American Experience (sometimes abbreviated
AmEx) is a
television programA television program , television programme , or television show is a segment of content broadcast on television...
airing on the
PBSThe Public Broadcasting Service is an American non-profit public broadcasting television service with 354 member TV stations in the United States which hold collective ownership. However, its operations are largely funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting...
network in the
United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. The program airs
documentariesDocumentary film is a broad category of visual expressions that is based on the attempt, in one fashion or another, to "document" reality. Although "documentary film" originally referred to movies shot on film stock, it has subsequently expanded to include video and digital productions that can...
, many of which have won
awardAn award is something given to a person or a group of people to recognize excellence in a certain field; a certificate of excellence. Awards are often signifiedby trophies, titles, certificates, commemorative plaques, medals, badges, pins, or ribbons...
s, about important or interesting events and people in
American historyThe first known inhabitants of what is now the United States are believed to have arrived over a period of several thousand years beginning sometime prior to 15,000–50,000 years ago by crossing Beringia into Alaska...
. A trademark of the series is its ability to take lesser-known events in history, such as the history of
Coney IslandConey Island is a peninsula, formerly an island, in southernmost Brooklyn, New York City, USA, with a beach on the Atlantic Ocean. The neighborhood of the same name is a community of 60,000 people in the western part of the peninsula, with Seagate to its west; Brighton Beach and Manhattan Beach to...
or
TupperwareTupperware is the name of a home products line that includes preparation, storage, and serving products for the kitchen and home, which were first introduced to the public in 1946....
, and expand on the topic, showing how that event reflected larger, more important themes in American culture or society.
The series premiered on October 4, 1988, and was originally titled
The American Experience, although the "The" was dropped during a later brand and image update.
American Experience (sometimes abbreviated
AmEx) is a
television programA television program , television programme , or television show is a segment of content broadcast on television...
airing on the
PBSThe Public Broadcasting Service is an American non-profit public broadcasting television service with 354 member TV stations in the United States which hold collective ownership. However, its operations are largely funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting...
network in the
United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. The program airs
documentariesDocumentary film is a broad category of visual expressions that is based on the attempt, in one fashion or another, to "document" reality. Although "documentary film" originally referred to movies shot on film stock, it has subsequently expanded to include video and digital productions that can...
, many of which have won
awardAn award is something given to a person or a group of people to recognize excellence in a certain field; a certificate of excellence. Awards are often signifiedby trophies, titles, certificates, commemorative plaques, medals, badges, pins, or ribbons...
s, about important or interesting events and people in
American historyThe first known inhabitants of what is now the United States are believed to have arrived over a period of several thousand years beginning sometime prior to 15,000–50,000 years ago by crossing Beringia into Alaska...
. A trademark of the series is its ability to take lesser-known events in history, such as the history of
Coney IslandConey Island is a peninsula, formerly an island, in southernmost Brooklyn, New York City, USA, with a beach on the Atlantic Ocean. The neighborhood of the same name is a community of 60,000 people in the western part of the peninsula, with Seagate to its west; Brighton Beach and Manhattan Beach to...
or
TupperwareTupperware is the name of a home products line that includes preparation, storage, and serving products for the kitchen and home, which were first introduced to the public in 1946....
, and expand on the topic, showing how that event reflected larger, more important themes in American culture or society.
The series premiered on October 4, 1988, and was originally titled
The American Experience, although the "The" was dropped during a later brand and image update. The show has had a presence on the
InternetThe Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standardized Internet Protocol Suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
since 1995, and more than 100
American Experience programs are accompanied by their own
websiteA website is a collection of related web pages, images, videos or other digital assets that are addressed with a common domain name or IP address in an Internet Protocol-based network...
s, which have more background information on the subjects covered. The show is produced primarily by
WGBHWGBH is a non-commercial television and radio broadcast service located in Boston, Massachusetts. WGBH is a member station of the Public Broadcasting Service, and has produced many programs for the network, including nearly a third of PBS's national primetime programming...
in Boston, Massachusetts, though occasionally in the early seasons of the show, it was co-produced by other PBS stations such as
WNETWNET, channel 13 , is a non-commercial television station licensed to Newark, New Jersey. With its signal covering the three-state New York metropolitan area, WNET is a flagship station of the Public Broadcasting Service and a primary provider of PBS programming...
in New York and
KCETKCET is the PBS member-television station in Los Angeles, California. It is one of four PBS member stations serving Greater Los Angeles, the others being KVCR-TV, KOCE-TV, and KLCS. Broadcasting on channel 28, the studio is located at 4401 West Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood...
in Los Angeles.
The documentaries are extensively
researchResearch can be defined to be search for knowledge or any systematic investigation to establish facts. The primary purpose for applied research is discovering, interpreting, and the development of methods and systems for the advancement of human knowledge on a wide variety of scientific matters of...
ed, often taking years to complete. Some programs now considered part of the
American Experience collection were produced prior to the creation of the series.
Vietnam: A Television History was one of them, airing in 1983 after taking six years to assemble. Also, in 2006,
American Experience rebroadcast
Eyes on the PrizeEyes on the Prize is a 14-hour documentary series about the African-American Civil Rights Movement. The series was produced in two-stages: Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years 1954–1964 consists of the first six episodes covering the time period between the Brown v. Board decision and...
: America's Civil Rights Years, the first half of the award-winning 1986 documentary about the
African AmericanAfrican Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have origins in any of the black populations of Africa. In the United States, the terms are generally used for Americans with at least partial Sub-Saharan African ancestry...
civil rights movements of the 1950s and 1960s.
External links