In a world where art is purchased to display as trophies, it can be hard to remember what a real art patron looks like. While researching my new favorite television station, I stumbled onto somebody who might qualify as the best art patron ever.

The station is Classic Arts Showcase. It shows amazing clips of things that are derived from the world of classical arts. A great deal of this content comes from the early days of television, when it was assumed that the general public would be happy to watch great conductors, dancers and opera singers. In some cases where a performer was too late for film, or died young, these television appearances might be the only existing footage of performing legends. CAS is often used by PBS stations to fill the time slots when they don’t broadcast, usually late at night.

They create an eight-hour block of clips each week, which are given for free to cable and satellite providers. The format is a bit like early MTV, right down to the block of text at the beginning and end of each clip, with useful facts like names, dates and websites of the releasing companies. The station turns 20 in 2014. They purposely don’t publish a list of the clips they show, as they favor the element of surprise. When discussing the station online, viewers love to cite favorite juxtapositions of clips. In one case, they showed three clips in a row of the same aria sung by different divas. The head of programming is an opera singer with an encyclopedic knowledge of the classic arts.

Were this station Lloyd E. Rigler’s sole claim to fame, he might still be considered an art patron of legend. But the station is only the tip of an iceberg of largesse. With his “business” partner, Lawrence Deutsch, (those were more circumspect times) he ran a foundation that had much to do with bringing opera and ballet to Los Angeles, while funding various arts organizations, and even creating the venues where they were shown. Rigler was instrumental in the restoration of the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood.

When Rigler was faced with an Edith Windsor-style tax dilemma after the death of Deutsch, he created a nonprofit entity (The LEDLER Foundation) and started a project that allowed anybody to purchase a copy of any recording in the Library of Congress and five other repositories. Many reissued recordings owe their existence to this data base. The LEDLER foundation also founded a program to address marriage equality issues by focusing on unmarried couples. The logic was that by taking the emphasis off of gay-only issues, those issues could fall under a bigger umbrella of human rights.

Rigler’s focus from day one has involved sustaining arts that were more at risk and ethereal. His motivation to start the TV station was based on the simple observation that the theaters where he was seeing these arts were starting to play to smaller audiences. The next time you spot Mr. Rigler’s name on a building, remember that it is an honor well-earned, and not another paid advertisement.