PBS Idea Channel

Submission 15,848

About

PBS Idea Channel is a YouTube video blog featuring weekly discussions about various aspects of popular culture, technology and digital art. The series is hosted by Mike Rugnetta and produced by the video production studio Kornhaber Brown in affiliation with the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS).

History

The project was launched in collaboration between Mike Rugnetta, Andrew Kornhaber and Eric Brown, all three of whom had previously worked together on the Know Your Meme web series, after they were approached by PBS.^[7] The YouTube channel^[3] for the series was created on February 17th, 2012, followed by the premiere of the pilot episode on March 14th. Titled "Super Mario Brothers Is The World's Greatest Piece Of Surrealist Art," the episode delves into the aesthetics of Nintendo's Super Mario Bros. in the context of surrealist art.

In its beginning, PBS Idea Channel ran on a bimonthly production schedule, but in early June, the series started releasing a new episode every week. On June 15th, New Media Rockstars^[7] ran a profile article about the series and the backstory behind how the project came to be. On July 3rd, National Film Society released an interview episode with the host Mike Rugnetta (shown below) and on July 10th, The Daily Dot^[11] highlighted the blog in an article titled "How YouTube is revolutionizing education." On April 11th, 2013, Mike Rugnetta appeared in an episode of the NPR interview program Ask Me Another.^[10]

Reception

Since its debut in March 2012, PBS Idea Channel has published 42 episodes, each spanning between five to eight minutes in length and covering a wide range of hot topics and issues in the realms of pop culture and social media. As of April 2013, the YouTube channel gained more than 8.8 million views and 221,600 subscribers, the latter of which exceeds that of its parent channel PBS. In April 2013, PBS Idea Channel won two Webby Awards^[6] for Best Editing and Best Web Personality categories.

Notable Episodes

Some of more frequently explored subject topics in the series range from pop culture fandom (Vocaloid, Community, Doctor Who) and social media ecology (Twitter, Facebook, Kickstarter) to emerging technologies (Holograms, BitCoin, Kinect) and digital arts (GIF, Dubstep, Mashups). For more episodes, check out the video gallery.