Moyers, Winship encourage PBS to "reverse bad decision" of indie program shifts

In an essay on their Public Affairs Television website, veteran pubTV newsmen Bill Moyers and Michael Winship discuss the importance of the diverse voices on Independent Lens and P.O.V. to the PBS programming schedule. Since the network shifted the shows from Tuesdays to Thursdays, Independent Lens has suffered ratings and carriages losses. Moyers and Winship are encouraged that PBS has signaled it is willing to consider other timeslots for the programs, and that the network told the New York Times it is "fully committed to independent films and the diversity of content they provide.”

"That can quickly be demonstrated," the two write, "by reversing a bad decision and returning to a national core time slot the independent documentaries created — often at real financial sacrifice — by the producers and filmmakers whose own passion is to reveal life honestly and to make plain, for all to see, the realities of inequality and injustice in America."