Appraising Public Television Programs: Toward an Interpretive and Comparative Evaluation Model

Public television programs are clearly unique from those produced for commercial broadcast. However, unique appraisal guidelines for evaluating public television programs do not exist for archivists. Critical in developing an appraisal model for such programs is an understanding of the history of public broadcasting in the United States, the politics underlying that history, and the entities responsible for the production of public television programs. Past and current appraisal theories also inform the criteria used in the author's appraisal model for public television programs, the application of which is demonstrated for four different types of public television programs.