A transmedia project—driven by a four-part television series—that will explore the interdependent and interwoven infrastructure networks that link America together. The focus will be on agriculture, manufacturing, energy and transportation. The series will visually dramatize these connections through an innovative use of CGI, aerial photography and satellite imagery. Each episode will introduce the men and women who maintain these fragile systems, which, we will see, can be rendered dysfunctional by man-made or natural disasters.
CPB and PBS provided an R&D grant through the Program Challenge Fund to test hosts and writers for the series. The selected host, Yul Kwon, was the winner of the CBS reality show Survivor and is the son of Korean American immigrants. He is deputy chief of Consumer and Governmental Affairs for the Federal Communications Commission.
The interactive Web platform will include the series as short films, exclusive Web-only video and photography, behind-the-scenes footage, an interactive map of America, a mobile mapping application, archival material from the Library of Congress and National Archives, user-generated content and other features. Social media tools will be used to promote the series to a broad audience and drive traffic to the website.
The project will also be supported by standards-based educational materials on science, technology, geography and social studies. In addition, television footage will be modularized for classroom use. The target users for the education components are middle school and high school educators and students.
America Revealed has the potential to become an ongoing weekly series with significant audience reach and impact.
- Produced by
- Public Broadcasting Service (for the benefit of Lion Television, London, UK)
- Arlington, VA
- Total CPB Investment
- $2,500,000
- Made possible by CPB's
- Television Programming Grant