Macneil/Lehrer:Twice As Long, Half as Good
KITMAN, MARVIN
On Television MACNEIL/LEHRER: TWCE AS LONQ HALF AS GOOD BY MARVIN KITMAN I don't understand the scheduling of the Public Broadcasting System's (PBS) new MacNeil/LehrerNewshour, launched last...
...The only one I recall him expressing was that the best hockey players come from Canada...
...It's bad that AT&T and similar enterprises can affect public TV programing...
...Television news programs are traditionally sponsored by the multitudes, a vast array of companies buying 30-second commercial spots much the way advertisers buy space in newspapers . The MacNeil/Lehrer Newshour is " made possible" by a grant from AT&T...
...it would otherwise be unthinkable for public television at present...
...An hour Mac-Neil/LehrerV one executive said...
...In the past year or two, however, the program became plain deadly...
...Made possible" is one of those charming expressions that eliminate the need for potentially disturbing words like "sponsored by...
...There are long pieces and short ones, light and heavy, reporting and analysis...
...I wouldn't want some of those network hand-me-downs taking home any of my tax dollars...
...Of course, it is no more than coincidence that for the first time in history there is competition in providing phone service...
...Woodruff's lengthy maiden piece on September 5 on the history of the labor movement could have put Samuel Gompers to sleep, as it did me...
...Some public-TV this is...
...He deals with more diverse subjects...
...You don't see them rushing to patronize a highly respected, and highly independent producer like Al Levin...
...If theaudiencedoesn't likesome-body, he stays on anyway...
...He is a sharper interviewer...
...These are not men who got where they are today by doing that kind of thing twice...
...Remember AT&T had The Telephone Hour on radio for 28 years...
...It's good, of course, that AT&T is paying the high salaries of MacNeil/ Lehrer'scast and crew...
...Nevertheless, purchasing timeonpublicTVisasmartmove...
...Infact,9or lOo'clock-anytime before 11:30whenTedKoppel'sMg/ir-line airs on ABC ?would be good...
...Well, pardon me...
...If you tell yourself you're the greatest often enough, after a while you start to believe it-especially in public TV, where you don't have the ratings to make you feel mortal...
...they can't get anything on the air for lack of corporate funding...
...The new show stands as a monument to one man's arrogance-robert MacNeil, who was determined to prove you can be dull for a whole hour...
...I'm not saying the opinions of, say, Robin MacNeil could possibly be influenced by his underwriter...
...He seems the more authoritative of the pair, too...
...And even the early MacNeil/Lehrer, painful as it is to admit, did not invariably present as open an examination of the issues as everybody said...
...A better time slot would be 8 p.m...
...I know these hours would cut into PBS' entertainment core, the bloc of programs they distribute to local stations for an evening...
...Robin also has an elitist demeanor that fits in perfectly at New York's WNET/ 13, his home base...
...Where I come from, anyone named Robert who wanted to be called "Robin" was suspect...
...Yet it is the best of times for MacNeil, who managed to talk the communications colossus into underwriting his dream with a $10 million grant, and $2 million or $3 million more thrown in for a promotion campaign...
...I do know that "just out of the goodness of our heart" doesn't compute...
...When it wasn't, theReport was in trouble...
...But the real problem was that the people running the PBS show didn't want to hear anything about its decline...
...On Television MACNEIL/LEHRER: TWCE AS LONQ HALF AS GOOD BY MARVIN KITMAN I don't understand the scheduling of the Public Broadcasting System's (PBS) new MacNeil/LehrerNewshour, launched last September 5 after a multi-million dollar buildup underwritten by AT&T that-In this age of public TV penury-Seemed excessive if not obscene...
...Judy Woodruff, the hottest commercial news star to appear on public TV since Jessica Savitch, is an example...
...On an off night they could have made the Report part of the physical fitness test for aspiring astronauts, to make sure they would be able to stay awake in outer space...
...In a world of elitist organizations, Channel 13, with its British programing, has always been among theelitistest...
...These were some of the thoughts running through my head when I read last spring that the dynamic duo were going ahead with their planned expansion...
...I'm not privy to AT&T's secret rationale for shoveling the two men millions right now...
...The producers are trying to give the show what is called "pacing...
...Sometimes, with all the pledge drives, it seems like public TV was invented by the phone company as a gimmick for increasing revenue...
...Certainly, Jim and Robin may bite the new hand that feeds them-once...
...I thought they were already doing an hour...
...Kop-pel is more lively than MacNeil and Lehrer...
...But then when you come to think of it, MacNeil doesn't have that many opinions...
...Too many eveningstheguests were PR people spouting a line of propaganda, rather than experts who could truly shed light on what was being discussed...
