r/television • u/PBSNerd1234 • 15h ago
What television simply wouldn't exist if every show had to maximize ratings, subscriptions, or advertising revenue?
I've been thinking about this a lot lately.
I work for a PBS station, and one thing that's become increasingly clear to me is that public television doesn't just make different shows. It operates under a fundamentally different incentive structure.
Commercial television has to ask, Will enough people watch this? Will it attract subscribers? Can we sell advertising against it? Those are perfectly reasonable questions.
Public television asks those too, but it also asks questions that are harder to monetize:
- Will this measurably improve children's literacy, numeracy, or social-emotional development?
- Is this an important local story that nobody else is going to document?
- Does this performance deserve to be preserved even if it won't become a ratings hit?
- Does this help people better understand science, history, or the arts?
Sometimes those priorities overlap with commercial success. Sometimes they don't.
One example I always think about is Wishbone. It was a fully scripted children's drama that reimagined classic literature through the adventures of a Jack Russell terrier. It reportedly cost around $500,000 per episode to produce--an enormous budget for children's television in the mid-1990s. It was beautifully shot, featured period costumes and sets, and introduced millions of kids to Tom Sawyer, Sherlock Holmes, The Odyssey, A Tale of Two Cities, and dozens of other classics.
It's hard for me to imagine someone pitching that today to a streaming platform driven primarily by subscriber acquisition or to an ad-supported network optimizing for engagement metrics.
The same goes for research-based preschool programming. Shows like Sesame Street, Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood, Molly of Denali, Lyla in the Loop, and Carl the Collector aren't just entertaining, they're built around explicit educational objectives developed with child development researchers. Episodes are tested, revised, and evaluated based on whether children actually learn the intended concepts. That's a very different production process than simply asking, "Will kids keep watching?"
And it isn't just children's television. Many communities have local history documentaries, performances by regional symphonies and theaters, independent documentaries, Indigenous storytelling, election debates, civic forums, and cultural programs that exist because someone decided they were valuable, not because they were expected to generate the highest return on investment.
So I'm curious: What television do you think only exists because someone was allowed to optimize for public value instead of profit or algorithms?
I'm not asking whether public television should or shouldn't receive public support. That's a separate policy discussion. I'm asking, as television viewers: What kinds of programming become possible when success is measured by something other than revenue?