In an ambitious move to try to give “another perspective” on the United States, PBS is launching a new channel in the United Kingdom.
PBS chief executive Paula Kerger tells The Guardian she hopes the new UK channel — sans Sesame Street — will “give people here in the UK a sense of how news is reported in the United States,” as well as the big issues affecting Americans.
The new channel will launch November 1 and is partly financed by David Lyons, a Canadian oil and gas executive. Kerger says the new channel will offer “500 unique hours of content” the first year and 1000 hours next year. Nova, Frontline, and Ken Burns’ new documentary, Prohibition, will be featured on the channel. Unfortunately, Newshour will be broadcast in the UK a day later than in the U.S.
“We hopefully will make some money because it is a commercial venture, but our primary interest in doing this is to exhibit our content to an international audience,” Kerger said.
Despite those American shows, Kerger added the UK channel will have a “British voice.”
As The Guardian points out, PBS is largely unknown in the UK. And it will have to compete with the BBC’s massive operation. To put their budgets in perspective, PBS’ programming has $350 million to work with, according to The Guardian, while the BBC’s license fee income is about $5.5 billion per year. And still, in the United States, Republicans often put PBS and NPR on the chopping block when it comes time to trim the budget. So how will PBS compete with BBC? It won’t, exactly, PBS UK General Manager Richard Kingsbury said.
“Rather than compete, PBS will complement the public service offering here in the UK,” he said in a press release.
Read Kerger’s interview with The Guardian here.
