American Program Service
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| Non-profit | |
| Industry | Public television |
| Founded | 1961 |
| Headquarters | Boston, Massachusetts, United States |
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Area served
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Worldwide |
| Website | APTonline.org |
American Public Television (APT) is the largest syndicator of programming for public television stations in the United States. APT continues to distribute a wide variety of public television programs nationally, as well as administering the Create and World channels on public TV.
APT began in 1961 when it was incorporated as the Eastern Educational Television Network (EEN). At first, EEN was a regional cooperative that began to exchange programs between a couple of its member stations. EEN was one of the first distributors of shows such as The French Chef (with Julia Child) in 1963,Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, and Washington Week in Review on a national basis.
Another first from EEN was the distribution of Newsfront, America's first live and non-commercial daily news program, starting in 1970. EEN introduced Wall Street Week in November 1970 before PBS began distributing it nationwide in January 1972. EEN also began importing BBC and CBC productions to America in 1974, with Monty Python's Flying Circus as one of them. In 1978, the EEN started the Free Library.
In 1980, Eastern Educational started the Syndication Service and was renamed Interregional Program Service (IPS). IPS started the Premium Service in 1989. The organization became American Program Service in 1992.
American Program Service was renamed American Public Television (APT) in 1999. Also, with many fax requests from international outlets, an international division called APT Worldwide was started.
With the digital rollout, APT became the distributor of a couple of multicast networks. In January 2006, APT started distributing Create. The nonprofit company started distributing World in 2010.
APT also owns two digital subchannel networks together with WGBH and WNET.ORG:
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