PBS is a membership organization that in partnership with its member stations serves the American public with programming and services of the highest quality, using media to educate, inspire, entertain, and express the diversity of perspectives. PBS empowers individuals to achieve their potential and strengthens the social, democratic, and cultural health of the U.S.

• PBS is a private, nonprofit corporation, founded in 1969, whose members are America’s public TV stations.

• PBS provides quality TV programming and related services to 356 noncommercial stations serving all 50 states, Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam and American Samoa.

• PBS oversees program acquisition and provides program distribution and promotion; education services; new media ventures; fundraising support; engineering and technology development; and video marketing.

• 168 noncommercial, educational licensees operate 356 PBS member stations.

• Of the 168 licensees, 87 are community organizations, 56 are colleges/universities, 20 are state authorities and five are local educational or municipal authorities.

The National Programming Service (NPS) is the major package of programs that PBS distributes to its member stations. It features television’s best children’s, cultural, educational, history, nature, news, public affairs and science programming.

 

Programs distributed on the NPS are produced by PBS stations, independent producers and other sources around the world. PBS does not produce programs.

• PBS averaged a 1.2 primetime rating during the 2007-2008.**

• More than 61 million people in 39 million households watch public television on-air during an average week. More than 124 million people access PBS content either on-air or online in a typical month.
  
  **Source: Nielsen Media Research. Public television prime time AA rating and full day weekly cume averages from October 2007-September 2008, and monthly cume and online unique visitors (Google Analytics) from October 08.

• PBS’ primetime audience is significantly larger than many of the commercial channels frequently cited as competitors, including HBO (0.8), History Channel (0.8), Discovery Channel (0.7), CNN (0.7), The Learning Channel (0.6) and Bravo (0.5).

The demographic breakdown of PBS’ audience reflects the overall U.S. population with respect to race/ethnicity, education and income.

*HOH = Head of Household Source: Nielsen Media Research. Public television full day weekly cume, average from October 2007-May 2008

August 2009