But that doesn’t mean that the show is going to be hanging up its petticoats anytime soon. In fact, the show could be around for as many as six (!) more years, according to show creator Gareth Neame.

Mr. Neame told the Daily News he hopes to keep the show going for up to 10 seasons. “I think it is going to go on for a while,” he said. “Right now the show is still growing in the U.S. and it would be awful to think of the show ending.”

Somebody should probably let the actors know they'll be around for another six years, because at the rate this flimsy lot are succumbing to eclampsia and the Spanish flu it's not looking good.

While no contracts have been signed, Mr. Neame seems optimistic about the show's longevity. “I would rather let the show run between four and 10 years, I imagine,” Mr. Neame said at the BritWeek Downton Abbey Celebration in Santa Monica.

Christ, 10 seasons. That could mean decades worth of Downton. Think of all the possible plot turns: Mary's baby discovers the Beatles! Thomas gets gay-married! The Dowager Countess gets a Twitter account!

Just please, guys—stay safe. Stay away from cars. Be careful in the next few decades, especially the early 1940s. And for heaven's sake, watch your hands on that electric toaster.

Kevin Clash (Getty Images)

"I'm sorry that I keep talking about sex with you, its driving me insane."

"I want you to know that I love you and I will never hurt you. I'm here to protect you and make sure your dreams come true."

"I'll have my assistant book a ticket for you to come to NY and we can talk about this in person."

Mr. Clash released an official statement on the allegations:

"I am a gay man. I have never been ashamed of this or tried to hide it, but felt it was a personal and private matter. I had a relationship with the accuser. It was between two consenting adults and I am deeply saddened that he is trying to characterize it as something other than what it was. I am taking a break from Sesame Workshop to deal with this false and defamatory allegation."

Sesame Street Workshop also issued the following release:

"In June, the workshop heard from a 23-year-old man who claimed that he had "a relationship" with Clash beginning when he was 16 years old, the workshop said in a written statement. "We took the allegation very seriously and took immediate action. We met with the accuser twice and had repeated communications with him. We met with Kevin, who denied the accusation. We also conducted a thorough investigation and found the allegation of underage conduct to be unsubstantiated. Although this was a personal relationship unrelated to the workplace, our investigation did reveal that Kevin exercised poor judgment and violated company policy regarding internet usage and he was disciplined," the Sesame Street Workshop statement said.

"Kevin insists that the allegation of underage conduct is false and defamatory and he is taking actions to protect his reputation. We have granted him a leave of absence to do so.

"Elmo is bigger than any one person and will continue to be an integral part of Sesame Street to engage, educate and inspire children around the world, as it has for 40 years."

Dan Stevens and Michelle Dockery of 'Downton Abbey'

Though its hordes of U.S. fans are still waiting for the third season of Downton Abbey to begin airing on PBS, that season ended last night in the UK with 10.1 million viewers, according to Deadline, making it the show's highest-rated season yet for Brit broadcaster ITV.

The third season, costarring Shirley MacLaine, will begin January 6 in the U.S., and it will certainly not be the end of the Downton saga; as with the second season, there's a two-hour movie wrapping up loose ends after the season. And there may be even more, you Grantham gluttons--the Deadline report features creator Julian Fellowes saying he envisions at least a fourth season.

The Masterpiece franchise Downton Abbey has given PBS--perpetually under threat, not least by Presidential candidate Mitt Romney--a new lease on life. Longtime Masterpiece producer Rebecca Eaton, whose work to this point had been widely praised but never in recent memory as widely viewed across America, told The Observer in March that she eagerly awaited more Downton, but "We have to try to keep Julian Fellowes alive—we can’t just work him into the ground."

Julia Child, master chef (PBS)

Several weeks ago, PBS Digital Studios released a Bob Ross mashup called "Happy Little Clouds." It was the follow-up to the studio's Mister Rogers Auto-Tune smash hit, "Garden of Your Mind," and it was all sorts of wacky. What are you doing, PBS? Public Broadcasting isn't supposed to be hipster-cool!

But following the "If it's not broke, don't fix it," theorem, we now have a Julia Child remix, "Keep on Cooking." It's making us kind of hungry.

http://youtu.be/80ZrUI7RNfI

We just can't wait for the Masterpiece/Downtown Abbey Auto-Tune.

Bob Ross' 'Happy Little Clouds' (YouTube)

It's all for the LOLs, of course, but it's also ingenious viral marketing for a network that's biggest draw is a guy who paints "Happy Little Clouds."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=YLO7tCdBVrA

And in case you missed it, here's Mr. Rogers' "Garden of Your Mind":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFzXaFbxDcM&feature=relmfu

Mind-blowing, right? (Music courtesy of Symphony of Science's John D. Boswell.) This might be the best way yet for PBS to get donations from the under-30 set: we would totally PayPal the network a dollar for each new mashup they came out with.

