I am old enough to vaguely remember the Bicentennial celebration in 1976 and the contrast between that celebration and the one for America250 is striking - and maybe a bit depressing.

The Bicentennial year was filled with festivals and celebrations of America. Along with commercial tie-ins and promotions that lasted the entire year. A Republican was President then as well, but none of the events felt like some janky and sad effort that was all about boosting the President’s ego.

A few weeks ago, I decided that I wanted to do something optimistic for America250. I wanted to celebrate the best of who we are and what we can accomplish. And that inevitably led me to a decision to celebrate PBS.

As you know, this is a challenging time for PBS and its local station partners. Last year’s federal recission cutbacks and the resulting elimination of the Corporation For Public Broadcasting (CPB) has left a massive hole in the budgets of local stations. And on a national level, the cutbacks have necessitated production reductions on many of the network’s flagship programs.

This comes at the same time as PBS is facing ongoing political pressures from political critics who argue that PBS is “too woke,” and/or is somehow politically biased. And that doesn’t include the critics who have argued for decades that the federal government should not be providing funding for public media at all.

The other challenge for PBS is the marketing and promotion side of the business. Federal cutbacks led to layoffs at PBS and the local stations and those losses heavily impacted the ranks of people who were tasked with promoting the network and it’s programs.

Those cutbacks happened as the ranks of television reporters continues to thin and the journalists who are left struggle to convince wary editors they should be writing about The American Experience instead of Silo.

And that’s where this newsletter comes in. I am a big supporter of the PBS mission and one of the advantages of working for yourself is that I get to decide what I want to cover. So beginning on Wednesday, July 1st, you are going to see a month-long celebration of PBS. I’ve created a section on the main TooMuchTV newsletter to post the coverage and much of it will also be cross-posted on AllYourScreens.com.

And the pieces will be linked to from the newsletter and I’ll excerpt portions of some of the coverage. So while TooMuchTV won’t become “All PBS, All The Time,” you’ll be able to stay on top of things.

There is a flood of PBS-centric pieces coming this month. Extended interviews with PBS executives, as well as people working at local stations. Looks back at classic PBS programming, coverage of new programs premiering this month and a lot of other surprises.

This is one of those situations in which I think this newsletter can punch above its weight and I look forward to seeing what you think.

If you have any feedback, suggestions or other thoughts about this initiative, you can email me at [email protected]