...What would Cardinal MacNeil do if next season they wanted to call his show The Telephone News Hourl We'll know something is wrong, 1 suppose, when Robin starts ending the broadcast by saying "Phone home," just as Walter Cronkite used to tell us "That's the way it is...
...Things are so bad they have been eliminating Per-rier from the taps at the poor little rich stations...
...Nothing is free, as I think either MacNeil or Lehrer first observed in an analysis of the capitalist system...
...Those shows happen to be the best work commercial TV does...
...Public broadcasting is supposed to be an alternative...
...That is buried in its PR computers...
...The big concern is that the bankrollers will sour on their pet projects...
...Conversely, a show's success depends heavily on how well the corporations like it...
...Les Crystal, the new executive producer who came to MacNeil/ Lehrer from NBC, probably picked them up from watching Shad...
...I don't know about you, but I find that scary...
...When that was interesting, they were terrific...
...During the last year or so, I found I was missing it whenever something more important was on, like Family Feud...
...They pack an enormous amount into their 21 minutes...
...His producers have the advantage of being able to provide better tapes and films from ABC's vast archives...
...What puzzles me is why PBS' only nightly news program has been put on the air at 7 p.m., directly opposite the major networks' evening news lineup...
...Much of the time it of fers the same mix of material to be found on the networks, except twice as long without being twice as good...
...The second thing I don't understand about the MacNeil/Lehrer Newshour is its new concept, or lack of one...
...Now there also are back-of-the-book bits on the arts and postcard visuals on burning issues like the Oregon coast...
...Jim Lehrer is the more popular partner...
...It is the worst of times for serious filmmakers, documentary makers and program makers in general...
...Kermit the Frog is more opinionated than Robin the Opinion Former, and that's one reason why AT&T is backing the Newshour...
...MacNeil, besides acting vaguely British although he is only Canadian, has an air of sainthood about him...
...MacNeil and Lehrer were the darlings of the intelligentsia, and their Report was beyond criticism...
...they spend more money per second than Star Wars and whip you around the world from one breaking story to another on a magic carpet...
...There is no point to competing with them, particularly when you've got one shot for the night...
...The whole show was devoted to the day's biggest story-In-depth treatment, the area where the networks were most vulnerable...
...I haven't seen stories like that since Shad Northshield, currently the producer of Sunday on CBS, was running the Today show...
...Most of us would be forced to confess, I suspect, that we weren't watching the 30-minute MacNeil/Lehrer as much as we should have been...
...PBS viewers have larger phone bills than poor people...
...As you may have heard on the air, PBS is financially troubled...
...Sooner or later, the sponsors get their pound of flesh...
...May be that explains why the new MacNeil/Lehrer has a 1960s network look...
...It'sanewAT&T," asthecom-mercials say...
...The silence harks back to a more gracious day, the era of Henry James, or at least Harry James...
...Ever since he passed up Roone Arledge's offer of a half-million-dollar-a-year post at ABC News in the late '70s, he has sported a pained expression plus a holier-than-thou attitude...
...Robin, or Bluejay as we call him in New Jersey, is too noncommittal...
...Robert MacNeil has always been a little on the pompous side...
...The promise of " film at 11" is what shapes news judgments in the commercial sector...
...The PBS people would put on adog barking show, or card tricks, or Japanese brush paintingif Mobil would financeit...
...The staff members there constantly walk into things because their noses are so high in the air...
...So public television's sole significant news show is financed by AT&T...
...The great thing about MacNeil/Lehrer was that it wasn't glitzy...
...In this case, the phone company is literally making the extension possible...
...Besides, there is so much bad news these days that watching it while eating can ruin your appetite or digestion...
...Don't worry, guys, this new logo you won't be able to drive away...
...The original half-hour MacNeil/Lehrer Report was just fine for the most part...
...The megabucks providers lost interest in Dick Cavett, for instance, and he's gone...
...In my town kids wear Jim Lehrer T-shirts and have Jim Lehrer fan clubs where they repeat his interview questions verbatim...
...In the old format, the hosts were as good as the day's topic...
...Granted it could be boring, pure Som-inex...
...Who cares if many of the stations didn't want it...
...A lot of people who work in a city and live in a suburb are eating dinner at 7 o'clock, and some of the more civilized among them like to enjoy their meal without the TV on...
...Nobody in the public television establishment is worried about compromising their newscasts anymore...
...It has recycled network news ideas, and a lot of its personnel are network cast-offs...
...The funding of the twice as long, half as effective product raises another thorny matter...
...That's why all the antacid pills advertise between 7-7:30...
...It's better than Hummingbird or Cardinal, I guess, though Cardinal MacNeil has a ring to it...
...But there is less to these celebrities than meets the eye once you take away their network hype...
...There were times when I thought, heresy of heresies, that Nightline was better...
Vol. 66 • October 1983 • No. 19