"We see this mobile app as another way to distribute our content—public media needs to deliver content to every device and let people choose which way they want to interact with our programs and our projects," said Dan Greenberg, head of WNET’s Interactive Engagement Group. "We used to be a television company, now we’re a media company." The content from MetroFocus online--on the mobile and regular web--will build towards a series of specials on air this summer. "In the old model, we might have done a different way," said Mr. Greenberg, acknowledging that television content has traditionally driven web content for stations like WNET.

Can they save PBS?

Downton Abbey, the Masterpiece franchise about life at a stately British manor, began with the sinking of the Titanic; its recently-concluded second season took on the Great War and the influenza outbreak. It’s a series about people unaccustomed to change suddenly dealing with staggering new technological and sociological realities, those who have long enjoyed a privileged position scrambling to preserve their birthright.

Little wonder it’s on PBS.

The network, too, has been under assault, its powerful patrons once again debating whether to disinherit it altogether. In 2009, PBS President Paula Kerger claimed that the changing media landscape had led to “clearly the most challenging times that this industry has ever faced.” She hadn’t seen anything yet. Last February, the House voted to defund public radio and television. (The measure died in the Democratic-controlled Senate.) Then came the March 2011 “sting” undertaken by James O’Keefe against NPR, which resulted in the departure of NPR President Vivian Schiller and increased scrutiny of public broadcasting overall. In December 2011, GOP frontrunner Mitt Romney vowed that in his administration, “Big Bird is going to have advertisements.”

Thank goodness for Downton, the February season finale of which drew an average audience of 5.4 million, nearly a million more than the better-rated night of Kim Kardashian’s wedding and double the Mad Men finale. Meanwhile, the series has inspired a slew of fan Tumblrs and viewing parties and even a Saturday Night Live parody.

“We’ve had programs out of Masterpiece that have really captured the public’s eye going back through our history,” Ms. Kerger told The Observer. “Programs like The Six Wives of Henry VIII and Brideshead Revisited. This is very much like a Brideshead—a program that fits a lot of what we do on a regular basis but for a lot of the right reasons, just resonates.”

The Six Wives of Henry VIII ran on what was then called Masterpiece Theatre in 1972, and Brideshead Revisited in 1982. Back then, of course, most TV dials went up to 13 (if you don’t count UHF), and more than half the channels were snow. It was easier to break through. The network best known for Sesame Street, Antiques Roadshow, and respected-if-not-loved shows like Frontline and NewsHour hasn’t had this kind of cultural currency in 30 years. Can Downton rebuild the fractured PBS audience—or is it just postponing the inevitable?

“We have to try to keep Julian Fellowes alive—we can’t just work him into the ground,” exclaimed Rebecca Eaton, executive producer of Masterpiece. She was referring to the Oscar-winning screenwriter whose plan for the project got PBS to jump in as coproducer. (Downton Abbey airs in the U.K. on the commercial network ITV—which explains how your web-savvy neighbors pirated the second season long before you watched it.) While Downton was intended as a miniseries, its success was irresistible; the third season, with Shirley MacLaine, is to air in the U.S. in January 2013, and more may follow.
What made this project work when others (ahem, the new Upstairs, Downstairs) disappeared without a trace?

“If I knew that, I would do it again really fast,” Ms. Eaton said. “It is a little bit of black magic.”

Ms. Eaton said that the success of Downton has influenced what will air on future Masterpiece installments only incidentally: “It’s affected the decision-making process of my colleagues in England, so there are more long-running miniseries being commissioned than before.” (PBS serves as a coproducer, but does not independently produce any Masterpiece programs.) “But it isn’t an either-or for Masterpiece, because our stock-in-trade has always been adaptations of classic books. We will always do those.” Next up is an adaptation of Great Expectations (are we ready for “Team Estella” and “Team Pip”?).

As edifying and high-minded as it may be, Masterpiece is also a money-maker. It originated in 1971 under a sponsorship with Mobil, which continued for 33 years. This year, Viking River Cruises, a travel company, signed on to sponsor Downton Abbey’s second season and the rest of the Masterpiece slate in 2012, though its ads do not interrupt the broadcast and avoid the FCC-prohibited “call-to-action.” They don’t tell you, exactly, to go on a cruise.

