PBS has launched a new video portal containing loads of clips and full-length episodes of many of its shows.

The News Hour with Jim Lehrer, NOVA, Antiques Roadshow, and other PBS programs all have their own pages on the site, where users can view a variety of video in the organization's own custom player. You can also browse by topic to find video about culture, science, or history, for example.

As with the PBS shows you watch on TV, there aren’t commercial interruptions, but rather, corporate sponsors that are mentioned at the start of each clip. Additionally, the player includes options to share the video on social sites like Facebook and Digg, though it just seems to post a link as opposed to the video itself. There’s also no embedding option.







The network is touting the ability for local PBS stations to use the site to bring their content to PBS’ web viewers. While it’s not immediately apparent where this fits into the site, the organization says in a statement that the site “will provide increased opportunities for local producers to be discovered by national audiences.”

Overall, the PBS video portal is a good start, and should help with one of the organization’s main needs – fundraising - as each video has a “buy it” link, in addition to other prompts to donate around the site. PBS already has a fairly good YouTube channel that includes options its own site doesn’t yet offer – like embedding – but ultimately it will be beneficial for the organization to have its own portal to drive viewers towards.