Cultural Pump Priming
KITMAN, MARVIN
OnTelevision CULTURAL PUMP PRIMING BY MARVIN KITMAN In 1971, the Mobil Oil Corporation announced proudly that it was giving a grant of $1.2 million to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to...
...Attempting to reassure him, I said, "The really surprising thing, in fact, is not that public television has so few viewers, but so many...
...Other observers maintain that Mobil has a more nefarious purpose in broadcasting a show that stresses a world of masters and servants...
...The argument for advertising is to get people to buy more Mobil oil...
...Without the underwriting grant the series wouldn't have been possible...
...Yet he insisted, "I took all the money from my Mobil stock and turned it into ABC, because they would never do anything so foolhardy as support public TV...
...I expect a corporation's managers to have clearer heads...
...Traditionally, the show specializes in rerunning BBC reruns, but this season it did something new by rerunning Upstairs, Downstairs, which is not a BBC rerun but a London Weekend Television rerun...
...At this point I should mention for any anti-TV snob who doesn't know what the hell I am talking about that "upstairs, downstairs" is the phrase used to define the two classes of life in the Bellamy household...
...Still, the angry stockholder did concede that he might have made a mistake in selling his stock...
...The other night, for example, I counted the following august organizations and individuals associating themselves with it: (1) WNET/New York...
...The company is simply trying to provide good entertainment for all the closet Anglophiles as a relief from the energy crisis...
...Upstairs, Downstairs is probably the closest thing to a class show, in the old-fashioned sense of the word, that we have had on television since / Dream of Jeanie...
...When Harold Wilson sees the good Mobil has done, he will give the corporation first dips, or whatever it's called, on the North Sea oil...
...Yet he continued to fume...
...One final point about Mobil's current investment...
...But can you imagine a company paying $250,000 a year to a man who then suggests they invest their money in public television...
...3) Masterpiece Theater, (4) Alistair Cooke...
...I was reminded of this conversation last month when I read of Mobil's latest venture into cultural pump priming...
...OnTelevision CULTURAL PUMP PRIMING BY MARVIN KITMAN In 1971, the Mobil Oil Corporation announced proudly that it was giving a grant of $1.2 million to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to help fund Masterpiece Theater until June 1973...
...Then, too, the series is very educational...
...China, incidentally, has a lot of off-shore oil reserves, and so underwriting a Chinese public television series wouldn't be a total loss...
...Public television, though, has given us only 13 shows, and no matter how many times they are rerun, it may be argued that this still leaves an Upstairs, Downstairs gap no less serious than the gas shortage...
...A British critic called it "the poor man's Forsythe Saga...
...The man, a prominent foundation lawyer, indicated he was planning to institute a stockholder's suit against Mobil based on ultra vires, the legal principle limiting a company to only those activities that are specifically listed in its charter...
...I sure wish I lived as well as those servants in the Bellamy house do...
...More people took credit for presenting it than any other series in the history of television...
...Of the free-riders, undoubtedly the most important in practical terms was Mobil...
...Even if there is no truth to the notion that the company is pushing Upstairs, Downstairs as a means of advocating a class society, the equal-time doctrine does seem to require a popular series advocating a classless society...
...I wasn't overly upset about their salaries...
...The royal family of Saudi Arabia reportedly views favorably a series that is seen as a kind of Upstairs and Downstairs at the Palace...
...They are wasting the corporation's assets," the outraged investor complained...
...Dozens of them, after all, have been on the air in England since 1971, where the adventures of the Bellamys, a typical turn-of-the-cenrury family, has been a smash hit...
...I tried to reason with him at the time, pointing out what a charitable thing Mobil was doing by underwriting public television shows...
...At least I haven't noticed that we've changed our name to the Mobil Public Television & Oil Corporation...
...The company had decided to provide $1.6 million in grants to the Public Broadcasting Service for the 1974-75 season, it was announced, and a large chunk of the money will go to supporting Masterpiece Theater for a fourth year...
...On the face of it, the decision to televise Upstairs, Downstairs is as clean as the clean gas Mobil used to advertise on commercial TV...
...Particularly inefficient charity...
