17 kids abd counting" "19 kids and counting" ..WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK? They think this is a fucking football game?! These kids are already warped from all this. I hope they get the proper intervention they need before one (or more) of them sh
    • Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday December 18, 2019 @08:55AM (#59531762)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • Unfortunately it's Youtube as a whole.

        If I go to Youtube without logging in and with cleared cookies I get mostly official TV channels on the top of the front page. Even if I watch tons of unrelated stuff I still get late night shows sprinkled in with my recommended videos. This is being pushed by Youtube.

        Recently there was a bug where people were able to see the hidden "social credit score" on Youtube which affects how visible content is. Of the top 11 scores there was only 1 non-corporate-media channel. H

    • Used to be Youtube was for you, for independent content creators. These days they're moving towards old-school, corporate content. At the same time they put more and more hurdles in the way of independent creators that made Youtube what it is today.

      They're trying to become the very same TV that people where moving away from to go to Youtube. Broadcast yourself my ass.

      You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.

  • by e3m4n ( 947977 ) on Wednesday December 18, 2019 @07:17AM (#59531516)

    So with this live feature will this become the TV iteration of iHeart Radio for local broadcasts tv stations? I have to admit iHeart does come in handy for long road trips. Instead of paying for costly satellite radio, or having to constantly find new stations every 100miles, my wife just runs iHeart through her iphone to the car. Only every rare occasion is there a internet deadzone lasting a minute or two.

    If youtube starts broadcasting livestream local channels it will make The OTA antenna hassle less of a big deal. It also will allow for faster migration to 4k/8k/insert-new-tech-here streams without waiting on ATSC standards to roll out.

    I guess I should be on the lookout for a youtube plugin for my PlexPass DVR functions.

    • So with this live feature will this become the TV iteration of iHeart Radio for local broadcasts tv stations?

      Since PBS didn't start their own streaming service, no. Believe it or not, iHeartRadio is just a new brand of iHeartMedia, which used to be Clear Channel. The reason they have so many stations on their streaming service is because they own them all.

  • Mine doesn't pick up the lower watt stations and I haven't seen a PBS station in many years, sorry Bob Villa. Glad the internet hasn't killed public television but found a way to carry it.

    • Mine doesn't pick up the lower watt stations and I haven't seen a PBS station in many years, sorry Bob Villa. Glad the internet hasn't killed public television but found a way to carry it.

      Yeah, I haven't really been able to watch PBS since the digital transition either. Which is kind of funny since the nearest PBS station used to be the easiest to pick up on analog TV.

      OTOH, the only things I could stand on PBS were NOVA and Nature anyway, and the most recent episodes are viewable on their website.

      • You need an attic or outdoor antenna. Indoors I could only get the local Jesus channel because the tower is in sight. I mounted one in the attic and get 40 or so now.

        • by Megane ( 129182 )

          There was also a channel reassignment back in May, on the 10th anniversary of the original switch-over date. This one was to remove RF channels above 36, though there were still some channels that won't move for a few more months. I suspect those channels were also power-limited on the higher frequencies because they were "temporary" (for 10 years?), and are now at "full" power.

          I had two channels (CBS and NBC) with reception problems, and CBS was getting absolutely horrible. Now CBS almost always comes in

  • Is already streaming on YouTube - at least the news programs.
  • I hope this doesn't signal an end of development into their own apps. The PBSKids and PBSVideo apps are both the best 2 streaming apps we've found for any platform.

    No cluttered interface, straight forward UI to get to the videos. Since they had to target multiple platforms they made the backend a very simple REST interface. They didn't try to bury it all behind DRM. No popup ads. No asking to subscribe. The backend supports multiple video codecs and bitrates (all presented in a simple JSON).

  • I assume elmo is dry humping big bird while spider man injects them with needles???
  • I guess I no longer have any reason to keep contributing to PBS if they're going to go commercial like they have been on YouTube.
  • I live in Canada, and used to get PBS when I had cable.
    Then, I cut the cord more than 5 years ago. The antenna does not get PBS Buffalo since it is a tad far away. Only in mid summer does something show off, but not regularly.
    The problem is that PBS stuff on Youtube is geo restricted: Canadians can't see it. Even videos on their web sites are often blocked (last I checked, and that was a couple of years ago).
    Searching Youtube, only PBS Newshour is available.
    Any one knows if the new live streams are availabl

  • So I assume YouTube is making ad revenue off this taxpayer funded/viewer supported content?

Economists state their GNP growth projections to the nearest tenth of a percentage point to prove they have a sense of humor. -- Edgar R. Fiedler

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