“They knew what they were doing,” Ms. Eaton said, noting that it was clear by then that Downton was on fire. “They did the calculus and knew that this was going to be a tremendous opportunity for that company. It was very shrewd.”
Ms. Eaton said  she doubted whether PBS would have sprung for the coproduction had the defunding occurred in early 2011. “At the time we made the deal for Downton one, we had no corporate sponsor. All of our money came from PBS.”

Actually, the defunding would have taken effect before the series’ second season, we reminded her, by which time PBS would have had the infusion of corporate cash to fund the production.

The reply was terse. “Yep.”

PBS’s argument for its continued existence is the fact that it does fundamentally different work than any other television outlet. “British costume drama hasn’t been particularly appealing to network broadcasters in recent memory,” Ms. Eaton said of Downton, citing HBO as the only possible outlet for similar programming and noting that without PBS, “It’s unlikely Downton would have been seen in this country.” Ms. Kerger noted the instructive example of the onetime highbrow channels that now air Ice Road Truckers, Intervention, The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, and American Chopper: “The latest is History, but if you look at A&E, if you look at Bravo, if you look at some of the work of Discovery, the commercial networks start with higher intentions, but the market is going to take you down a different path.” (She didn’t mention Ovation or Trio; she didn’t have to.)

Interestingly, and perhaps tragically, PBS pioneered many of the most lucrative TV genres. Julia Child’s The French Chef was among the first cooking shows, and now we have two networks devoted to the format. An American Family created the template for reality. Sesame Street laid the groundwork for Nickelodeon. This Old House begat HGTV.

More recently, Downton-adjacent programming like the documentary Secrets of the Manor House indicate PBS may finally be learning to strike while the iron is hot.

Ms. Kerger cited Showtime’s Homeland as the sort of contemporary drama that would do well on PBS, but it would have made for an odd fit. Perhaps the flukiest thing about Downton’s success is how perfectly the show meshes with the PBS brand; by staying in its own lane, PBS got a win that required no pivoting, no rebranding, no stooping.

The great temptation, then—and the risk—is taking Downton’s success as a sign that PBS’s longstanding strategy will continue to work. “This is what we do week in and week out, so we have a built-in audience who was there, cheering that along and watching every minute of it,” Ms. Eaton said of Downton. Nonetheless, many of Downton fans hadn’t been regular PBS viewers since kindergarten. Viewers have tuned in for sex and death and gossip and big hats, and there’s no way of knowing if they’ll hang around. “We have another season of Sherlock that looks really great,” Ms. Kerger said. “That’ll be out later this spring, and I’m hoping some of the Downton audience will stick with that.”

Perhaps the greatest boon to PBS has been on the web side: Dan Greenberg, head of WNET’s Interactive Engagement Group in New York, noted that the show has been “an incredible generator for traffic,” adding, “We’ve seen an increase in donations and membership, and an extreme level of user-generated content.” For all the fustiness of its setting, Downton Abbey’s helped draw attention to the fact that PBS streams all its shows online—where a pledge is just a few clicks away. And PBS isn’t concerned about eating its own Nielsen’s lunch by making material available on the internet. “It used to be that ‘We have to make them watch on air,’ Mr. Greenberg said, “but now we have to supply them with content so they can watch the way they want.”

PBS is actually not a network. Like NPR, it’s a system of local member stations, which receive the majority of the federal government’s investment in the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (which stands at $445 million in the most recent budget). All PBS programming is produced or licensed through one of its local affiliates, which get a great deal more leeway than your average NBC or ABC station. Most innovation, then, will happen at the local level. New York’s WNET recently launched “MetroFocus,” an online newsmagazine that will eventually transition to the air—after it becomes a smartphone app that serves up news on-the-fly.

Meanwhile, although AOL might not be most networks’ idea of an perfect business partner, Ms. Kerger has joined forces with Tim Armstrong to jointly promote Makers, an online interview series that will go to air in first-quarter 2013.

As to the danger of defunding, David Boaz, executive vice president of the Cato Institute, has been arguing for for years that the government should get out of the broadcast business; he declared PBS a “public menace” in a New York Post editorial last June. “I don’t know any reason why PBS couldn’t be a nonprofit network that relied on foundational giving to a slightly greater degree than they do,” he said. Claiming that the federal government provides only 15 percent of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s annual budget, he added, “Do you know how many households have lost 15 percent of their income? And some of them have survived.” (In fiscal year 2009, PBS and its member stations derived 21.9% of their budget from federal funding.)

