{"id":8007,"date":"2004-02-02T22:55:54","date_gmt":"2004-02-02T22:55:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2004\/02\/pbs_is_so_odd.html"},"modified":"2004-02-02T22:55:54","modified_gmt":"2004-02-02T22:55:54","slug":"pbs_is_so_odd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/02\/pbs_is_so_odd.html","title":{"rendered":"PBS is so odd"},"content":{"rendered":"

I mean, really. It’s hard to figure out exactly what PBS is<\/strong> anymore. It seems as if its evening programming alternates between three-hour specials on the construction of a bridge and five-hour beg-a-thons framed around some guywith wavy hair playing the violin in front of adoring crowds, which is strange since he’s playing with an orchestra, and seems to be playing the same melody as all of the rest of the first violins, so his exact contribution to the proceedings stands as a mystery. Except for the hair.<\/p>\n

Children’s programming has long passed PBS by. Give me Blue, Miffy, Max and Ruby and Bob any day over any of the painfully helpful PBS shows (the exception being George Shrinks, a jazzy, somewhat surreal piece of work inspired by the Roly Poly Oley guy). Cultural and historical programming is everywhere, too. <\/p>\n

But hey, who else is showing Lawrence Welk in 2004! Only on your local PBS station! Send money now!<\/p>\n

(Did I ever tell you how entranced Joseph is by the LW show? If he’s antsy and fussy on a Saturday night, we know that all we need do is flip on channel 39, and something about Bobby and Sissy and Myron just stops him in his tracks.)<\/p>\n

Well, tonight, in our area at least, it was PBS Does Speedweek. As in, over the next couple of weeks, the NASCAR season starts again (And remember…it’s not the Winston Cup anymore), and everyone has to hop on the NASCAR train. Even PBS, apparently, for their program tonight was a tape of a stage full of women discussing the role of women in racing. It was sort of interesting (to me, if not to my husband), but honestly. It was so PBS. <\/p>\n

(But, ah, I remember the good old days. In fact, I tried to recapture the good old days when I rented the first disc of The Pallisers<\/strong> from Netflix. Alas, the disc was cracked, so I’ll have to wait for a replacement to see if that series was as wonderful as I remember it to be. Pretty good, I’d say, if it inspired a 17-year old to read Trollope.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I mean, really. It’s hard to figure out exactly what PBS is anymore. It seems as if its evening programming alternates between three-hour specials on the construction of a bridge and five-hour beg-a-thons framed around some guywith wavy hair playing the violin in front of adoring crowds, which is strange since he’s playing with an…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8007","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nPBS is so odd - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/02\/pbs_is_so_odd.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"PBS is so odd - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I mean, really. It’s hard to figure out exactly what PBS is anymore. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8007","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8007"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8007\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8007"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}