Over the past year and a half, public broadcasting and the late night comedy shows have formed an alliance. Some comedians hold fundraisers or advocate for public media on their shows. Public media then in turn hosts the comedians on their own shows and honors them by giving them awards. The latest development in this exercise in mutual liberal back-patting came on Thursday as ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel gave PBS an idea for a new tote bag.
On his Wednesday show, Kimmel reported how PBS’s Threads account has had to inform people that just because the Corporation for Public Broadcasting has shut down does not mean that PBS has ceased to exist. To that end, he played a satirical ad from PBS:
Masterpiece Theater, Sesame Street, News Hour, Austin City Limits, 22,000 hours and counting of Ken Burns footage. The show with people bringing [bleep] from their garage, and the one where white people find out they're black. PBS. Check your local listings. We're still here, bitch!
News Hour anchor Amna Nawaz approved and replied with “Nailed it” and a bullseye emoji, but the main PBS account suggested there could be new merchandise to be sold, “Shout out to @jimmykimmel for our new tote bag design,” followed by a picture of the PBS logo and the tagline “we’re still here, bitch.”
Of course, the tote bag is not real, but for a supposed news organization, PBS’s Threads account is devoid of any news content and instead full of various memes about how they are still here or what day of the week it is. Meanwhile, PBS’s X account has not tweeted since April 8, 2023, after their feud with Elon Musk. Now that PBS has lost its taxpayer money, if it wants to post silly memes on its social media accounts or partner with liberal comedians, that is its prerogative, but it should not expect to get that money back.
