People may differ in their viewpoints on the quality or perspective of PBS programming in recent years, but there’s no denying that it has produced a lot of memorable series that many viewers enjoyed and which did have an intent to inform and/or educate the populace, including children.
Some of these shows ran for decades and therefore might not be on DVD box sets. For instance NOVA has aired since 1974. I’ve already noticed that some of the children’s series like The Puzzle Place are considered partially lost media due to being “copyright abandonware” (the original IP holder temporarily licensed it to public broadcasting but then went bankrupt, leaving the rights essentially in limbo).
With Paramount having obliterated all of its Daily Show archive from the website, it’s probably only a matter of time before something similar happens to those PBS series that are viewable in streaming format. Is there an effort under way to 1) download whatever can be saved to disk from their streaming video site, and/or 2) dispatch whatever else (reels, tapes, etc) is collecting dust in the vaults distributed among the various public broadcasters, to some kind of preservation service / museum (maybe outside the US?) before it gets sold off or thrown away?