Talk:List of Frontline (American TV program) episodes

Topics

I think this list would be more useful if it were subdivided into topical sections. In particular I want to create a section for Iraq War stories. George100 07:08, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

The current topic list is completely arbitrary and not used by Frontline itself, I plan on fixing it Vedder110 (talk) 02:53, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

I agree. The topics are limited and also can often be subjective. Breaking up the episodes into a small number of somewhat subjective topics significantly limits the utility of this page for users wanting to research past episodes. Enquire (talk) 09:23, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

American Porn

I'm watching a PBS Frontline show called 'American Porn'. I can't find reference to this. It was stated to be 'banned' though, so maybe this is an 'aired on tv' list? Piepants 02:51, 25 February 2007 (UTC)Piepants

USSR/Russia

There are a lot of episodes about the USA and about China. How about listing some about the USSR/Russia? Borock (talk) 01:07, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Hugo Chavez

what about The Hugo Chavez show? it's a Frontline episode that aired in November. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/hugochavez/view/ is the pbs webpage.--66.253.145.149 (talk) 09:13, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

Links

I think it would be a good idea for links within the descriptions to the equivalent Wikipedia article. For example "The Secret File on J. Edgar Hoover – The career and secrets of J. Edgar Hoover are explored. (Feb. 9, 1993)" instead of "The Secret File on J. Edgar Hoover – The career and secrets of J. Edgar Hoover are explored. (Feb. 9, 1993)". Some articles already have this but it would be nice if they all did. 17.103.182.211 (talk) 00:33, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

I agree. It's not particularly interesting if Wikipedia doesn't provide something not found at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/.

On a similar note, many of the present descriptions have been copied from the official sites with no indication that it's a quote (apart from the copyvio/plagiarism, in a few cases the tone is inappropriate for Wikipedia). I'll chop these descriptions. —Mrwojo (talk) 06:00, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Many of the episodes are available on Youtube. Is it acceptable to include links to Youtube in these cases? Or is there a copyright violation issue? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Enquire (talk • contribs) 09:30, 21 April 2011

Per WP:ELNEVER, it's acceptable if and only if the video is provided by a source that has the rights to do so (i.e., PBS's channel on YouTube) However, it seems that all of the videos they've provided on YouTube are also available on the PBS.org links that are already in the article. —Mrwojo (talk) 00:43, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Sorting

What would you say to the idea of me putting the content into a sortable table default chrono sorted? Anna Frodesiak (talk) 07:19, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

Okay. No objections I see. I think I will. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 06:46, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

 Done Please mop up any mistakes I've missed. Hope this is an improvement. Nothing lost and more gained, I think. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 18:38, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

The Suicide Plan, Poor Kids and The Undertaking should be part of season 30, according to the numbering that accompanied them in the Tivo guide. e.g. That makes Raising Adam Lanza episode 3106. Darr247 (talk) 20:00, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

Nobody ever replied to that or fixed it, so I've gone ahead and prepended proper episode numbers to the section titled Season 29 (source http://www.tvguide.com/tvshows/frontline/episodes-season-29/191522/ ). I'll continue adding them in a few days as long as there's no uproar about it. :) Darr247 (talk) 00:53, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

Hmmmm... should I instead just (or is it even possible to) prepend another column to the tables for seasons 15 on, and add the episode numbers there, like they are in seasons 1 through 14? Darr247 (talk) 00:59, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

Afghan resource

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/opium-brides/

99.190.86.5 (talk) 04:17, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Added, thank you. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 04:27, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Bosnia war wikilink

Wikilink Bosnia war as it is generally not known outside Europe, per wp:Audience. 108.195.137.232 (talk) 01:37, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

It's possible, but it's a quasi-quote, which means that we have to have convincing evidence that their "Bosnia war" is ours. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 02:16, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

Miscellaneous

Added new episodes page looked to be un-managed for almost 6 months. Lbparker40 (talk) 02:33, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

POV Edit for "Cliffhanger"

This is intended to explain my rationale for making a recent POV edit.

The description for Season 31's episode "Cliffhanger" used to read: "A look at the manufactured debt crisis in United States". I looked at the transcript for the episode, and nowhere does the term "manufacture" or "manufactured" come up. The old description could be interpreted as a crisis fabricated by the GOP, and this interpretation does not seem to be supported by the transcript.

In an attempt to make it POV neutral, I changed the description to more closely reflect what is written on PBS Frontline's website, which states: "As the nation faces yet another round of fiscal crises, FRONTLINE investigates the inside history of how Washington has failed to solve the country’s problems of debt and deficit." I shortened this for the description on the Wiki page: "The inside history of how Washington has failed to solve the country’s problems of debt and deficit". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.52.241.222 (talk) 00:19, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

Thank you to the people who have contributed to this list

Thanks very much to the people who contributed to this article. It's really an excellent service. Softlavender (talk) 08:16, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

Episode Descriptions

If anybody wants to fill out the blank spots in the table, especially the episode descriptions, this should help: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/programs/ Nicolás Macri (talk) 04:28, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

In case others are planning on updating to a better format

Feel free to use User:Anna Frodesiak/Orange sandbox. User:Darrel M is already working on it. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 07:34, 21 September 2018 (UTC)

Done. I'm deleting the Orange sandbox. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 22:52, 21 September 2018 (UTC)

