American Public Television
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American Public Television (APT) is the largest of the television syndication distributors of programming for public television stations in the United States. It began in 1961 as the Eastern Educational Television Network and was the first distributor of shows such as The French Chef (with Julia Child), Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, and Washington Week in Review to the rest of what was then National Educational Television (not yet PBS). They introduced the unedited Monty Python's Flying Circus to American audiences in 1975 (ABC had run censored versions in late night previously), and brought The Three Tenors to public television audiences in 1991. The organization was known for a time as the American Program Service in the 1990s.
Shows regularly distributed by APT have included Deutsche Welle's European Journal, Globe Trekker (aka Pilot Guides in other countries), Nightly Business Report, and Rick Steves' Europe; as of March 22, 2005, the Nightly Business Report became a PBS offering; meanwhile, the series Uncommon Knowledge and World Business had recently left PBS to become APT-distributed programs.
In January, 2006, APT became the primary force behind a new public broadcasting network in the U.S., Create, which offers primarily crafts and travel programming from the APT, PBS and NETA libraries. In part this network fills a void left by the closure of PBS's subsidiary crafts, education and public-affairs network PBS YOU at the end of January, 2006. Many of Create's affiliates are PBS digital stations.
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