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Comment by duxup | Hacker News Reader

Well there is:

https://www.pbs.org/video/

Also PBS has a great kids games app(s) that are free with games that are fun / no ads.

And PBS kids video app is again free, great content, no ads.

If you're in the US and care about that content, I suggest contributing to your local station. The quality of the content from kids to adult is outstanding. It's not usual for me to browse a few streaming services and just end up watching PBS's content in the end.

Maybe when it comes to the article they mean more accessible? But I'm not sure as they seem to ignore the PBS content available.

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The pbs apps are made by OPB (Oregon public broadcasting) they’ve been a big partner of pbs for a long time.

The apps are really good and they try to keep relevant content and popular shows on the apps.

I work at PBS on one of the teams building these apps, and this has not been the case since I joined. PBS apps are maintained in house out of our Arlington headquarters, with most team members working fully remote during covid, but I fully appreciate you calling our apps good!

I’m sorry for my mistake. I live in Oregon and I was led to believe that OPB was developing the Kids apps since they reached out to me about 2ish years ago for working on the games.

No worries! My apologies if I came off brash, you may have been right about the origins of the kids games. We're currently hiring for engineers to work on them!

https://www.pbs.org/about/careers/current-openings/?gnk=job&...

Quick question if you know the answer: is that position remote-friendly/where is it located? There doesn't seem to be any location info on that listing.

I'd love to answer that, but I honestly don't know.

I just had a phone screen with them last week! Remote is possible, but unlikely. Their office is next to the Crystal City metro station on the blue line.

Love the PBS app for my kid. He is using it right now :)

My youngest loves the games! I kinda like them too ...

OPB is excellent. Oregon Field Guide is just so good. As a Seattle resident, I'm a bit jealous that Oregon has us beat with the outdoor programming. But a lot of their stories cross the state border. https://watch.opb.org/show/oregon-field-guide/

It appears the call is for more local journalism/programming online. PBS has great national and children's programs and does have broadcast local journalism/topics of interest. However, getting access to that online is more difficult.

Do we need this? Meh.. IDK.

I get that more from my local NPR affiliate than I do PBS.

Which I think is perhaps appropriate, if we've got to make a choice between the two. Textual media are a somewhat smaller jump from radio than they are from TV, and also, at least in my area, public radio is already doing a lot more local journalism. The public television station has a fair bit of locally produced programming, but most of it isn't really journalistic.

Huh—I judge PBS much more valuable to me, these days. Kids are a big factor in that, but also NPR's news is largely pretty poor—it's all horse-race shit and campaign Monday-morning quarterbacking around elections, the campaigns for which are now so long that they seem to be happening more often than not, and they continue to be blind to all kinds of issues and events generally—when it's not just re-broadcasting the BBC, and two of my favorite programs are gone now with nothing I consider anywhere near as good to replace them (Car Talk, and old-school A Prairie Home Companion, i.e. atheist Sunday church service). Some bright spots remain (On the Media), sure, but largely not stuff I care about or else programs that I think are simply bad.

They also spend a ton of time on ads (if you include promoting their own programs, especially).

I don't love a lot of PBS' current programming, but their historical material is a goldmine.

Kqed is both the npr radio and TV station for a good chunk of the sf bay area. I know in other markets this is not the same arrangement.

In Los Angeles there are two local NPR stations within 25 miles of eachother: KCRW and KPCC.

Well local PBS & NPR stations ... often do that.

I'm not sure the article really makes it clear what the situation in the first place is, or if they know.

Not entirely https://www.pbs.org/passport/videos/

Orthogonal: Can we pause for a moment and admire how amazing the PBS logo is? They've kept it for many years and haven't fallen to "trends". Here is some history: https://logos.fandom.com/wiki/PBS

I'm not sure what counts in your book as many years considering that page shows the latest one is from 2019. Also, not sure what counts as trends, considering their previous logo had a gradient added (which was trendy then, or a few years before then), and the current one is definitely a flat logo in comparison (which is also trendy, though it was a bigger trend a few years ago) and they changed the font drastically.

If you were just referring to the head element of the logo, I do like that element -- it's very recognizable and hasn't changed much over the years. Though I never knew (until looking at the page you linked to) that it's shaped like that because it was originally flipped on the Y axis and used as a 'P'.

Here is an example that went with the trends and destroyed the iconic mark of the Library of Congress: https://www.underconsideration.com/brandnew/archives/new_log...

Library Library of Congress. Sad.

What they did with PBS logo is simlar to slight redesigns over the years - GE, Lufthansa, AMEX, VISA, MasterCard, etc.

Honest question: what's amazing about it? Am I missing some clever aspect of it?

They don't have their full content there... only a few episodes from various shows.

I think you see a great deal more if you're a member and sign in.

> I suggest contributing to your local station

how do you find one to contribute? definitely interested in that, been binge watching The Great British Baking Show for a while now

Go to pbs.org. It will ask you to select a station based on your location and popup a big donate banner. There's also a donate button on the top bar. I feel like they make it pretty easy and obvious.

Search for your nearest major city + public radio.

I donate to PBS for the streaming, but I wish they would update their content more frequently, or rather they have a lot of content that I don’t care much about (especially the local programming). Mostly I’m interested in the nature, science, and history documentaries, especially the nature and nova series, but they only show a new episode once every few weeks.

Have you looked at their YouTube channels? Eons and SpaceTime are excellent.

EDIT: here's all of the channels: https://www.youtube.com/c/pbsdigitalstudios/channels

>Have you looked at their YouTube channels? Eons and SpaceTime are excellent.

I agree. Eons and Space Time are both excellent. I just hope they both start making new episodes soon.

I'd note that you can get those without YouTube's tracking/advertising by going right to the source[0] of those series.

[0] https://www.pbs.org/digital-studios/

My kids love It's Okay to Be Smart

> I suggest contributing to your local station

Most PBS stations run infomercials promoting quack medicine. So long as they keep doing that I'll never give them a penny.

This is an over generalization (and will differ for each member station). E.g. here is the KCTS 9 schedule for the full day tomorrow -- https://www.kcts9.org/schedule/kcts9/20210803

You could make a case for the 1AM slot being quackery and there are definitely more entries like that in the greater schedule but its a very small amount of the content (and ever decreasing...).

Disclaimer: I work for KCTS 9.

Ironically, if enough people gave them a penny they wouldn’t have to run those quack informercials.

Likely they'd just expand, like any other organization. PBS is somewhat better, but NPR is a cesspool of corporate sponsorship and journalism that's marginally better than some private, for-profit outlets but still generally low quality and scarcely informative.

> Most PBS stations run infomercials promoting quack medicine.

Can you give details? I'm wondering if this was something that only a local affiliate did and not something that was PBS sanctioned.

I don't think I've ever seen that.

Link to donate to OPB, with like KQED is both NPR and PBS affiliate: https://give.opb.org/opb/ Someone I know was a PM there and they were often struggling financially.

I thought they relied on yearly fundraisers. This is how OPB gets income

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