When I went home to Gainesville, FL for the holiday, I realized how lucky I was to grow up in a town with only 3 television stations. Firstly because stations 1 and 2 really stunk (TV-20, an abc affiliate, and Channel-51 which only turned to a Fox affiliate when I was in middle-school, around Simpsons season 3 or 4) and secondly because WUFT, the University of Florida PBS station, was so freaking terrific. I watched it all the time. I think 78% of all my knowledge came from my formative years glued in front of all the programming there.

Gainesville actually has at least two PBS signals now. WUFT, which has the normal stuff, and PBSyou, which has instructional "tele-classroom" shows (like cooking with Julia Child, lots of Language courses, and the odd guy in a workshop using a router).

Anyway, over the break I watched quite a bit. Most notable were the last episode of NOW with Bill Moyers and some great reports by Frontline. Click on some of the stuff here, as most are viewable online in full or by segment.

For Moyers'retirement episode he dutifully relcaimed the aesthetic and philosophy for what a true journalist should be, and slammed/condemned the heads of the New Conservative Media. He also had a great interview with director of the ACLU, Anthony Romero.

Frontline was also great. And I'd like to point you to some really good episodes. Last week "Is Wal-Mart Hurting America?" (answer pretty obvious) and the week before, The Persuaders (which is mostly about advertizing and subtle marketing strategies, but winds up its thesis also slamming the media tactics used by the Neo Cons and democrats alike - very cool).

Tonight should prove a good PBS night as well. NOVA has a good looking show called "Our elegant Universe" all about Gerry's favorite thing, String Theory. I'd normally have to set the VCR, as I'll be watching Life Aquatic tonight, but, looks like PBS is doing well to have this show online, too.