October '08 Entertainment—Celebrity Chef Connection Column

Tom Axell, General Manager for PBS, spoke at a recent event about the new fall line-up at Vegas PBS, broadcast Channel 10. He related how many years ago that corporate sponsors could only have white letters on a blue screen and the letters could only be a certain height. He lost the sponsorship of IBM since by law; it would have to say “International Business Machines Corporation” and not “IBM.” “Over the years the government has tremendously changed the rules about what sponsors can do and how they can be identified. It is almost like a commercial and while Washington D.C. lawyers know it is not, apparently no one else in the world apparently does,” Axell said. Corporations now use sponsorship of PBS as a way to promote their company as well as give back to the community.

Public Television also does outreach programs and last year gave 450 presentations in mostly Title One schools where they took stars of their TV shows. One example given was “Barney goes to the Dentist,” where Vegas PBS brought the character Barney and copies of the book, showed a video clip along with corporate sponsors who gave talks about dental hygiene and dental kits for children. “It is almost a tearful experience. Many mothers came to support their children and said to us, ‘You know, we only have one toothbrush in our family. Can we have three more for our children?’ You know you are making a difference teaching children how to brush their teeth and the importance of Public Television programming,” Axell said.

He spoke about the Spanish-speaking market. “During the day, from about 9 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. PBS is often the Number One-rated television station in the Hispanic Nielsen beating Univision and Telemundo and that is pretty amazing. This is because Spanish-speaking families see public television as a gateway to their children’s achievement in schools and they have their children watch English-speaking programs on public television.”

Vegas PBS also has several digital networks on cable (Channels 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 355, 710) to diversify their programming. For example, there is Sprout with children’s programming, Create with cooking and World View with news reports from around the world and these digital networks are programmed 24 hours a day.

Locally programs include:

Nevada Week in Review