On Television

...Respectfully yours, Marvin Kitman...

...There is nowhere else the oil firms and their like can get an elite captive TV audience...

...As you can tell, this is not what transpired...

...Once you pledged your millions other titans of the media would join you...

...Of course public television, as envisioned by the Carnegie Commission Report of 1967, was supposed to be an interruption-free alternative to commercial broadcasting...

...During the pledge weeks, the network's pitchmen keep repeating how much they loathe the commercials on regular TV, although everyone watching is well aware—since shows are frequently interrupted to tell us so?that Masterpiece Theater is brought to us courtesy of Mobil Oil Corporation and we owe our Evening at the Pops to Martin-Marietta, the wonderful folks responsible for some of our most educational evenings when their products were seen on the news blasting the hell out of Vietnam...

...In fact, it is my nominee for this year's Pulitzer Prize in letters...

...One can't help wondering sometimes if PBS has any cameras of its own, or only an import license...

...Nonetheless, you owe a greater debt to TV than to the old-fashioned, obsolete mediums, newspapers and museums...

...Yes, there is a cause needier than the Metropolitan, and it is called public television...

...But as they say in public television...

...Instead, we could sit in our comfortable homes and see your cultural artifacts on our sets...

...Indeed, Channel 13 may be a permanent financial disaster area...

...I don't think you should rest on your laurels, however...

...It reminded me of the time years ago when I used similar tactics in my power struggles, and threatened to take home my marbles...

...Think it over, and while you do let me urge that you take inspiration from the immortal words of one of the tube's most respected thinkers...

...When I was a boy the important reference work was the Book of Knowledge...

...I am certain you resent this kind of dishonesty as much as I do...

...I myself made a bid of $100...

...Toward such a worthwhile goal I myself am willing to contribute $125,000 of my weekly salary at this magazine...

...I submit that your notion would benefit public television more than the Met and would produce infinitely better viewing than the stuff sponsored by Mobil and Exxon, who subsequently congratulate themselves in newspaper ads for their civic-mindedness...

...Your ambassadorial service in the United Kingdom was enriched, you said, by watching television...

...Just the other night I heard that my local public TV station (WNET/13 in New York) was desperately short of funds...

...It never ceases to amuse me that smack in the middle of a piece of fine art like Alec Guinness in The Ladykillers, WNET will present an "intermission" to inform the viewer that it brings such classics into the home uncut and without commercial interruption...

...In the process, the announcer either asks everybody to become members for a small fee or drops the name of the conglomerate helping to air the movie...

...Again...

...It is technology in the service of humanity...

...Finally, you will make many new friends...

...You should see how those highbrows crawl before Atlantic-Richfield or Prudential Insurance to get their crummy grants worth a few hundred thousand dollars...

...Given your expertise in the medium, gained as publisher of TV Guide, you undoubtedly know that underwriting is a form of soft-sell commercial advertising...

...It's enough to make a person sick to his stomach...

...Add an emergency surcharge to their grants...

...some of my egghead friends don't respect the Annenberg name...

...The companies will have to shell out, as you and I must shell out when buying their gas for our limousines...

...Well, in that case let them pay for it...

...And while I'm embarrassed to admit my inclination to tell other people how to spend their money, you did invite speculation when you wrote that you intended going ahead with the project someplace else, should the in-grates in the Big Apple not take your threat seriously...

...You mention in your Times letter that watching Lord Kenneth Clark's series, Civilization, planted the conviction in your head to record and disseminate all the fine arts for the benefit of mankind...

...Dear Sir Walter, I truly enjoyed your "Open Letter to the Citizens of New York" in the March 15 New York Times...

...Moreover, why should we be forced to drive into New York or any other urban center to use your show-and-tell reference library, adding to traffic congestion and energy waste...

...Perhaps you also noticed that the high-quality fare on the BBC was not brought to the people by a sponsor, I mean underwriter...

...In this spirit, I would like to offer a modest proposal...

