The Public Broadcasting Laboratory (PBL) was a television program

Television program

A television program , also called television show, is a segment of content which is intended to be broadcast on television. It may be a one-time production or part of a periodically recurring series...

 broadcast in the United States, created on November 5, 1967 by National Educational Television

National Educational Television

National Educational Television was an American non-commercial educational public television network in the United States from May 16, 1954 to October 4, 1970...

 (NET). The program was considered a live Sunday-night magazine program.

History

The Public Broadcasting Laboratory had the financial backing of the Ford Foundation

Ford Foundation

The Ford Foundation is a private foundation incorporated in Michigan and based in New York City created to fund programs that were chartered in 1936 by Edsel Ford and Henry Ford....

 which put over $292 million into educational television

Educational television

Educational television is the use of television programs in the field of distance education. It may be in the form of individual television programs or dedicated specialty channels that is often associated with cable television in the United States as Public, educational, and government access ...

 programs included the Public Broadcasting Laboratory. PBL featured a two-hour program of news and other features aired on Sunday evenings.

The initial PBL program featured African American

African American

African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...

s with white-painted faces in a one-hour drama. Although this would be highly controversial today, the program simply confused and bored most viewers at the time.