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National and Local Programming Units
Culture and Arts
Thirteen/WNET is the leading provider of culture and arts
programming for American public television. Under the
leadership of Jac Venza, Thirteen's Culture &
Arts Department has brought to American audiences such
recent limited series as AMERICAN VISIONS, the eight-part
series with TIME Magazine critic Robert Hughes on the
history of American art (May, 1997); YO-YO MA: INSPIRED
BY BACH, a six-part exploration of the creative process
via J.S. Bach's "Suites for Solo Cello" (April, 1998);
the six-part, Peabody Award-winning I'LL MAKE
ME A WORLD: A CENTURY OF AFRICAN-AMERICAN ARTS (February,
1999); the six-part GREAT COMPOSERS, profiling the lives
and enduring work of classical music's leading composers
(April, 1999); the six-part AUSTRALIA: BEYOND THE FATAL
SHORE written and presented by Robert Hughes (September, 2000); and the
six-part CHANGING STAGES, a history of the English-language
theater written and presented by Sir Richard Eyre (August
2001). Ongoing Culture & Arts department presentations
include the primetime series GREAT PERFORMANCES and AMERICAN MASTERS.
GREAT PERFORMANCES is America's longest running
series devoted to the performing arts. Thirteen launched
THEATER IN AMERICA in 1972, creating the first
component of the series that would come to be known as
GREAT PERFORMANCES. In 1976, DANCE IN AMERICA premiered
as a sub-series presented under the GREAT PERFORMANCES
banner. Currently in its 30th-anniversary season on PBS,
the series has produced or presented nearly six hundred
programs of music, dance, drama, opera, artist profiles,
and performance-documentaries. The roster of major artists
who have found a showcase for their work on GREAT PERFORMANCES
reads like a "Who's Who" of the past and
present in the performing arts, ranging from Leonard Bernstein,
George Balanchine, Rodgers & Hammerstein, Martha Graham,
and Aaron Copland to Stephen Sondheim, Wynton Marsalis,
Wendy Wasserstein, Paul Taylor, and George C. Wolfe. The
series has won fifty seven Emmy Awards from more than one hundred
and twenty nominations, and has also received every other
major television award, both nationally and internationally,
including three prestigious Peabody Awards for Excellence
in Broadcasting and the Prix Italia.
AMERICAN MASTERS began its first broadcast season
in 1986, and remains the only American primetime documentary
series to focus on the individuals who shape the American
cultural landscape. The series has presented more than 116
documentaries on individual subjects, and the many artists
profiled include Louis Armstrong, George Gershwin, Billie
Holiday, Artur Rubinstein, Paul Simon, Lillian Gish, Martin
Scorsese, James Baldwin, Neil Simon, Diego Rivera, Andy
Warhol, Lena Horne, Danny Kaye, William Styron, Man Ray,
and Isamu Noguchi. AMERICAN MASTERS is consistently the
recipient of every major broadcast award, including the
Prime-time Emmy for Outstanding Non-Fiction Series for
1999, 2000, and 2001 as well as Academy and Peabody Awards,
Cine Golden Eagle, and hosts of others.
News and Public Affairs
The Department of News and Public Affairs offers a wide
range of programs with factual public affairs content.
Subjects include but are not limited to: politics, economics,
international relations, crime and justice, race, family
life, technology, business, and relevant modern history.
Programs are distributed through Public Broadcasting Service
(PBS) or American Public Television (APT) for national
broadcast.
The Department produces and presents documentary films
of varying lengths and styles, along with weekly and monthly
series. These include recent documentary series such as
RED GOLD and LOCAL NEWS; specials such as SHADOW PLAY,
ALLIES AT WAR, and SREBRENICA: A CRY FROM THE GRAVE; and
newsmagazines such as RELIGION AND ETHICS NEWSWEEKLY
and IN THE LIFE. WIDE ANGLE is the Department's new weekly
series of one-hour international documentaries.
