Tavis Smiley (TV series)

Broadcast history

The program, a 30-minute interview series, brought in well-known figures from entertainment, sports, politics, and literature to discuss their lives and current events. It was a joint production of The Smiley Group, Inc. and New York’s WNET, with Wal-Mart as a major funder. For its first eight seasons, the show taped at KCET’s studios, which was the West Coast’s flagship PBS station until it left the network in December 2010, after which KOCE-TV took over that role. In January 2011, WNET assumed production, and some episodes were recorded at its Lincoln Center facility in New York City, though the show continued using KCET’s space for the rest of season eight. Season nine premiered on January 19, 2012, in a new studio at Encompass Digital Media Studios near downtown Los Angeles, and the series kept taping in both New York and Los Angeles. On December 13, 2017, PBS halted distribution of the show indefinitely following an investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct. Smiley was accused of having sexual relationships with multiple staff members and of fostering a verbally abusive and threatening work environment. Six days later, on December 19, 2017, PBS and the BBC announced that the program would be replaced by simulcasts of BBC News shows Beyond 100 Days and World News Today, which started airing on PBS on January 2, 2018.