I'll always have a soft spot for PBS. I know why people don't like them or find them useless, the debate recently revived by the dissolution of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and I'm not interested in the political waters of the thing. I just know that sometimes, I tune into PBS Create and watch a man I've never heard of talk about how neat Salvador Dali's home in Cadaques, Spain is for a half hour, and I like that. I like that it's calm, low-budget, and informational. PBS is also one of the few outlets for British media in the US. My Welsh girlfriend got me into Red Dwarf on my last visit over there, and PBS has traditionally been the only place you could see it on TV in the States, despite its success in the UK.
But that's only half the reason I felt such a pull towards restoring WVIA's site, after someone named oecreativearc suggested it in our Discord. WVIA-TV is actually my local PBS affiliate, and WVIA-FM our local NPR outlet. Licensed to Scranton (only an hour's drive from here), WVIA is first and foremost a Northeastern Pennsylvania channel, even sharing the same antenna only a county over from me as our ABC affiliate WNEP. Understandably, a lot of the focus here goes towards restoring the really big sites of the time, or stuff like retrogaming that appeals to a large chunk of Protoweb's audience, but I was pretty stoked to be able to contribute something so local to me to Protoweb for people to peek around.
wvia.org was in excellent shape. I feel like this site mirrors how I feel about PBS as a whole--it's a lot of plain text and images, maximally informational on niche topics even if the presentation is kinda boring, and as a wordy, boring, niche person, I appreciate that. Of the site, you can see the fantastic hair and mustaches on the then-station staff, check out some to-the-minute detailed old program listings for both the TV and radio halves of WVIA (and yes, you will find Red Dwarf in there, often overnight, and I so wonder what episodes they were airing), look through the programs the station was producing on everything from eclectic jazz mixes to a show all about that newfangled Internet thing, and even read about WVIA's videoconferencing services, long before remote was an everyday part of education.
Perhaps at some point I'll take on the big PBS site of the time, but this should be plenty for now. If anything, seeing that list of station sponsors, filled with local businesses I've seen around all my life and even worked for, made this the far more personally interesting trip for me. Hopefully you find it a little interesting as well. Enjoy, everyone!