PBS agrees to consider moving indie showcases after online outcry from filmmakers

In reaction to recent pressure from the indie film community following Current's story on PBS's move of Independent Lens and P.O.V. from Tuesdays to Thursdays, the network has agreed to consider shifting the indie showcases to another night, reports the New York Times. An open letter to PBS from Kartemquin Films now has several hundred signatories. And PBS Ombudsman Michael Getler weighed in on the controversy in his column Thursday (March 22). His concerns as a PBS viewer, he writes, "are two-fold. One is that the series not be marginalized if that is what the schedule change winds up doing. The other is that, at least at this stage, the current situation seems to fit a pattern that I sense of diminishing or less prominent public affairs programming distributed specifically by PBS in recent years."