Forum Network
Free online lectures: Explore a world of ideas
The WPBT Forum Network is presented as part of a new partnership with PBS and NPR, with generous funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The Forum Network service provides an online, on-demand archive of audio and video lectures given by some of the world's foremost scholars, authors, artists, scientists, policy-makers and community leaders. These lecture events are hosted by cultural and educational organizations in Florida and across the nation. The Forum Network online lecture library currently includes over 2500 video and audio files, produced by participating public broadcast stations throughout the Country. Through the Forum Network, audiences in Florida and across the world can now listen and watch these lecture events online. We encourage audiences to browse our featured, new, and popular lectures. Explore all lectures by Topics, Series, Partners, and Speakers. To provide our viewers with added information, lectures are further augmented with speaker biographies, related lectures and books, captions and transcripts, and downloadable audio. About WPBT Public Broadcasting WPBT/Channel 2 began in November of 1953 when the Community Television Foundation of South Florida, Inc. was formed as a nonprofit organization with the mission of raising funds for the establishment and operation of Florida's first noncommercial television station. On August 12, 1955, Channel 2 went on the air without a penny of tax money having been spent. There was no budget, no income, no paid staff and even the station's transmitter and antenna had been donated. Today, with a signal reach from the Treasure Coast to Key West, Channel 2 attracts an audience of over one million households each week, and consistently ranks as one of the 10 most-watched public television stations in the country. The station has come a long way from its humble origins in the 1950s. It continues to demonstrate its worth to the South Florida region by providing quality content to educate, enlighten, inspire and entertain. Each week, it provides a program schedule as diverse as its audience - thirty-seven hours of children's programming; Nightly Business Report, Frontline, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, The McLaughlin Group and Wall Street Week with FORTUNE make up only a small portion of the more than thirty hours of news and public affairs programs; seven hours of nature and science programs; thirteen hours of how-to programming; thirteen hours of British comedies; twenty hours of award-winning commercial-free films; domestic and international dramas including the signature series ExxonMobil Masterpiece Theatre and Mystery!; independent documentaries; and the best in classical and popular performances including Great Performances, Live from Lincoln Center, The Metropolitan Opera Presents, and specials like Carreras, Domingo and Pavarotti in Concert.