American Public Television

American Public Television (APT) is the largest of the television syndication distributors of programming for public television stations in the United States. It began in 1961 as the Eastern Educational Television Network (EEN) and was the first distributor of shows such as "The French Chef" (with Julia Child), "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood", and "Washington Week in Review" to the rest of what was then National Educational Television (not yet PBS). They introduced the unedited "Monty Python's Flying Circus" to American audiences in 1975 (ABC had run censored versions in late night previously), and brought "The Three Tenors" to public television audiences in 1991. The organization was known for a time as the Interregional Program Service in the 1980s, and American Program Service in the 1990s.

Shows regularly distributed by APT have included Deutsche Welle's "European Journal", "Farmers' Almanac TV", "Globe Trekker" (aka "Pilot Guides" in other countries), "Nightly Business Report", and "Rick Steves' Europe"; as of March 22, 2005, "Nightly Business Report" became a PBS offering; meanwhile, the series "Uncommon Knowledge" and "World Business" had recently left PBS to become APT-distributed programs.

In January, 2006, APT became the primary force behind a new public broadcasting network in the U.S., Create, which offers primarily crafts and travel programming from the APT, PBS and NETA libraries. In part this network fills a void left by the closure of PBS's subsidiary crafts, education and public-affairs network PBS YOU at the end of January 2006. Indeed, many of Create's affiliates are PBS digital stations.

External links

* [http://www.aptonline.org/ American Public Television's website]