PBS - Broadway's Leading Ladies

PBS Specials tend to air at different days/times in different cities so check your local PBS station’s schedule. I’m in Southern California and it airs on our PBS station on Sunday Nov 30, 2025 at 6pm PST.

I don't know what happened to the broadcast, but it's currently available to stream on PBS Passport. Having seen it live back in March, I can say that this is an incredibly disappointing recording. They cut out almost forty minutes, including nearly all of Bebe Neuwirth's interludes and tributes to the great Ann Reinking, Chita Rivera, Debbie Allen, and Gwen Verdon, and dramatically shorten Priscilla Lopez, Kelly Bishop, and Baayork Lee's tributes to Elaine Stritch, Chita Rivera, Graciella Daniele, and Molly Smith from their heartfelt speeches down to just saying the names of the women they so beautifully honored.

The show's set list is also dramatically reordered for reasons I can't begin to fathom. For example, Kate Baldwin's "Back to Before" was originally in the show's 11 o'clock slot and brought down the house, but now it's thrown in the middle of the show, while LaChanze's "Be a Lion" (which was originally fairly early in the night) is now the penultimate number. To say nothing of the multiple errors in the press release's song list. It seems particularly egregious to claim "All that Jazz" is from Cabaret and not...y'know, famously the opening number of Chicago.