Many of the Department's programs are made by independent producers who enter into different kinds of production and/or funding agreements with the station. One funding program in which the Department has participated in the past is LInCS (Local Independents Collaborating with Stations), an initiative run by the Independent Television Service (ITVS). This program provides incentive or matching monies to collaborations between public television stations and independent producers. Please be aware that many different genres, not just news programs, are eligible for funding. For more information regarding LInCS funding program you may visit the ITVS Web site at www.itvs.org or phone 415-356-8383 ext. 270 for further information. Please submit proposals to: LInCS, c/o News and Public Affairs department, Thirteen/WNET, 450 West 33rd Street, NY, NY, 10001. Deadline to submit for consideration is March 1, 2005.
Science, Natural History & Features
The Science, Natural History & Features department
specializes in producing programs on science and technology,
nature and history for national broadcast. We produce
for primetime broadcast on PBS about 60 hours a year.
About a third of the department's output is natural history.
We broadcast individual one-hour, single-subject natural
history programs within our NATURE strand. Another third
of our output is science, and we have produced major mini-series
including WARSHIP, SECRETS OF THE DEAD, and FRONTIER HOUSE.
The balance is history, and we have produced THE RISE AND
FALL OF JIM CROW, IN SEARCH OF ANCIENT IRELAND, CROWN
& COUNTRY, and THE SIX WIVES OF HENRY VIII. Aside from
NATURE, we generally accept proposals only for series.
Any successful project must be attached to a producer-director
with experience making programs for national broadcast.
Children's and Educational Programming
Thirteen/WNET's Children's and Educational Programming department has earned a national reputation as a leading developer and producer of high-quality television, including children's animation, live-action specials, and documentaries. CEP also creates educational videos, teacher training programs, and distance learning courses. Productions have won many honors, including Emmys, Tellys, Cine Golden Eagle awards, and US International Video and Film Festival awards. Programs are distributed through Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) or American Public Television (APT) for national broadcast.
For kids and families: CYBERCHASE is an animated adventure series and multi-media project that engages children in the challenge and fun of math. Featuring the voices of Christopher Lloyd and Gilbert Gottfried, CYBERCHASE has become one of the most popular daily series on the PBS Kids lineup. FREEDOM: A HISTORY OF US, produced with Kunhardt Productions, is a miniseries based on Joy Hakim's award-winning books. Hosted by Katie Couric and featuring the voices of Meryl Streep, Morgan Freeman, Tom Hanks, Susan Sarandon, Angela Bassett, Reese Witherspoon, Paul Newman, and Anthony Hopkins, among others, this 16-part series captures history, from the Revolutionary War to the present, through the inspiring stories of human freedoms. WHAT'S UP?, a magazine series for teens, examines innovative ideas in fields including technology, manufacturing, and the environment. Thirteen ZOOM into Action is a weekly segment of ZOOM, a daily PBS series for kids 6-12, that features kids who are making a difference in their community. THE NEW NORMAL, a co-production with IN THE MIX, is a three-part series of documentaries that shows how teens are coping with the devastating effects of September 11. ETHICAL CHOICES is a series that uses Socratic dialogues to explore issues including bias, substance abuse, violence, social responsibility, and personal integrity.
For the community: Recent outreach programming has included live specials and documentaries tied to the national PBS series OUR GENES: OUR CHOICES, CLOSE TO HOME: MOYERS ON ADDICTION and ON OUR OWN TERMS: MOYERS ON DYING; and SCHOOL'S IN FOR SUMMER, a special with former NYC Education Chancellor Harold Levy.
For educators: Teacher professional development initiatives include THE INTERNET IN ACTION, a multi-part series profiling creative ways to use technology in the classroom; LEARNING SCIENCE THROUGH INQUIRY, a broadcast workshop series; PBS Teacherline, a Web-based project designed to promote change in math education;Insights into Algebra I, a video/Web project exploring new approaches to teaching Algebra I; PEACEFUL SOLUTIONS, a series that introduces middle and high school teachers to conflict resolution strategies; and THE EXPANDING CANON, a video/Web project about teaching multicultural literature.
CEP reviews treatments, proposals, pilot programs, and/or completed series submitted by independent producers or production companies with experience producing successful children's series. Properties should have an educational foundation.
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