Doctor Who in the 1960s did not have shorter seasons, by any means. William Hartnell and Patrick Troughton both made between 40-45 episodes per season (or “series,” as they would have called them). In fact, that’s part of the reason Troughton decided to leave when he did; he didn’t like the grueling work schedule.
It wasn’t until Jon Pertwee took over in 1970 that Doctor Who’s seasons got shorter. And even then, seasons had between 20 and 25 episodes, so “shorter” was a relative term.
I also always like to point out the ITV police procedural show The Bill, which often had 80 or 90 episodes per season, and at its height had even more. Its longest season had 156 episodes (it was on several times per week, from January through December).
Do you count Annika, Magpie Murders, Miss Scarlet and The Duke, The Miniaturist, Death Comes to Pemberley, The Marlow Murder Club, Alice & Jack, Grantchester, Van der Valk, All Creatures Great and Small, Call the Midwife, Wolf Hall, Victoria, World on Fire, Marie Antoinette, The Boleyns: A Scandalous Family, Around the World in 80 Days, The Durells in Corfu, and Unforgotten?
PBS produces documentary series, like the science-oriented NOVA, and children’s shows, like Sesame Street, but its dramas and comedies are mostly imported from Britain. Here’s a list. ETA: Wendell, aren’t those all British? Is even one made in America?
Independent films and music productions are common, but the “series” run across years, not 22 episodes a season. Here’s what they brag about. Individual stations also produce their own programs, which can be syndicated to other PBS outlets.
Overall, PBS is in no way comparable to any American network and never has been. It runs closest to BBC America of any of the cable channels.
Seriously? I really don’t know what bee you have in your bonnet.
I recognise a few of these, Magpie Murders, Wolf Hall, Call the midwife are original BBC dramas, Van Der Valk (both the 70s and 2020 one) , and Grantchester are original ITV drama series.
I’m not going to bother looking up the rest. Are you seriously saying you think that PBS has produced this original content?
Incidentally, PBS pays something to BBC, ITV, or whatever for the rights to show British television shows. I suspect that the money paid to BBC, ITV, and whatever from PBS and the networks in other countries to show those British shows is a lot of the profit of those shows. PBS doesn’t consider it to be their job to do ordinary fiction shows or talk shows. They let the commercial networks take care of that.
Public television (PBS stations, and the occasional municipal station) is pretty much the only exception to the rule, when it comes to U.S. broadcast or cable networks being either (a) funded by advertising, or (b) funded by subscription fees (e.g., HBO, Showtime).
Not really, but the answer isn’t entirely “no.”
For PBS, the vast majority of their shows originate from one of four sources:
Original programming produced by one of PBS’s member stations or regional networks. For example, Nova (a long-running science documentary series) is produced by WGBH, the PBS affiliate in Boston.
Original programming produced by independent non-profits; the big example here is Sesame Street (produced by Sesame Workshop, formerly known as Children’s Television Workshop)
Foreign programming, mostly English (and a bit of Canadian); most of these are dramas (e.g., the Poirot and Father Brown mysteries) or comedies (e.g., Doc Martin). Two famous British shows largely got their first exposure in the U.S. by being shown on public television: Doctor Who and Monty Python’s Flying Circus.
A fourth, which is really a subset of the third, are two of PBS’s most popular shows: Masterpiece and Masterpiece Mystery, which are produced by individual PBS stations, but are essentially packaging British (BBC or ITV) dramas with short, US-produced introductions.
Nearly all of the U.S.-produced PBS content (i.e, the first two groups) is either educational, cooking, travel, cultural (music, theater), or news.
I’ve seen a few scripted, original comedy and drama series on PBS that were produced by local public broadcasting stations, but very few – a notable one was Mystery! producing and airing adaptations of three of Tony Hillerman’s Navajo Tribal Police novels (and that was over 20 years ago).
What are your rules about how long ad breaks should be? Over here, it seems to be no more than four minutes, plus maybe a minute for channel trailers. The number of breaks seems to vary with the show. A two-hour mystery might have no more than four breaks, a popular half-hour comedy or drama just the one.
Only the BBC broadcast channels and streaming service have no commercial advertising, just their own programme trailers. But they are trying to optimise income from their back catalogue on commercial archive channels, where they partner with the commercial broadcasters (as, I believe, with Britbox).
I am confused. You say one thing with the first sentence, and then the opposite with the second sentence.
In reality the main channels in the UK (the most watched), are 50% advert free. BBC1 + 2 are advert free and ITV + Channel 4 have adverts (I don’t count Channel 5, it’s not a real channel, you have to have more original content than 15 hours of South Grimthorpes crack traffic police)..
If I want real drama or comedy in the US, as far as I remember from when I used to be able to go there without being arrested for believing the 2020 election was valid, it was ALL advertising apart from the subscription based channels given free at the hotel. I won’t be watching Sesame street or documentaries (I am not sure if I have ever stopped on a PBS).
(There are lots of digital channels in the UK too, which are advertising based, but really, not many people watch them.)
I think you missed my slightly later post. There was zero question about the pay American actors starring in hit shows make.
Exapno’s chicken feed comment was on a British unknown-at-the-time actor’s pay, which is a completely different ball game. Even if they were known actors, it would be. American standards do not apply.
By the term “absolute difference”, I mean that you can’t say that American television is completely funded by commercials, nor can you say that British television is completely publicly funded. The relative proportions are greatly different. The proportion of television that is commercially funded is greater in the U.S. The proportion of television that is publicly funded is greater in the U.K.
I’m a little confused about this. I’ve looked them up and I see multiple group photos of them, and there are usually 13 in the photos. Like here:
I also see images that show only 10 of them, but I don’t know if that’s just not all of them available for that photo.
But you’re not the only one who claims there were twelve. Maybe that was the original group and then the membership fluctuated? (Sorry about the tangent but I found it curious.)
You just reminded me of that very short lived animated show starring Click and Clack from Car Talk. I assume that was probably produced by WGBH, since the radio show was produced by WBUR, Boston’s NPR station.
I don’t really know how many members there were. I remember watching the comedy sketches on Dean Martin Presents the Golddiggers in London. I don’t remember watching the Golddiggers perform.
I remember that one, too. The Wikipedia entry on the show doesn’t indicate a particular station which was behind the production of it (seeming to suggest that it was produced by PBS itself), but the show’s IMDB entry lists WETA (the Washington DC PBS station) as the “production company.”
IMDB shows there were 30 separate performers listed as “Golddiggers.” Some of them were billed by name, others only billed as a Golddigger. There were a total of 28 episodes over three summers, but no Golddigger appeared in more than 19 episodes (some are listed, but not shown as having any appearances.)
Don’t think of them as regular actors, but more like chorus girls in old movie musicals. It’s possible there might not have been the same dancers in every number on an individual episode.