Requested move 25 September 2018

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: pages moved. wbm1058 (talk) 18:30, 5 October 2018 (UTC)

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• List of Frontline (PBS) episodes → List of Frontline (U.S. TV program) episodes
• List of Frontline episodes → List of Frontline (Australian TV series) episodes

– Leaving aside the issue of the incomplete split at List of Frontline (PBS) episodes, these are all either incorrectly, or incompletely, disambiguated under WP:NCTV – please see the list articles section of NCTV. This proposal moves them to the correct, or necessary, disambiguation under WP:NCTV. Meanwhile, List of Frontline episodes will likely need to be turned into a WP:DABPAGE. --IJBall (contribs • talk) 14:19, 25 September 2018 (UTC)

• Support per nom and NCTV. --Gonnym (talk) 14:46, 25 September 2018 (UTC)
• Support - Sure, sounds good, fine, yep, dandy, okee dokee, indeed, good plan. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 19:50, 25 September 2018 (UTC)
• Support per WP:NCTV. -- Alex^TW 03:52, 30 September 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose first three which are much better known as PBS episodes than as "U.S. TV program" episodes. PBS is also more WP:PRECISE and WP:CONCISE. Not sure what the intent of the NCTV guideline is, but in this case I call WP:IAR - these three moves would not be an improvement to WP in any way that I can see; they would be a detriment. But the last (Australian) one is ambiguous, and so I support that one. --В²C ☎ 18:38, 2 October 2018 (UTC)
  • You're wrong – "by network" disambiguation has been been deprecated under NCTV, because it is not WP:RECOGNIZABLE to many readers (in this case, especially non-U.S. readers). Second, even if you did "by network" disambiguation, it should be List of Frontline (PBS TV program) episodes not List of Frontline (PBS) episodes – the latter is just wrong, wrong, wrong. Finally, the base article is at Frontline (U.S. TV program), so it makes no sense to have the LoE articles disambiguated an entirely different way! WP:IAR is supposed to benefit the readers – your proposal doesn't. --IJBall (contribs • talk) 23:19, 2 October 2018 (UTC)
    • The notion of making titles recognizable to those who are unfamiliar with the topic is silly, practically impossible in most cases, and not the norm. Don't believe me? Click on SPECIAL:RANDOM a few dozen times and keep track of how many topics you recognize from the titles alone out of the total number you click. So in terms of making a topic recognizable from its title, we only need to be concerned with those who are familiar with the topic. And anyone familiar with the the show Frontline will also be familiar with PBS, so that's not an issue. In fact, I would argue "Frontline (U.S. TV Program)" is less recognizable to someone familiar with the program than is the far more definitive Frontline (PBS). NCTV guidance on this may make sense in many if not most cases, but here it is misguided. --В²C ☎ 23:38, 3 October 2018 (UTC)
      • This encyclopedia is for a general audience, not a U.S. or UK one only. You also ignore that even among Americans, many do not know what network they are watching at any particular time. (And, again, even the way you disambiguate by network is incorrect – it would be "Frontline (PBS TV program)" under NCTV, not "Frontline (PBS)" ("PBS, what?!...).) But, regardless of what your feelings are, WP:TV had very legitimate reasons for deprecating disambiguating by "TV network", and the List of Episode articles should follow the same disambiguation scheme as the base article, both by WP:NCTV, and as per common sense. --IJBall (contribs • talk) 00:59, 4 October 2018 (UTC)
• Note that with the elimination of the two subpages, and the withdrawl of the WP:RM attempt at Frontline (U.S. TV program), it's more clear than ever that there is consensus, and guideline support, for moving these articles as proposed. --IJBall (contribs • talk) 16:41, 5 October 2018 (UTC)

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The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Mismatched Episode Numbers

Episode numbers of later seasons differ substantially from [1]. Why? --Traal (talk) 04:22, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

Episode numbers are also listed here: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/ (If you click on the each episode). They vary from episodes here: https://www.pbs.org/show/frontline/episodes/season/2014/ . Also Episode titles vary, typically on the episodes with multiple stories. I have been putting the one type as production code and the other as episode number. Season breaks are also affected.Adent1 (talk) 03:55, 11 February 2020 (UTC)

External links

I notice in Season 37 that the titles are external links. That doesn't seem right. Should we remove those? --David Tornheim (talk) 00:04, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

Changed feb 2 2010 digital nation episode from 60 minutes to the correct number of minutes which is 90 minutes.

Changed feb 2 2010 digital nation episode from 60 minutes to the correct number of minutes which is 90 minutes. You can see the evidence at this URL. The program lasts for one hour and 25 minutes, which is 90 minutes when broadcast on television with commercials and Leadins and post commercials. Please maintain this correction.

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/documentary/digitalnation/ 69.244.59.214 (talk) 14:20, 3 June 2023 (UTC)

-a. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.244.59.214 (talk) 14:21, 3 June 2023 (UTC)

Current Season listings are a mess

Multiple sources (Frontline Web Page, PBS Streaming App, IMDB) give different episode and season numbers - which don't really match up with existing entries in the wikipedia entry. I did my best to continue season 42 based off the PBS Frontline website... but it seems that the last few "seasons" are kind of arbitrary in terms of Episode Number, What Season They Belong To, etc. All that I can be sure about is the length, summary, subjects, and first air date!

Maybe someone can sort this out down the line... Dtolman (talk) 18:24, 22 October 2024 (UTC)