FEELING BAD ABOUT 'FEELING GOOD'
KITMAN, MARVIN
On Television FEELING BAD ABOUT 'FEELING GOOD' BY MARVIN KITMAN The most widely publicized important public television experiment of the 1974-75 season, Feeling Good, quietly left the air last...
...But as they always say in television, "What's the bottom line...
...Accuracy and authenticity were major concerns, too...
...One can't blame the research apparatus...
...In its original conception, the series was to educate low-income minorities and blue-collar workers in the ways of preventing illness by practicing good health habits...
...Although 'public' is in the name, they don't think of it as theirs...
...This created difficulties, though, with output...
...A drunk,' they said, 'is a negative role model.'" In the case of a piece dealing with depression, a writer was instructed to comment on the burdens blacks bear, but told not to mention the issues of poverty or discrimination...
...The series was going to have so great an impact on American society, CTW's research had revealed, that it wanted to be sure every race, creed and color had input...
...With that winning smile of his, he has enjoyed numerous artistic triumphs like his three ABC talk shows...
...Let the existing staffs at CTW compile what they want the people to know about health, and just allow Marcus Welby to read it from a piece of paper...
...At least the show doctors took out one of the sickliest organs, Mac's Place-a make-believe restaurant that served as the central meeting spot for a collection of icky-poo characters...
...Bendick was formerly producer of ABC's American Sportsman, where stars like Robert Redford and John Wayne go out and strangle rabbits in the name of ecology-the contemporary rationale for consistently glorifying the inhumanity of man...
...It seems to me, however, that the Workshop had the right target audience in the first place: those who tend to get the bulk of their knowledge about health from network TV commercials...
...This was a pure think-tank creation...
...Careful research had told CTW these groups most needed such guidance...
...Whether they will follow any of Cavett's orders to keep up their good health is quite another matter...
...The original one should have been given more time to grow and the chance to find out what didn't work-like the appendix in the human body...
...When the show finally premiered last November 20, it did actually have some impact...
...asked one CTW source...
...Things reached the point, for example, where if a black in a segment was to have a worse disease than a Puerto Rican, the Puerto Rican advisers protested...
...Given the insurmountable hurdle that the public doesn't normally watch public television, for another $250,000 I would have recommended a new host...
...Intuition tells me there is a hard core of intelligentsia who do bad things, even though they know they're bad for them-like smoking, or not seeing a doctor, or even watching television...
...It is sad that in giving it to them, CTW dragged the show down to the commonplace...
...the research-recommended hour length) and half as interesting as the prototype...
...Research told CTW that what it needed was a locale, as in Sesame Street...
...King gave his recipe for preparing broccoli, consisting mostly of letting it steam...
...Sometimes research will tell you practically anything you want to hear...
...By mixing drama, song, situation comedy, satirical take-offs on game shows and commercials, and cameo guest celebrity appearances, the old Feeling Good covered many topics in rapid succession and sought to get its messages across subliminally...
...Change the rules...
...After the media physicians finished their corrective work, the new Feeling Good appeared on April 2. It was ready to continue spending the S6.5 million made available by 16 underwriting foundations and corporations (Exxon, Aetna Life and Casualty, Robert Wood Johnson, the Commission of Public Broadcasting, etc...
...I can't understand how those responsible for the program's facelift ever managed to achieve such startling results...
...It was impossible to buy a vegetable steamer the next week," one staffer reported...
...Researchers would be content to run charts and graphs on the air...
...I don't know what it is about public television,' I would have gone on to explain in another expensive paper...
...The advisory panels included representatives of all the minorities and were given the power to scrutinize every idea and word that went into the initial programs...
...I must admit that Cavett's essays as anchorman have all been well written and beautifully spoken...
...In other words, what's the experiment in the new Feeling Good...
...Nobody likes to criticize Children's Television Workshop...
...A sincere, genuinely nice person, Cavett has the gift of being able to say in a bubbly way things like, "Hi there, I'm here tonight to talk about death...
...They also happen to be least likely to watch public television, but nobody looked into that...
...While the greens steamed away, King did a song that lasted two minutes-just about the time it took the broccoli to cook...
...It got so bad," one of the Workshop's creative people recalled recently, "that in a piece about alcoholism we couldn't have a black person looking as bad as drunks sometimes do...
...This guidance would have been ignored as well, on the grounds that he is not convincing enough because he is not a real doctor...
...It's the worst possible medium for reaching ordinary folks...
...The most obvious change has been the hiring of cheery little Dick Cavett as front man...
