PBS, or the Public Brainwashing Broadcasting Service, announced plans recently to expand the supply of its trademark leftist content on the uber-popular video host. InformationWeek reported that it would grow the current list of some 700 clips to one which will include…more clips.
An estimate as to the number of videos expected for the latest infusion was not given, though by the look of the PBS channel’s current subscribership (3,229 as of 6:28PM EST), a great many more would not be too alluring to new viewers. The page’s maintenance crew might wish to buck convention and exercise some conservatism when hitting them upload buttons.
In all honesty, I enjoy a good amount of PBS programming now and then. The offerings born of the Masterpiece Theatre brand are very well crafted. Only commercial network titles like NBC’s Heroes and Journeyman and ABC’s Lost and Brothers & Sisters can really run with the best of the public broadcasts.
But there is a fatal flaw in PBS’s YouTube presentation: the ever-present and ever-annoying time limit. Because video clips cannot run north of 10 minutes in length, the PBS experience (a measured, non-sound-byte-driven atmosphere) is effectively dismembered. And that’s a terrible thing. How could anyone be satisfied with an incomplete Charlie Rose conversation? One-half hour, at least! (Oppositely, some find Rose an unappealing chatterbox, and might then consider the PBS channel a waste of fine server space altogether.)
Perhaps YouTube’s administrators should begin to weigh the option of removing barriers at the request of premium content providers. It’s time that users be given the chance to once again view media as it was meant to be.
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