Monday Morning Brief | Postal inspectors on TV

Linn’s Stamp News managing editor Chad Snee reports on the United States Postal Service’s funding of The Inspectors, a Saturday morning TV show about postal inspectors.

Full video transcript:

Greetings stamp-hobby friends! Happy Labor Day and welcome to the Monday Morning Brief for September 5.

Are you aware that the United States Postal Service has been funding a TV drama aimed at children? We weren’t either until our Washington Correspondent Bill McAllister reported the startling news August 29.

Citing a report posted on the Deadline Hollywood website, McAllister reports that the Postal Service “has spent $5.4 million since 2014 on a program featuring postal inspectors and could spend millions more on the show, now in production for its second season on CBS.”

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The show, titled The Inspectors, is based on actual cases handled by postal inspectors. The 30-minute episodes run on Saturday mornings, when many kids park themselves in front of the TV.

To learn more, McAllister contacted Paul Krenn, a spokesman for the U.S. Postal Inspection Service.

According to Krenn, the show’s funding comes from two sources: an assets forfeiture fund and criminal penalties paid by individuals prosecuted by the Postal Inspection Service. No funds come from taxpayers or postal rate payers.

Krenn also told Linn’s that the Postal Inspection Service is “proud of this innovative approach to consumer education and fraud prevention using television as a medium to extend the reach of our crime prevention campaign.”

The show’s current contract runs to September 14, “with options to extend the contract two times for one-year periods,” McAllister reports.

If you collect or have a soft spot for butterflies on stamps, I have good news to report. The United States Postal Service announced August 30 that it plans to issue the sixth stamp in its popular and colorful Butterfly series of stamps.

No issue date has been announced for the stamp, which will satisfy the 68¢ rate for nonmachineable first-class mail, such as square greeting card envelopes.

Featured on the stamp is a beautiful eastern tailed-blue butterfly.

For Linn’s Stamp News and the Scott catalogs, I’m Chad Snee. Have a great week enjoying our wonderful hobby. Cheers!