Rail Passengers Supports ‘Wild Travels’ TV

By Jim Mathews / President & CEO

The third season of the Emmy award-winning PBS travel show Wild Travels kicks off next Tuesday, and your Association will be featured at the beginning of every episode this season!

Soon there will be thousands of broadcasts all around the country of our promotional spot, and we’re encouraging all of our members and supporters to check out this warm and funny show, either on PBS next week or on the PBS-owned CREATE TV network channel beginning August 24th.

If you haven’t yet seen Wild Travels, you’re in for a real treat. In each episode, host Will Clinger goes off the beaten path to find the quirkiest, most unusual, and delightful corners of the United States – the kind of travel passenger-rail often makes possible. Go look at this clip and be amazed by Pierogi Fest, or the restaurant that specializes in throwing rolls at its diners, or – my personal favorite – tackle football played on unicycles.

“While most travel shows go abroad for their content, Wild Travels finds treasure in the roadsides across the USA,” the show’s website declares. “Whether it's the Rattlesnake Roundup in Sweetwater, Texas or the World Beard & Mustache Championship in Portland, Oregon, our program tirelessly celebrates the off-kilter groups, the obsessive collectors and hobbyists, and the decidedly odd jobbers that make America so crazily unique–it's a wild ride.”

It's also great fun!

The show’s producer and creator, Harvey Moshman, reached out to me more than a year ago about this partnership and shared his own rail roots during our conversation. It was clear that this connection would make sense for both of us, and I couldn’t be more glad that it worked out.

Unlike the commercial networks, PBS has an unusual scheduling model. Each local affiliate can decide independently when to run shows on their individual stations. That means we at the Association have no way to tell you when and where Wild Travels will air where you live. Harvey says the best way to determine air dates & times is to go to www.pbs.org and navigate to a particular local station website. Once there, search ‘WILD TRAVELS.’

Here in DC, WETA will start airing Season 3 with our promotional message on Tuesday, August 9, at 3 p.m., and then daily at 3 p.m. after that for six weeks of daily episodes.

“The exception to the PBS-scheduling situation is when ‘Wild Travels’ runs on the PBS-owned CREATE channel,” Harvey says, a more traditional network model in which shows are broadcast at the same time everywhere.

Beginning August 24, weekly on Wednesdays at 10:30am, 5:30pm & 10:30pm ET (3x a day) ‘Wild Travels’ will run across the entire CREATE TV network in addition to the PBS station main channels.

Here’s a great way to introduce your friends and family to our work. Watch the show, share it with friends and family, and let them know that one of the best ways to see and experience all the quirky goodness of this country is to use passenger rail to go off the beaten path. And it probably doesn’t hurt to call your local PBS station after you’ve watched the show and tell them you want more!