It’s not hard to imagine a future for PBS as a nonprofit that keeps the brand intact—drawing in donations and corporate partnerships—while innovating on the margins. What WNET President Neal Shapiro, whose career began in commercial television, calls “the work of the angels” could fall slightly to earth without going to hell in a handbasket. Then again, perpetual war has long meant perpetual success for PBS: “Last year, when there was a move to defund PBS, our viewers were mobilized—they sent donations, they called Capitol Hill,” Mr. Shapiro said.

But Mr. Boaz highly doubts that a post-federal-funding future will come to pass, no matter who is elected: “PBS and NPR audiences are the most influential in America,” he admitted. “There may be a lot of waitresses out there who’d rather have Randy Travis subsidized, but they’re not making decisions.”

Meanwhile, Mr. Boaz is thoroughly enjoying Downton Abbey. “I must say Lord Grantham is just as perfect and judicious and generous and metes out justice and equity to every person,” he said. “I can’t help but admire him—I just marvel at how noble he is.”

Ms. Kerger, PBS’s President, prefers the youngest daughter: “I love Lady Sybil. I think she’s amazing. I think that she is a woman that is trying to forge her own way.”

daddario@observer.com

Christiane Amanpour (Getty Images)

Attendees at AOL and PBS’s recent joint “Makers Lunch” at AOL Studios in the Village posed in front of a bank of monitors featuring images of Katie Couric, Condoleezza Rice, Sandra Day O’Connor, and other famous femmes. They were celebrating the launch of Makers.com, a site that features video interviews with a number of lady machers who broke through glass ceilings of all sorts; once all the videos are uploaded over the course of the year, the full complement is to include Google’s Marissa Mayer, Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg, conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly, and fashion blogger (and high schooler) Tavi Gevinson.

The videos are building to a TV documentary intended to air on PBS in the first quarter of 2013. As PBS President Paula Kerger told The Transom, “The way we’ll define success is if we’re able to generate significant traffic to the site.” She said that PBS had been looking for an opportunity to partner with AOL for a long time: “There can be a nice alignment between corporations and nonprofits.”

Per AOL CEO Tim Armstrong, both AOL and PBS had been pitched separately on the Makers series by its producers, and both bit. A meeting in Washington between Mr. Armstrong and Ms. Kerger forged the partnership by which PBS and AOL’s sites will both host some content and promote it in their own ways. PBS will send the programming through broadband to classrooms, and its flagship station in Washington will issue grants to local affiliates to promote Makers in local communities. AOL is to place content on Patch and the Huffington Post; Mr. Armstrong said that he had met with all AOL editors to discuss how to further promote Makers, and Maureen Sullivan, SVP of Brand for AOL, told the assembled crowd that the videos had been “tagged with a layer of metadata” for viewers looking for inspiration. (Tags include “work-life balance” and “imperfection.”)

Would we end up seeing Mr. Armstrong’s celebrity-blogger partner on Makers? “Arianna would be [a Maker], clearly. And so would Pat Mitchell and Susan Lyne on our board.” But? “We agreed a year and a half ago that no employees of AOL, PBS, or Unilever can be on the list." Unilever's included because the Makers series is sponsored by a soap for women with sensitive skin.

The only Maker we spotted in attendance was Christiane Amanpour, until recently of ABC News’s This Week. When the makers of Makerspresented the crowd a quick excerpt of Barbara Walters’s interview about her own trailblazing, Ms. Amanpour pointed and laughed (though not exactly in a derisive way)—and left promptly, before the meal-ending hot chocolate was served.

Ms. Maclaine will be playing the proud American mom to ex-pat Lady Cora (Elizabeth McGovern) on season 3. (This visit will not go over well with Dame Maggie Smith's Lady Grantham, we're sure.)
This news was accompanied by rumors that other stateside cameos might be in the works, so we made several educated guesses as to which American actors could hold their own against the upstairs/downstairs scheming of the McGovern household.

Click through to see our choices, and right in your own candidates in the comments!

(With help Andrew Belonsky.)

A real Hamm's Hamm

Of course, you'll never know where Jon Hamm might pop up next...like on a PBS Kid's cartoon, perhaps?

On February 20th, set your DVRs for Martha Speaks, an animated series about a talking dog who loves words, which will feature Mr. Hamm and Ms. Westfeldt in their cartoon debut. If you just can't wait until then to get your daily dose of Hamm, check out these preview clips below for the episode, titled "Cora! Cora! Cora!"

"Ham Johnson" (Jon Hamm) talking about his love for his deep passion for vocabulary calendars:

Ham falls for Cleopatra (Jennifer Westfeldt):

It's almost sad that soon Mr. Hamm will be back full-time playing Don Draper, a man who has probably never seen a cartoon in his life (unless it was selling Lucky Strikes).