PBS Logo History

PBS is Victor Daniel's Favorite Logo.

## National Educational Television

NET (National Educational Television) was a former major educational and public TV network, founded in early 1952 and incorporated in November of that year. Among their original affiliates were WNET New York, KCET Los Angeles, WGBH Boston, WQED Pittsburgh, WETA Washington D.C., and various others. Originating from The Educational Television and Radio Center from 1952-1959, and later The National Educational Television and Radio Center from 1959 to 1962, when the radio portion was dropped. It was succeeded by PBS in 1970, due to the Corporation of Public Broadcasting and the Ford Foundation pulling its funding. It merged with WNDT to become the Educational Broadcasting Corporation, the parent company of WNET, in 1972.

### 1952-1955

This logo consists of the typewriter letters "NET", each in a segmented rounded square, on a white map of the U.S. inside a black circle on a white background, with what looks like an antenna on the map. "NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL TELEVISION" and "EDUCATIONAL TELEVISION AND RADIO CENTER" are shown above and below, respectively, in very small print.

### 1955-1959

This logo has a white circle with a black "NET" inside it.

### 1956-1961

We see a close-up of the letters "N", "E", and "T", each in a black box, positioned along the coast of California on a gray background. The camera zooms away from the letters, revealing a complete map of America, with a white line along the West Coast and Northernmost states. The boxes shoot to the right, revealing "National", "Educational", and "Television". Then, the text fades into the words "EDUCATIONAL TELEVISION AND RADIO CENTER".

### 1958

On a black background, we see gray text that reads "ETV". In the middle, we see white letters that say "NET". (the one seen here is actually the inverted variant)

### 1958-19??

On a carpet like background, the words NET appear in multicolored boxes across on a white line.

### 1959-1961

we see an early version of the NET House logo, which is a black house with the words "NET" inside and an antenna in the roof.

### 1959/1961-1966/1970

The words "NET" with the "T" connecting to a roof that hangs over the "N" and "E", with an antenna sticking out of the roof, making the N look pretty squished.

### 1963/1966-1967/1968

    On a black screen, several dots flash near the center of the screen (a la the Screen Gems “Dancing Sticks” logo, or like YouTube dots while a video is buffering), and then we see a circle being drawn in the counter-clockwise direction. A line is drawn through the circle going downwards, which quickly vanishes. A small fire can be seen starting within the circle. Another line is drawn through the center of the circle from left to right. Two lines similar to a Worldvision-like globe are drawn. Another pair, closer to the circle are drawn, like that of the first lines, and then two horizontal lines above the first horizontal line. The camera zooms backwards and we see a thick line (the top of the "T") being drawn under the ball of fire, which later connects to the ball of fire. A vertical line (the beginning of the "N") is then formed. The "T" then finishes, and then the diagonal part of the "N" appears. Lastly, the "E" is formed. The fire continues blazing until we fade out.

### 1967/1968-1970

This color variation of the 1961 "house" logo first appeared in 1967. NET ceased network operations on October 4, 1970, with PBS taking over the following day, though WNET continued to produce some shows for the national PBS schedule with the NET branding until about 1972.

### 1970-1972

Although NET had ceased operations in 1970, programs that still carried the NET branding used this logo. It was never used as a network identifier logo.

## Public Broadcasting Service

The Public Broadcasting Service, known on air as PBS, is a publicly funded non-profit distribution service (founded on November 3, 1969) that serves a variety of television stations in the United States, as well as some areas of Mexico and Canada. PBS replaced its predecessor NET in October 5, 1970 with some of their original affiliates being KPBS in San Diego, WNET in New York, WGBH in Boston, and KCET in Los Angeles. PBS has over 350 affiliates today, mostly owned by educational institutions.

### 1969/1970-1971

On October 5, 1970, National Educational Television was replaced by the Public Broadcasting Service. The first logo consisted of the words stacked up on top of each other, with “PUBLIC” in red, “BROADCASTING” in yellow, and “SERVICE” in blue.

### 1971-1984/1985; 2000

This logo premiered in 1971. It was designed by the late Herb Lubalin who also designed the accompanying typeface ITC Avant Garde Gothic. The "P" resembles a human head (nicknamed the "P-Head" by many fans) while the "B" and "S" are more overtly geometric. The nickname for this is the "Tri-Colored Everyman P-Heads". The logo was still used on new episodes of PBS shows until 1985. The colors were changed as well. PBS Digital Studios brought back this logo (sans the company name underneath) in 2014 with the introduction of its new logo which includes the Tri-Colored letters, and was used until 2019 when the new PBS logo was introduced.

### 1984-1998/1999

Chermayeff & Geismar designed a modified version of the "P-Head" from the previous logo and placed it in a forward-facing position and added two additional facial outlines on the edge, one in negative space and one in positive space. The font used for the "PBS" identification was designed specifically for the network. The logo is also used on PBS Home Video. It aired on September 30, 1984 as the channel was shortened to the **PBS** abbreviation.

### 1998-2019/2020

#### 1998-2002

In 1998, the "P-Head" logo was placed in a black circle, with the "P-Head" now being colored white (black in this image).

#### 2002-2010; 2009-2020

    In 2002, the logo was redesigned so that the P-Head circle appears bigger than the text. This wordmark uses the font Caecilia 75 Heavy instead of Lubalin Graph Demi. Sometimes, the circle is 3D. Even though this logo was replaced by the next logo in November 2019, This logo is still being used on some platforms like the Samsung Smart TV, and it's still being used at the end of some of PBS' shows like *Firing Line*, *Motorweek*, and *To the Contrary*as of May 2020.

### 2019-present

    To coincide with the 50th anniversary of its founding, a new logo for PBS designed by Lippincott was unveiled on November 4, 2019. The P-Head design has been slightly modified, with rounder edges around the nose, and a new custom font, named PBS Sans, for the wordmark was used. The previous icon is still used for PBS NewsHour, and on most affiliates such as KOCE, which is branded as PBS SoCal.