On Monday, February 6th, 2012, at 08:22:55h -0500, Arny Krueger wrote:

BBC's service to the US over cable seems to be pretty serviceable.

You do need to realize that many of the programs on BBC America
are not BBC programs or programs made for shewing on BBC, but
are in fact programs made by or produced for the commercial
tv network ITV, and possibly one or two for the state owned
commercial tv network Channel 4.

PBS is a nationwide consortium of TV and radio stations

Actually PBS is a separate organization from the local
tv stations, it is not a consortium, so local stations
affiliate with and pay PBS to carry the network programming
to fill their schedules.

And PBS is TV only. Public radio stations affiliate primarily to
NPR (some to American Public Media, and even fewer to Pacifica)
not PBS.

Except in a very few cases where they pay PBS to broadcast
the audio from PBS's Newshour.

In the case of the Detroit public TV station, WTVS, is a little
unusual at it has always been non-university owned (the Detroit Educational
Television Foundation) unlike neighboring WUOM Ann Arbor
(University of Michigan) and WKAR East Lansing (Michigan State University).