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50 free PBS trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
For more than half a century, PBS has been the place where American children met their first favourite characters and where their parents settled in for British dramas, cooking lessons and long documentaries. Few networks have left so many shared memories with so little advertising. This quiz covers both halves of the schedule. The PBS Kids questions range over Sesame Street, Arthur, Barney & Friends, Reading Rainbow, The Magic School Bus and the newer cartoons, with their heroes, pets, voices and theme tunes. The rest asks about the network itself: how it began, who paid for it, the stations that make its shows, and the presenters, painters, cooks and filmmakers who became household names there. It is written for families, classrooms and anyone who grew up with public television. The early questions suit younger players, the later ones reward grown-up fans, and every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which future Academy Award winner played Easy Reader on the 1970s PBS series The Electric Company?
Morgan Freeman
Morgan Freeman stayed for all six seasons, also playing a disc jockey called Mel Mounds and a vampire who was obsessed with eating vegetables.
Q 02Which rock drummer played Mr. Conductor in the first season of PBS's Shining Time Station?
Ringo Starr
Ringo Starr handed the part to comedian George Carlin after one season. The series wrapped American stories around clips of the British show Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends.
Q 03Which Muppet was orange during the first season of Sesame Street before turning the green that viewers know?
Oscar the Grouch
Oscar the Grouch changed colour for the second season. Grouch is his species as well as his mood, and his pet is a worm named Slimey.
Q 04Which children's TV host's 1969 Senate testimony helped save $20 million in public broadcasting funding?
Fred Rogers
Fred Rogers spoke for about six minutes, and his calm delivery won over the sceptical subcommittee chairman, Senator John Pastore, after the White House had proposed halving the money.
Q 05Which soft-spoken artist finished a landscape in each half-hour episode of PBS's The Joy of Painting?
Bob Ross
Bob Ross spent twenty years in the US Air Force and rose to master sergeant. Tired of being the man who shouted orders, he decided never to raise his voice again once he left.
Q 06What kind of animal is Arthur Read, the eight-year-old hero of Marc Brown's books and PBS Kids cartoon?
Aardvark
An aardvark, Arthur began as a bedtime story that Marc Brown invented for his son Tolon. The cartoon went on to run for 25 seasons.
Q 07Which Star Trek: The Next Generation actor hosted the PBS children's series Reading Rainbow for 23 years?
LeVar Burton
LeVar Burton was already known as Kunta Kinte in Roots when the show began in 1983. As its host and executive producer he collected 12 Daytime Emmys and a Peabody Award.
Q 08Which Sesame Street character did Mitt Romney name in a 2012 debate as he vowed to cut PBS's subsidy?
Big Bird
Big Bird, who stands eight feet two inches tall, soon turned up in a satirical Obama campaign advert that mocked the remark.
Q 09Which cookbook author hosted The French Chef, made by Boston's public television station from 1963?
Julia Child
Julia Child got the series after a one-off appearance to promote her book Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Her first regular episode showed viewers how to make boeuf bourguignon.
Q 10What does the S stand for in PBS, the American public television network founded in 1969?
Service
Service completes the name Public Broadcasting Service. PBS has no central production arm of its own, so every show comes from a member station or an outside producer.
Q 11Which bow-tied former Boeing engineer hosted a 1990s science show made by Seattle PBS station KCTS?
Bill Nye
Bill Nye worked on the 747 airliner before he left engineering for sketch comedy. His show, Bill Nye the Science Guy, was nominated for 23 Emmy Awards and won 19.
Q 12Which teacher, voiced by Lily Tomlin, leads the science field trips in PBS's The Magic School Bus?
Ms. Frizzle
Ms. Frizzle reached television in 1994, when The Magic School Bus became the first fully animated series that PBS had ever aired.
Q 13What kind of dinosaur is Barney, the purple star of the PBS children's series Barney & Friends?
Tyrannosaurus
A Tyrannosaurus, though a huggable purple and green one, Barney was created by Sheryl Leach of Dallas, Texas. His young friend Baby Bop is a Triceratops.
Q 21Which PBS series, based on a BBC original, has experts value heirlooms brought in by their owners?
