AMERICAN EXPERIENCE, GBH’s award-winning history docuseries, kicked off its 37th season with a suite of new digital content — beginning in February — as well as a collection of beloved documentaries from the series’ archives, airing through the summer. Incorporated into the new powerhouse GBH Documentary Unit alongside celebrated programs FRONTLINE and NOVA and led by Editor-in-Chief, Raney Aronson-Rath, AMERICAN EXPERIENCE has been reimagined with contemporized storytelling and a renewed commitment to “fight for facts,” she says. The series is adopting a model of multi-episode deep dives into a single topic, rather than one-off documentaries on a subject. While the format of the series is changing, AMERICAN EXPERIENCE’s mission is the same as ever.
“There is this whole ecosystem of dis- and mis-information. Every day, we see history being rewritten, facts and figures dispensed with — usually with an agenda behind it,” says Aronson-Rath. “We’re here to say, ‘Fair, fact-based history is alive, and we should look back at it to understand our present day.’ That’s a tradition AMERICAN EXPERIENCE has kept through all the decades of its existence, and will continue.”
Central to the GBH Documentary Unit’s work is to “contemporize how we tell stories,” she says. There’s never been more content across the media landscape — much of it neither as edifying nor rigorous as the programming of AMERICAN EXPERIENCE, NOVA, and FRONTLINE. As such, breaking through the noise requires big, tentpole subjects as well as a comprehensive digital strategy.
“We’re going short and long at the same time,” Aronson-Rath says. The plan is to combine long-form, multi-part documentary films (available on TV, streaming, and AMERICAN EXPERIENCE’s YouTube channel) with steady creation of short-form content on social media channels, including the recently launched AMERICAN EXPERIENCE TikTok channel, to spark engagement. “It’s part of the strategy I’ve learned [as Editor-in-Chief and Executive Producer of FRONTLINE]. You can’t sit back and wait for people to watch your films. You have to meet them where they are, and that means being on platforms that, traditionally, PBS shows were not on. Our content has to be available everywhere people are, reaching them on their mobile phones, TV’s, all the way to the movie theater.”
Under her leadership of FRONTLINE, the acclaimed current events documentary series has deepened its reputation for outstanding documentary journalism (earning a 2024 Academy Award® for Best Documentary Feature Film) while branching out into digital platforms with significant success. Moving forward with GBH’s Documentary Unit, she intends to bring a similar approach to NOVA and AMERICAN EXPERIENCE’s content. “It starts with considering how I consume media, how my parents consume media, and importantly, how my teenage children consume media,” she says. “Taking that approach — from teenagers all the way to people my parents’ age — we have a strategy that covers all generations.”
Aronson-Rath is quick to point out how well historical content — short- and long-form — performs on streaming as well as social media. Moreover, “documentaries” are among the top search terms for young people on YouTube. The hunger for these kinds of stories is substantial, she notes, and AMERICAN EXPERIENCE’s digital reinvention will help provide it with a strong foothold in this media ecosystem.
The first of these new AMERICAN EXPERIENCE long-form episodes will focus on the life and legacy of the embattled aviator Charles Lindbergh. Equal parts complicated and compelling, the resonance of his story with present day America was hard to ignore, says Aronson-Rath. “We’re not just telling the story of his flight, but looking at his views that could best be described as ‘America First’ and isolationist views, when those started to take hold, and the implications they had in his life.”
With ten additional ideas in early development, the AMERICAN EXPERIENCE team will continue divining our nation’s history in search of new stories and new ways to broadcast them. The same is true of GBH’s entire Documentary Unit, with all three units working under the same roof to produce programming greater than the sum of their parts.
“I think of it as a triple lens. FRONTLINE covers current events. NOVA focuses on science, which involves the future. and AMERICAN EXPERIENCE specializes in history,” Aronson-Rath says. “So the Documentary Unit tells stories about where we’ve been, where we are, and where we’re going.”
The idea of the GBH Documentary Unit, Aronson-Rath says, was conceived by GBH President and CEO Susan Goldberg. At the heart of it is the notion that the three national programs can be stronger together. “We can think together editorially, grow our audiences together, learn from each other’s publication methods, and eventually, collaborate on cross-platform work,” says Aronson-Rath.
AMERICAN EXPERIENCE is an intellectual endeavor. We’re constantly making sure there’s academic research and historical records that give us a real foothold in saying something new and interesting about the topics that we’re exploring.Raney Aronson-Rath, GBH Documentary Unit Editor-in-Chief
The storytelling possibilities are as numerous as they are exciting. From the development of AI to the Iran War to the decades-long efforts to address climate change, there is no shortage of subjects that simultaneously have scientific, historical, and geopolitical components. “In my experience with the AMERICAN EXPERIENCE and NOVA teams, they are, [like the FRONTLINE team], all journalists in their own way. We all follow the same standards and practices, we’re all nonpartisan. So I think we’ll be really compatible partners and collaborators,” adds Aronson-Rath.
As for why documentaries are best equipped to tackle such intricate issues, Aronson-Rath credits their capacity to explore nuanced ideas in an even-handed manner. “I’ve found there’s no better form than a short- or long-form documentary to explore really complex ideas,” she says. “Whether it’s geopolitical issues on FRONTLINE, historical events for AMERICAN EXPERIENCE, or scientific concepts on NOVA, if you’re telling it right it ought to be complicated, expansive, and informative.
“That’s what our audiences expect from us — deeply considered, thoroughly researched, fact-based storytelling they can trust — and that’s my number one goal to deliver every day when I wake up.”
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Viewers can watch AMERICAN EXPERIENCE new digital content on YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram, including documentaries and a series of archival interviews with iconic people, and short-form videos marking America’s 250th anniversary. Full episodes of AMERICAN EXPERIENCE are available to stream on GBH 2, PBS.org, the PBS app, and YouTube.
For the program’s 37th season, a series of beloved encore documentaries will be broadcast and streaming, starting with Seabiscuit. On Tuesday, June 9, Woodstock will be available, followed by two AMERICAN EXPERIENCE presidential biographies: George H.W. Bush in June, and JFK in July.
