This week on the channel +2.6M views this week

A barber, a pastor and a doctor return for American Voices 2026

FRONTLINE's 90-minute documentary, filmed across eight states, drew about 200,000 views in its first day.

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FRONTLINE PBS | Official Story of October 16, 2026Trari Newsroom

Why this story? The channel's weekly summary: what went up this week, what is drawing views now, and where the channel stands among similar channels.

U.S. Voters Share Their Views & Lives | American Voices 2026 (full documentary)| FRONTLINE (PBS)

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2:54Amy Garner asks people in St. Joseph, Missouri, about local ballot initiatives and finds that few know about them.
8:08Pastor Cary K. Gordon tells his Sioux City congregation that American politics offers a choice between bad and worse.
10:35Portland barber Bryant Moore says rising living costs have thinned his shop's clientele.
11:54Chapter One returns to the 2020 lockdowns, ending with a Zoom wedding at 18:32.
21:16Mayra Ramirez describes becoming the first U.S. double lung transplant patient due to COVID-19.
46:03Chapter Five reaches 2026, with Dr. Mann's growing cynicism and ICE enforcement in Minneapolis.

Bryant Moore has fewer customers in his Portland barbershop than he used to, and he is not expecting a quick recovery. "I don't think that we're gonna come out of this one unscathed," he says early in "American Voices 2026," FRONTLINE's new 90-minute documentary.

Moore is one of more than a dozen Americans whom filmmaker Mike Shum and his team have followed since 2020, first in "American Voices: A Nation in Turmoil" and then in a 2024 installment. This chapter checks in a month before the midterms. It opens with a quick tour of its cast. Amy Garner asks people in St. Joseph, Missouri, about local ballot measures and finds that few have heard of them. In Leander, Texas, Dr. Christine Eady Mann packs an emergency go-bag. In Sioux City, Iowa, Pastor Cary K. Gordon tells his congregation, "You got two choices in American politics: you can have bad, or you can have worse."

Then the film goes back to the beginning, chapter by chapter: the 2020 lockdowns, the protests, the 2020 election, the 2024 campaign and an aftermath set this year. Some of it is gentle. Jamie Dinh and Jason Tolentino, who own a nail salon in Oakland, marry over Zoom and kiss through their masks. Some of it is not. Mayra Ramirez describes becoming the first COVID-19 patient in the U.S. to receive a double lung transplant, and later on-screen text says she died in May 2022.

The full film has passed 300,000 views in two days. A shorter cut of its prologue went up the day before.

The week's other uploads came from FRONTLINE's investigative work. Reporter Martha Mendoza explains how a direct message can turn into sexual blackmail, and what to do if it happens. Her explainer extends "Scammed," the film FRONTLINE made with The Associated Press, which has now passed a million views. An excerpt from the 2018 film "The Facebook Dilemma" looks at Mark Zuckerberg's early fascination with hacker culture.

The channel gained about 50,000 subscribers over the week, even though its daily views are running at roughly a fifth of their usual level. Among nearby documentary channels, Absolute History, British Pathé and Real Stories are busier than usual, while Nat Geo Animals and Channel 5 with Andrew Callaghan are quieter.

Older films keep getting new visitors as well. Martin Smith's 2008 climate investigation "Heat" is one of them, and it now carries an editor's note correcting a glacier forecast that the UN climate panel later retracted.

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