Antiques Roadshow
Antiques Roadshow reached PBS in 1997, eighteen years after the British original began, and for its first two decades it was taped indoors in convention centres and ballrooms.
Q 22Which premium cable channel became the first-run home of new Sesame Street episodes in January 2016?
HBO
HBO won first-run rights under a five-year deal announced in August 2015, a response to sweeping changes in the media business, and the series went on airing on PBS as well.
Q 23Which US president signed the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, the law that paved the way for PBS?
Lyndon B. Johnson
Q 14Which PBS Kids cartoon follows a monkey who lives in a city apartment with the Man with the Yellow Hat?
Curious George
Curious George began on PBS Kids in 2006 as a sequel to a film released that year, and actor William H. Macy narrated the whole first season.
Q 15Which PBS Kids cartoon sends zoologist brothers Chris and Martin out in Creature Power Suits?
Wild Kratts
Wild Kratts gives its heroes a flying turtle ship called the Tortuga as a base, and the two real-life brothers provide the voices of their own cartoon selves.
Q 16Which PBS Kids cartoon follows a girl whose family runs a trading post in the fictional village of Qyah?
Molly of Denali
Molly of Denali made its heroine the first Alaska Native lead of a nationally distributed American children's show, and some dialogue is in Gwich'in.
Q 17Which filmmaker's 1990 PBS series The Civil War popularised slow pans across still photographs?
Ken Burns
Ken Burns drew more than 39 million viewers to at least one of the nine episodes, a record for PBS at the time, and the camera technique was later named after him.
Q 18Which scientist presented Cosmos, the 1980 PBS series later seen in more than 60 countries?
Carl Sagan
Carl Sagan's series won two Emmys and a Peabody Award, and for ten years it stood as the most widely watched series in the history of American public television.
Q 19Which BBC drama with Benedict Cumberbatch as a modern-day detective came to PBS's Masterpiece in 2010?
Sherlock
Sherlock won Emmy Awards in 2014 for both of its leading men and for its writing, and its 2016 special was the first episode shown on the same day in Britain and the United States.
Q 20Which British drama about the Crawley family and their servants came to PBS's Masterpiece in 2011?
Downton Abbey
Downton Abbey was filmed at Highclere Castle in Hampshire, which really did serve as a hospital for wounded soldiers during the First World War.
Lyndon B. Johnson signed it that November. The law was first going to be called the Public Television Act and cover television alone, which alarmed supporters of public radio.
Q 24Which American radio network was founded in 1970 following the same Public Broadcasting Act that led to PBS?
NPR
NPR made its first broadcast in April 1971, when it carried United States Senate hearings on the Vietnam War.
Q 25Which British children's series with a baby's face in the sun aired on PBS Kids from 1998 to 2008?
Teletubbies
Teletubbies was created by Anne Wood and Andrew Davenport for the BBC, and its four colourful stars live in an earth house called the Tubbytronic Superdome.
Q 26Which PBS Kids cartoon stars a four-year-old cub who rides Trolley and sings short strategy songs?
Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood
Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood began in 2012 and came from Angela Santomero, a co-creator of Blue's Clues. Its hero is the son of a shy puppet tiger who lived inside a grandfather clock on an older PBS show.
Q 27What food gives the family dog the power of speech in the PBS Kids cartoon Martha Speaks?
Alphabet soup
Alphabet soup does it: the pasta letters travel to Martha's brain instead of her stomach. Skits, the family's other dog, eats the same meal and gains nothing.
Q 28Which reggae singer performed the theme song of the PBS Kids cartoon Arthur with his band the Melody Makers?
Ziggy Marley
Ziggy Marley is the eldest son of Bob and Rita Marley, and he led the family band until 2002. They recorded the cartoon's upbeat opening tune in 1996.
Q 29Which Three's Company star voiced the title character in the PBS Kids cartoon Clifford the Big Red Dog?
John Ritter
John Ritter voiced the giant pet in every episode of the series that began in 2000, and by the time it finished production he was back in prime time on 8 Simple Rules.
Q 30Which company's Bake-Off trademark made PBS retitle a British hit as The Great British Baking Show?
Pillsbury
Pillsbury first ran its own Bake-Off cooking contest in 1949, at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, and registered the name, so the British tent show needed a new title in America.