“Think of PBS as premium television on the honors system.”
PBS wants to be HBO but without forcing you to pay for an upfront subscription. As Federal funding continues to drop, and by asking for money “some of the time” from viewers, that makes freemium the broadcaster’s business model of choice.
The challenge of freemium is scale. You need a lot of members if you can only depend on 2-3% of them to pay for the entire service. That’s a tough racket for a niche programmer like PBS who won’t (and can’t) sell sex and violence like HBO.
The silver lining—and what they appear to be betting the farm on—are the baby boomers. There’s lots of them and they’re rich. And the older they get, the more the want sophisticated shows like Downton Abbey.
