Divinity Atlas

Sacred Correspondences
Articles

A New Name for a Network Built on an Old Promise of Pluralism

article

Citation Formats

General Reference

APA Style

BibTeX

Learn More
A New Name for a Network Built on an Old Promise of Pluralism

On September 24, 2014, eight years after its first broadcast, Shalom TV renamed itself the Jewish Broadcasting Service, a change that marked less a shift in mission than an attempt to describe the network more plainly. The new name, and the JBS abbreviation that came with it, positioned the channel explicitly alongside PBS in a way its own founder, Rabbi Mark Golub, had already been describing informally for years: a nonprofit, donor funded broadcaster built to educate and connect a whole community rather than sell to it.

Distribution grew steadily through the years around the rename. The network reached Comcast subscribers starting in 2008, expanded to Roku in 2012, added DIRECTV in 2016, Verizon Fios in 2017 and Charter Spectrum between 2018 and 2023, and joined Xfinity in 2020, each addition widening a reach its own reporting put at more than forty million homes across North America by the mid 2020s. Programming grew alongside distribution, adding live coverage of services from Manhattan's Central Synagogue, Hebrew instruction through From the Aleph Bet, and children's programming through Shalom Kids, alongside Golub's own long running L'Chayim.

Golub died in January 2023, having led the network from its earliest development through nearly two decades on the air. Rabbi Justin Pines succeeded him as CEO in February 2024, taking over a network whose most recent original production, the 2025 documentary Blind Spot on campus antisemitism, showed it continuing to produce the kind of current, community facing programming Golub had built the channel to deliver from the start.

Cross-Tradition Connections

Article On

Sources
JBS, Your Source for Engaging Jewish Content (Jewish Broadcasting Service)
Jewish Education in Media, Inc, doing business as JBS Jewish Broadcasting ServiceView the Source
Jewish Broadcasting Service (Wikipedia)
Wikimedia FoundationView the Source
Comments (0)
No comments yet. Be the first to share a thought.
Reader Challenges (0 open reader challenges)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.

View At A Past Year

The atlas records no dated fact of its own for this entry, so there is no other year to choose.