PBS YOU (the latter word is an acronym for "Your Own University") was founded in the late 1990s as a 24/7 channel/network featuring formal and informal educational programs and
college
A college (Latin: ''collegium'') is an educational institution or a constituent part of one. A college may be a degree-awarding tertiary educational institution, a part of a collegiate or federal university, an institution offerin ...
-related fare, largely to take advantage of available rights and satellite transponder space and eager customers for carriage among the satellite-dish and some cable television companies.
How-to programs and public affairs programs and news predominated. An
American Public Television
American Public Television (APT) is an American nonprofit organization and syndicator of programming for public television stations in the United States. It distributes public television programs nationwide for PBS member stations and indepe ...
,
WGBH and
WNET
WNET (channel 13), branded on-air as "Thirteen" (stylized as "THIRTEEN"), is a primary PBS member television station licensed to Newark, New Jersey, United States, serving the New York City area. Owned by The WNET Group (formerly known as the ...
partnership now offers two similar alternative national services,
Create, which was introduced in January, 2006, and
World
In its most general sense, the term "world" refers to the totality of entities, to the whole of reality or to everything that is. The nature of the world has been conceptualized differently in different fields. Some conceptions see the worl ...
, beginning national service August 2007.
PBS YOU formerly included
PBS
The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcaster and non-commercial, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly funded nonprofit organization and the most prominent provider of educat ...
Adult Learning Service (ALS) telecourses for college credit and foreign language instruction. PBS ALS has been decommissioned as of September 2005; the Annenberg/CPB Channel remains in place as a source of networked feeds of credit courses.
Demise
PBS YOU had long been vulnerable to budget concerns at PBS.
In late 2001, YOU was in danger of being shut down altogether. A deal with New River Media, producers of ''
Think Tank
A think tank, or policy institute, is a research institute that performs research and advocacy concerning topics such as social policy, political strategy, economics, military, technology, and culture. Most think tanks are non-governmenta ...
'' and with the producers of the ''
Standard Deviants'' educational series for teens helped to provide a reprieve for the channel, which largely reverted to its initial mix of programming in 2002 after having carried a preponderance of programming from those two sources.
In the wake of the closure of the
original incarnation of the PBS Kids Channel on September 26, 2005 (in favor of the new commercial partnership service
PBS Kids Sprout
Universal Kids is an American children's television channel owned by the NBCUniversal Television and Streaming unit of Comcast's NBCUniversal.
The channel launched on September 26, 2005, as PBS Kids Sprout, a preschool-oriented channel jointly ...
), YOU's future was once again in doubt and eventually followed suit on January 9, 2006. The
Create network was created to partially fill the void left by the closure of YOU.
Prior to its cancellation, PBS YOU was carried by 67
PBS
The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcaster and non-commercial, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly funded nonprofit organization and the most prominent provider of educat ...
member stations (via
ATSC subchannels),
DirecTV
DirecTV (trademarked as DIRECTV) is an American multichannel video programming distributor based in El Segundo, California. Originally launched on June 17, 1994, its primary service is a digital satellite service serving the United States. I ...
,
Dish Network and select
digital cable providers.
See also
*
Create (television network)
Create is an American digital broadcast public television network broadcast on digital subchannels of PBS member stations. The network broadcasts how-to, DIY and other lifestyle-oriented instructional programming 24 hours a day.
History
Create w ...
External links
Archived official websiteat the
Wayback Machine
The Wayback Machine is a digital archive of the World Wide Web founded by the Internet Archive, a nonprofit based in San Francisco, California. Created in 1996 and launched to the public in 2001, it allows the user to go "back in time" and see ...
{{DEFAULTSORT:Pbs You
Public Broadcasting Service
Defunct television networks in the United States
Television channels and stations established in 1998
Television channels and stations disestablished in 2006
Educational and instructional television channels
English-language television stations in the United States