:@ you have not answered my question "what did Franklin mean by "Patriot" in 1773?" did he mean a supporter of the Good Old Cause, or did he mean something else? Instead you write "I think the misunderstanding is that PBS assumes that the word patriot has only positive connotations." Whether at the time people use the term patriot to mean a supported of the Good Old Cause or something else, its usage today implies someone who supports their nation, and if it is to be used before the UDI, then what does it mean as (the nation did not exist)?
@ your argument "The British colonists had made North America their country" is I think flawed unless you think that Virginians somehow changed from being patriots to rebels between the 1770s and the 1860s. Surly in both cases they were either rebels or patriots, unless one is using the terms inconsistently. If they were rebels in the 1860 then why not use the term for the 1770s as well? Luckily one can usually substitute the word "Confederate" for "rebel" so this is not usually a POV issue for civil war articles (but using the word patriot in an article has POV connotations). For example in the main body of the text the first use of the term Patriot is in the sentence "The landing of this tea was resisted in all the colonies and, when the royal governor of Massachusetts refused to send back the tea ships in Boston, Patriot mobs destroyed the tea chests". In what way were the mobs patriotic? Even the phrase "rebellious mobs" would not be accurate. "anti-tax mobs" would be more accurate, but it is probably better just to drop the adjective completely from in front of mobs.