...Is it sheer coincidence, or bungling on the part of Mobil's public relations people...
...Why, especially, were they sinking money into making it possible for us to see Upstairs, Downstairsl Perhaps the company feels that America suffers from a dangerous shortage of Upstairs, Downstairs episodes...
...Then he cited the 1971 Nielsen ratings to me...
...And next season, with the company's assistance, 13 new Upstairs, Downstairs reruns will be rerun...
...What does public television have to do with selling gas...
...I never saw a single car in the first 13 episodes of the show...
...I didn't want to invest in a business that expended funds so wantonly...
...Yet another theory about why Mobil is investing in Upstairs, Downstairs is that the company wants in on the North Sea oil bonanza...
...We'd be better off buying time on ABC's Monday Night Football Game...
...Profits are up approximately $450 billion," he admitted...
...He told me he had sold his holdings...
...Nonetheless, as a critic, I do wish the Mobil people would use their money to encourage the growth of original drama in this country...
...But public television is an inefficient organization...
...You're just lucky Mobil didn't underwrite the British wrestling show from Birmingham...
...According to public television's financing rules," he explained, "underwriters are not supposed to push any product or ideology...
...I am more interested in principle than interest...
...But surely American public TV viewers would also enjoy soap operas about the Rockefellers and the Goulds and the Harrimans making love behind closed doors...
...asks one suspicious anti-monarchist...
...These people argue that Upstairs, Downstairs implants a favorable image of an authoritarian form of government on the public consciousness through the medium of public TV...
...When I get one or two of them, I am sure I will be able to deal with them properly...
...This latest conversation set me thinking about the enigma of why Mobil was investing in public television at a time when funds were so desperately needed for research elsewhere in their business...
...Is that what we want— to promote the BBC...
...On the other hand, the series has made me envious...
...In one sense the program was an incredible TV event...
...I wouldn't mind if we were helping an efficient charity, like the March of Dimes...
...Is it possible that Mobil is backing Upstairs, Downstairs not for its own political ends, but for someone else's...
...They used flashforwards in Easy Rider, didn't they...
...And don't give me that stuff about the series being set in Edwardian England...
...The news almost gave one of Mobil's stockholders a heart attack...
...In a mere 13 weeks it has taught me how to handle servants— a skill I never learned from my parents, my public school education in Brooklyn, or my many years of diligent and attentive TV viewing...
...We don't even sell Mobil gas in England...
...Charity is not one of the responsibilities of our corporation," he replied...
...Besides," he went on, "as appalling as the judgments were, the illegalities were even more upsetting...
...and (6) London Weekend, the company that, of course, actually produced it...
...It might be titled Inside and Outside the Commune...
...Soon after the good news of the grant was released, I sought out the angry stockholder and asked what he thought of Mobil's latest and escalated commitment...
...The Bellamys are swell...
...5) Mobil Oil...
...We are not in the television business," he explained...
...To prove its sincerity, Mobil should next bring viewers a show about, say, a family from Peking, one where the father is a professor, the mother manages a noodle factory and the kids work on a collective...
...It would be different if the name of our company were British Petroleum...
...Many believe the corporation —worried and perplexed by its inability to keep the price of gas down to less than 50 cents in America— increased its involvement in television to maintain cordial relations with the shahs and shieks and other oil-rich autocrats...
...In Victorian and Edwardian England, apparently, you were either "upstairs," a member of the ruling class, or "downstairs," a worker...
...I'm certain, however, that there is nothing cynical about Mobil's investments...
...All the oil companies want to do is rape the ground and the people, and they will deal with any regime that allows them to do it...
...All we are doing by presenting Masterpiece Theater is creating a desire to go to England and see British television...
...2) WGBH/ Boston...
...These expenditures are an unlawful diversion of corporate funds from the company's stated purpose —which is making money...
...They are helping buy British television programs for the United States as a way of supporting the British economy," a usually reliable inside source said...
...Not only that," the source continued, "Mobil has no special interest in any form of government...
...But when I posed this idea to a knowledgeable inside source, he demurred...
Vol. 57 • May 1974 • No. 10
