American Public Television (APT) is an American nonprofit organization and syndicator of programming for public television stations in the United States. It distributes public television programs nationwide for PBS member stations and independent educational stations, as well as the Create and World television networks.
History
Eastern Educational Network
APT was founded in 1961 when it was incorporated as the Eastern Educational Network (EEN). At first, EEN was a regional cooperative that began to exchange programs between a few of its member stations. EEN was one of the first distributors of shows such as The French Chef (with Julia Child) in 1962, The company gained national attention when EEN's IPS subsidiary begin distributing The Nightly Business Report when it went nationwide in 1981. The organization became American Program Service (APS) in 1992.
With the digital roll-out, APT became the distributor of a couple of multicast networks. In January 2006, APT started distributing Create. They later began distributing World on July 1, 2009.
Programming services
- APT Exchange (originally the Free Library) was a service in which the company acts a clearing house for pre-funded programs that are offered free of charge to stations started in 1978. Rick Steves' Europe (starting in 2000), Nightly Business Report, and America's Test Kitchen are offered through this service.