TiVo, PBS Form Alliance to Promote 9/11 Commemorative Documentary
Reprinted from a TiVo/PBS press release:
PASADENA, Calif., July 26 /PRNewswire/ — The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and TiVo today announced an alliance that will allow the leading Digital Video Recorder (DVR) to promote PBS’s upcoming 9/11-related programming saluting the heroes, memorializing the departed and analyzing the Sept. 11 attacks and their aftermath to TiVo subscribers. The announcement was made at the Television Critics Association Press Tour.
The two organizations also said they are developing a groundbreaking six- month alliance to promote viewership on local PBS stations and ascertain the best ways emerging DVR applications can support public television programming.
As part of the announcement, TiVo subscribers will be able to view special highlights from PBS’s entire schedule of 9/11 programming and have the ability to timeshift programming to watch at their convenience.
PBS’s comprehensive schedule of 9/11 programming, to be called “We Remember,” will include FRONTLINE “Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero,” exploring how survivors, families and friends are coping with the difficult questions of good and evil; HEROES OF GROUND ZERO, capturing the shock, despair, determination, professionalism and hope of the firefighters in the weeks immediately following the attacks and later as they struggle to adjust to their own changed lives; and AMERICA REBUILDS, which examines the process of cleaning up Ground Zero and the engineering challenges faced by workers on the site.
PBS’s “We Remember” schedule will include a broad range of other news and public affairs programs, as well as several PBS KIDS programs, including specials from ARTHUR, READING RAINBOW and ZOOM. In addition, “We Remember” will offer interactive PBS.org Web sites including classroom curriculum connections and local PBS station links.
“We consider it an honor and a patriotic privilege to play a role in helping PBS and its local stations deliver these programs that will undoubtedly be a part of the entire country’s commemoration of this historic event,” said Morgan Guenther, TiVo President. “Our country has changed profoundly and permanently since the terrorist attacks last year. It will be important for us to take a hard look back at that terrible day with the guidance and public interest perspective of PBS.”
“PBS’s ‘We Remember’ programs will offer Americans unique perspectives on the many ways in which our country has changed since 9/11,” said Pat Mitchell, CEO and president of PBS. “In putting together a schedule of nearly two dozen programs focused on the events of last fall and their impact, we recognize the challenge this presents for active, engaged viewers to be available for all of it. But with this alliance with TiVo, we offer them additional opportunities to view the programs made available by their local public television stations.”
The TiVo announcement augments PBS’s ongoing digital programming strategy to work with major technology platforms to ensure public television content is made available to the broadest possible audience.