...But apparently the corporate friends and individual subscribers have failed their network miserably...

...Secondly, it could probably be arranged, in return for a $40-million pledge, to change the name of public television...

...Naturally, it's easy for me to tell you what to do with your money...

...today, as a mature adult, I regard the recording of man's accomplishments on video cassettes or discs an essential stepping stone to the future...

...It reminds people of "educational television," a previous name that became a dirty word...

...Personally, I would prefer their sending volunteers onto the streets to ask for cash more privately...

...Unfortunately, the people who run public television simply aren't very good businessmen...

...It is currently my intention," you went on, "to go far beyond the fine arts and record man's total accomplishment," truly a quantum leap in communications...

...For as you and I know, if an enterprise—a public TV station, for example—is not receiving adequate money from the current sponsors or underwriters who are, after all, using the system to advertise, the obvious remedy is increasing their rates...

...Really, though, I don't have a head for business...

...every few weeks, it seems, the management sets aside a week or two for soliciting pledges, an institutionalized form of begging in public that makes viewers feel guilty...

...Still, you needn't worry...

...Sir Walter, let's get to the bottom line...

...Reach for the sky," Matt Dillon always said...

...Unless, of course, you're the person handing out the money...

...Whose fortune isn't tainted—the Fords', the Rockefellers', the Carnegies...

...In other words, what's in this for you, besides saving public televisionkind...

...Maimonides, the 12th-century physician and philosopher said the number one rule of giving requires the donor be unknown to everyone including the recipient, lest the recipient be overly humble in his future dealings with the donor...

...For the whole station...

...I suggest that the best method of getting an audience for your new property would be to retitle it "TV Guide TV," which would assure the average viewer that he can watch in safety, without his friends thinking bad thoughts about him...

...William S. Paley for instance...

...as I grew older, the Encyclopedia Britannica and World Book replaced it...

...At one point last year, it was necessary to cancel the afternoon and evening programs for nine days (June 6-14) in order to hold an auction for raising additional funds —possibly the longest nonstop commercial in broadcasting history...

...Therefore, the first advantage you will derive will be to find the finest persons among television's intelligentsia groveling at your feet...

...What you are actually describing here is the museum-without-walls concept, advanced by Andre Mal-raux and often seen on local independent stations that offer the classics of TV art—like Mayberry RFD and / Love Lucy...

...Corporations underwrite programs because they want selective viewers—opinionmakers—to appreciate what fine fellows they are...

...It was fun once...

...Surely, then, you realized how wonderful it was to have interruption-free broadcasting, something we may have someday in this country, too...

...The business of America," the great orator Calvin Coolidge once said, "is business...

...I am merely a TV critic who knows that something is wrong and that your $40 million can help...

...For "public TV" has become a dirty word by now...

...This is a worthy goal, and a higher one than public TV now has: rerunning British government programs and, recently, Swedish government programs (Scenes from a Marriage...

...Also, the Morning Telegraph and other racing scratch sheets—early family productions—did not meet the intellectual's standards in literature...

...Now, that's technology in the service of humanity...

...So your missive and the big impact it had—two days later you took back your $40 million—were a source of inspiration to us all...

...Perhaps I would object less to the plugs for corporations if they actually paid for the station's operations, hence giving us real interruption-free viewing...

...Many of us write letters to the Times with no visible result, particularly since they're usually not printed...

...They remember your family's sordid beginnings in the newspaper distribution field (a long time ago, I knew a newsboy in Chicago who was beaten up by your father, Moe...

...Especially the part where you said you would take back the $40 million you promised for a fine arts visual education center at the Metropolitan Museum, unless the city did what you wanted it to do...

...James, Publisher of leading cultural journals (TV Guide), Founder of powerful schools of communication at the University of Southern California and the University of Pennsylvania, and the Duke of Radnor, Pennsylvania...

...Since charity, they say, begins at home, may I suggest that the most logical home for your visual center might be on television itself...