Before PBS

Reading Robert Lloyd’s story about how public television [“PBS and Its Grand Ambitions,” July 16] was created in 1967 as “a rebuke to free-market television” because the latter was depriving families of “a concert hall, a museum, a university, a forum,” I was reminded of some of the schlock shows we peons of a certain age had to suffer through in front of our 19-inch screens when only three or four crassly commercial networks ruled.

To name a few: Leonard Bernstein’s “Young People’s Concerts,” Alistair Cooke’s “Omnibus,” “Playhouse 90,” Rod Serling’s “The Twilight Zone,” David Susskind’s “Open End.”

Nothing, of course, that could ever compare with all the feel-good tributes to over-the-hill rock groups lionized on PBS specials these numbing nights, complete with intrusive, very long pledge breaks desperately seeking more membership dollars from free-market discontents.

David Lewis

Piedmont