...I don't know...
...They have faith in educational TV, regardless of the evidence provided by Nielsen...
...In the first installment, blues singer B.B...
...Every place I went to was sold out...
...Plainly, they don't know what's good for them...
...Once again, the experimenters tackled the task of making viewers who are famous for watching television as a form of escape turn it on instead to face the realities of disease and other allied unpleasantries...
...If only one of those 16 foundations had approached me, I could have saved them a lot of money...
...They had gone like hot cakes...
...To run things behind the scenes, and add more of the common touch, a new producer, Robert Bendick, has been brought in from commercial television...
...But the research team on Feeling Good, my own research has concluded, has fostered the fear of legitimate creativity usually found at that other bastion of overanalysis, the ad agency...
...2. It's good to eat vegetables...
...The Workshop should never have given in...
...It turned out that there was no longer any reason to keep an eye on that statistic...
...That was an essential part of its innovative approach...
...Research also said that the second time around Mac's Place had to go...
...Since it's not on CTW's list of goals, I doubt that the psychological phenomenon called "the death wish" will be examined...
...Moreover, research would have proved that I was wrong...
...What else do you do when you have millions in grants remaining in the kitty...
...That's the very sort of thing they find entertaining...
...After all, it's one of the few production companies involved with experimentation...
...While I don't have any data to prove this, I suspect the regular devotees of educational stations already know most of what Feeling Good has to say...
...A kill-joy might add that health had been pretty much done to death by both commercial and public television during the previous season...
...Never mind that experience has demonstrated television addicts do not want to hear what is good for them...
...Good will be done...
...I made a note to myself to check on how many blue-collar workers are tuning in to Feeling Good because of the addition of Dick Cavett...
...Nevertheless, this innovative effort attracted my attention because it wasn't going to use the traditional documentary approach to scare grownups into living longer...
...Following major surgery, the show returned to the public's air on April 2. Produced by Joan Ganz Cooney's prestigious Children's Television Workshop (CTW)-of Sesame Street and Electric Company fame-Feeling Good marked the unit's first venture into the adult world...
...Despite the increased cookware sales and all the advance studies, it was decided with the January 29 episode that Feeling Good wasn't reaching its intended audience...
...I don't know when the change occurred, but it's happened.' Well, that's one way to win the game...
...it's only normal...
...They wanted their way...
...On Television FEELING BAD ABOUT 'FEELING GOOD' BY MARVIN KITMAN The most widely publicized important public television experiment of the 1974-75 season, Feeling Good, quietly left the air last January 9. After only nine weeks of a scheduled 26-week run, the series was not feeling so good...
...For a mere $250,000 I would have given them a one-line memorandum that would set their endeavor on its proper course: "Put it on commercial television...
...Yet for six years on ABC, Doc Welby has filled up the nation's doctors' offices with patients suspecting they have the malady he cured on his show the previous night-even cases of acute porphrya...
...You know-the people who think there is a graph in their heads and that sinus cavities look like the drains in their kitchen sinks...
...Two vital points were ultimately decided upon: 1. It's bad to have heart attacks...
...The research establishment at CTW would have thrown me out on my ear after that bit of advice...
...The already-broadcast treatments of aging and alcoholism may even manage to inspire positive action...
...perhaps the largest consortium of do-gooders ever put together for an undertaking of this kind...
...But since this is fantasy, let's assume they asked for further counsel...
...Children's Television Workshop, previously undefeated champion of originality, could not fail...
...Not only have we resurrected the show," a CTW man explained, "we have upgraded the target audience...
...Now a stand-up, sit-down, walk-around narrator establishes the fact that each installment is a single-subject documentary-i.e., something that should be watched because it is good for you...
...The ordinary Joes want somebody they respect, a medical authority of unquestionable credentials, a man like Marcus Welby, M.D...
...New York Times critic John O'Connor didn't like it, and that's always enough to make the intellectual establishment sick...
...But there was never any doubt that it would be back...
...The altered package is half as long (30 minutes vs...
...It would employ a new kind of variety show format to scare them, a combination of entertainment and information...
...Now we're shooting for upper-middle- and lower-higher-class educated watchers of public television...
...Maybe that's the perfect training ground for a series about sickness...
...More than 300 doctors, educators and other experts served as consultants during a two-year tooling up period which cost over $2 million...
...One of the questions they discussed for roughly two years was what should be gotten across to the target audience...
...They got no taste...
Vol. 58 • May 1975 • No. 10
