Underwritten
The American Experiment in Public Broadcasting, 1967 to 2026 (Institutional Autopsy, Book 3)
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Underwritten
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Narrated by:
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Alan Taylor
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By:
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David Boles
On January 30, 2026, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting filed its Articles of Dissolution with the District of Columbia. The federation that had carried American public broadcasting from the 1967 Public Broadcasting Act through fifty-eight years of programming, political contestation, and federal appropriation reached its legal end. UNDERWRITTEN is the first full institutional history of that federation.
UNDERWRITTEN traces the architecture of federated American public broadcasting from the November 7, 1967 signing of the Public Broadcasting Act in the East Room of the Johnson White House through the January 30, 2026 dissolution filing. Beginning with the four-second PBS logo sequence as a sensory anchor, the book moves through the founding political coalition, the federation's design as a thousand-station non-commercial license regime, the coastal flagships at WGBH and WNET, the state networks producing for national distribution from Lincoln and Boise and Columbia, the independent producers at Florentine Films and ITVS and Sesame Workshop, the canonical programs that defined American cultural memory, and the five political campaigns from Nixon through the second Trump term that tested the federation before the sixth ended it.
©2026 David Boles (P)2026 David Boles