PBS prepares to celebrate 50th anniversary, orders more ‘ Daniel Tiger’
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — PBS renewed “Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood,” produced by the Pittsburghbased Fred Rogers Productions, for a 20- episode fifth season that will begin rolling out episodes in summer 2020.
Topics will include managing sibling rivalry, maintaining calm at mealtime, missing loved ones, coping with accidents and growing up.
The week of Sept. 16, five new episodes of “DTN” roll out as part of the show’s “family week” with episodes themed to family issues, including jealousy over a sibling’s birthday party.
Fred Rogers Productions’ “Odd Squad” will return for its third season in winter 2020, including an episode set in Pittsburgh that will film scenes locally later this week.
A new animated version of “Clifford the Big Red Dog,” a co- production with Amazon Studios, premieres Dec. 7 with an emphasis on literacy, imaginative play and socialemotional skills.
“Xavier Riddle and the Secret Museum,” an animated program aimed at children ages 4 to 7, debuts Nov. 11 and introduces children to historical figures ( Marie Curie, Harriet Tubman, Alexander Hamilton, Maya Angelou, Amelia Earhart, Jackie Robinson) and the character virtues that helped each of them succeed.
“This is not a series about history,” said co- creator and executive producer Brad Meltzer at the PBS portion of the Television Critics Association summer 2019 press tour. “It’s a series about character. It’s a series about values.”
PBS president Paula Kerger, who has led the public broadcaster since 2006 and will continue in that role for another five years, said education will continue to be at the heart of PBS’s mission as it celebrates 50 years of broadcasting beginning this winter and continuing through 2020.
That anniversary comes as streaming services move into traditional PBS territory already encroached upon by cable outlets, particularly natural history programming that has started to crop up on Netflix.
“Are we blind to what everyone else is doing? Absolutely not,” Ms. Kerger said. “I’d like to give ourselves a little credit that we have helped to create an appetite for that programming. … I also think it inspires us to look harder for the stories they’re not picking up, and we’re in it for the long haul. We will continue to be in the natural history space when some who are in it now decide there is another genre that will be [ more] appealing to them.”
PBS’s additional announcements include:
• Season six of “Finding Your Roots With Henry Louis Gates, Jr.” debuts at 8 p. m. Oct. 8 ( with
episodes airing in October and then in January and October 2020) tracing the ancestry of Pittsburgh native Jeff Goldblum ( in January 2020), Sterling K. Brown, Melissa McCarthy, Gayle King, RuPaul Charles, Sigourney Weaver, Eric Stonestreet, Terry Gross, Nancy Pelosi and Jordan Peele among others.
• PBS secured carriage for its member stations, including Pittsburgh’s WQED- TV, on YouTube TV’s live TV and on- demand subscription service.
• The three- part natural history series “Prehistoric Road Trip” explores science, culture and history in the Western U. S. for airing in summer 2020.
• “Asian Americans,” premiering in May 2020, explores the fastest- growing racial/ ethnic group in the United States.
• “American Masters” celebrates entertainer Rita Moreno in a documentary slated for broadcast in 2020.
• The two- part “American Experience” documentary “W,” debuting next spring, explores the life and presidency of George W. Bush.
Nat Geo searches for Earhart
National Geographic Explorer- at- Large Bob Ballard, best known for his 1985 discovery of the Titanic shipwreck, must have a pretty good line on the wreck of Amelia Earhart’s plane because Nat Geo is mounting an expedition that begins Aug. 7 in the South Pacific with plans for a two- hour TV special, “Expedition Amelia,” to air Oct. 20.
“I don’t want to jinx anything, but I think we have a real shot at rewriting history, by solving one of the greatest mysteries of our time,” Ballard said at a Nat Geo Channel press conference last week. “We’re really fortunate to have had several other expeditions that went ahead of us, that are helping us guide this one.”
Ballard said two independent elements of the expedition will kick off in August, one looking for evidence of Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, on an island and another team looking for Earhart’s airplane, which Ballard thinks may be located on the side of an underwater mountain.
Kept/ canceled
TNT renewed “Animal Kingdom” for season five.
TV Land will bring back “Younger” for a seventh season.
CBS canceled “The Code” after one season.
National Geographic Channel canceled hybrid drama/ documentary series “Mars” after two seasons.
Netflix canceled Kiefer Sutherland’s “Designated Survivor” and animated comedy “Tuca & Bertie.”
Channel surfing
Green Tree native Zachary Quinto (“NOS4A2”) will be among the celebrity guests on a new season of the revived “Running Wild With Bear Grylls” ( Nov. 5) on National Geographic Channel. … The documentary film “Science Fair,” featuring Carnegie Mellon University computer science student Abraham Riedel- Mishaan, which was originally announced to air in May on National Geographic Channel, will now debut at an unannounced future date on upcoming streaming service Disney+ under the Nat
Geo banner.
Post- Gazette TV writer Rob Owen is attending the Television Critics Association summer press tour. Follow RobOwen TV at Twitter or on Facebook. You can reach Rob at 412- 263- 2582 or rowen@ post- gazette. com.