PBS has pulled “Finding Your Roots.” I’m guessing they didn’t like all the lousy publicity that they received over the seeming “cover-up” of Ben Affleck’s ancestry. So Season Three is ending before it gets started. That’s too bad, for over all, it was a good program.
The following teaser is from an article written by Sarah Kaplan, published in the June 25, 2015 edition of the Washington Post:
When Ben Affleck volunteered to be featured on the PBS genealogy program “Finding Your Roots” last year, he was hoping to find “the roots of his family’s interest in social justice.”
Researchers did turn up plenty for the actor-cum-activist to be pleased about: a mother who was a member of the Freedom Riders, an ancestor who fought in the Revolutionary War.
But they also found Benjamin Cole, a great-great-great grandparent on his mother’s side…
An attempt to cover up that unwanted detail has led PBS to suspend the show, citing Affleck’s “improper influence” on programming.
“Finding Your Roots,” which was due to start its third season, is a typically PBS show. Executive produced by Harvard historian Henry Louis Gates Jr., it’s understated, bookish, set to a gentle soundtrack of twanging acoustic guitars and lightly probing in a way that’s neither too harsh nor provocative…
