TV WORTH PAYING FOR?
Aufderheide, Pat
VIEWS REVIEWS worth iwing For? BY PAT AUFDERHEIDE The contribution of public broadcasting to society is debatable," the Reagan Administration declared in a 1981 report recommending drastic cuts...
...I looked at a garden full of ambitious projects and I pruned and pruned, leaving a few surviving plants...
...Like other agencies and programs begun in the Great Society era, public television seemed a prime target for small-government zealots...
...The Administration mounted an assault on the very notion that Federal revenues should support public television...
...Public television provided funds and equipment for video art by the likes of Shirley Jackson, for the travels of such Portapak-armed new journalists as Jon Al-pert, and for the probing social essays of Fred Wiseman...
...Everyone was going broke...
...Its showcase project provides financial information to Merrill Lynch offices and clients by using the vertical blanking signal—the little black band that shows up when the TV image starts flipping...
...Whenever the Public Interest Video battled their way to the air through now-defunct public documentary series...
...The AFL-CIO's video arm, Labor Institute for Public Affairs, distributes its studiously balanced documentary series, "America Works," on commercial stations looking for free or low-cost ways to fulfill public service requirements...
...It also offers teleconferencing for the business world and satellite services for such corporations as Bell and Howell and Post-Newsweek...
...Public stations were encouraged to expand their fund-raising efforts and to ease restrictions on the showing of corporate contributors' logos...
...More important, it challenged the notion of advance funding—the "insulation" that protects public television from political retaliation for controversial programming— by demanding rescission of current funds...
...Sometimes, they also pay for the fund-raising appeals themselves...
...America Works" doesn't show up on public stations because of conflict-of-interest underwriting rules rigorously enforced against labor and public-interest groups...
...Frontline," the investigative documentary series, often tackles controversial subjects, but it presents them in a traditional BBC-style leisurely essay format...
...An example is the proposed series, "No Sacred Cows," promoted as an electronic "op-ed page...
...It has never been clear what public television is or what it ought to be...
...A working democracy needs an informed public, not an entertained one...
...Last year, one station in Indiana simply folded...
...The trouble is that not everyone can pay...
...Even if Congress is willing to buck Presidential displeasure and restore a few million dollars to CPB's budget, it isn't about to quadruple or quintuple the appropriation...
...The audience that likes "Masterpiece Theater" also likes ABC's sepia-toned "A Streetcar Named Desire...
...And although children's programming has always gone to the back of the budget bus, public television is still producing the only national programming of substance for children, including an innovative literacy series, "Reading Rainbow...
...If we were short of ideas at the outset, we could check with the many independent film and video producers and the community activists around the country who already have done pilot research for such an era with their own scanty funds and on the access channels of cable television...
...In addition, PBS Enterprises has beamed commercials from its satellite to local public stations, which record them and ship them on to commercial stations...
...programs that criticize the accuracy and perspective of mainstream media...
...Information could be used, not just osmotically absorbed...
...The current White House proposal of $100 million for CPB in fiscal 1987 is being taken as a joke, since it barely matches the amount budgeted for the armed services' 102 military bands...
...Nationally produced public affairs programming sometimes looks more cautious on public than on commercial television...
...It proposed slashing the CPB budget's Federal share, which had reached an all-time high of $172 million in fiscal 1981...
...Public television has even benefited from cable, since public signals must be carried on it as a basic service...
...Public television had its highest audience ever in November 1983 and prime-time programs are drawing between 3 and 7 per cent of the viewing audience...
...Then came the Presidency of Richard Nixon...
...with any luck, it will bring commercial side-benefits as well...
...It could provide us with public forums on critical issues...
...Genteel commercials fit right in...
...those backers want the credit at the beginning of the hour for having helped to boost culture in America...
...In New York City, WNYC-once a major producer of black cultural programs—gave up its noncommercial status, leasing all but four hours of its programming day to commercial users...
...But then why would they...
...shows about the traditions and customs of the people about whom sitcoms are never made, in formats that don't turn them into National Geographic nature studies...
...There is, for instance, no regular backing for productions made by and speaking directly from America's minority communities...
...Corporate and foundation contributions readily meet the costs of popular programs...
...Republican Sonia Landau is praised by liberal board holdovers for her defense of Federal funding, while Richard Brookhiser, a former speechwriter for Vice President Bush, is given a polite hearing but has little impact on the board...
...And this has meant setting priorities throughout the system to ensure survival...
...Public television no longer attempts to provide an electronic forum for freedom of expression, or to foment diversity of opinion, or to practice pluralism...
...What they are not, by definition, is controversial...
...Not everyone in public television is persuaded that commercials are a good idea...
...The public television system is now a labyrinthine bureaucracy in which good intentions are liberally mixed with exquisite caution...
...As PBS beats the bushes for commercial clients, it doesn't waste time worrying whether the public's resources are being used in the public interest When you watch "The Business of America," a challenging probe of our economic crisis to be aired early in May on public stations, you may well see it in conjunction with a "balancing" program featuring Alvin Toffler singing the praises of high technology...
...And it would always be in the thick of conflict over just what "the public" and its interests are...
...On a station like Chicago's vigilantly middle-of-the-road WTTW, where President William McCarter has been chafing under Federal restrictions for years, the difference between public and private television is not one of concept but of tone...
...It could be, even in this electronically plugged-in age, an instrument of democracy...
...Such cultural program services as CBS Cable and the Entertainment Channel—which seemed so eager to rival public television by presenting ballet, opera, and other high-culture offerings— proved too costly and went belly-up...
...The arts, humanities, and communications media are regarded on Capitol Hill as relatively cheap crowd-pleas-ers, and appropriations have regularly exceeded the Administration's minimal funding requests...
...by Chicago independent Lor-etta Smith, has never been aired, despite promises...
...Nixon was outraged at what he perceived as a left-liberal slant in public-affairs programming...
...Video artists who can't find jobs with ad agencies or computer firms are ghettoized in gallery showings...
...There is, in fact, much confusion over what freedom of expression means on public television...
...Still, much of what shows up on public television is thoughtful, and most of it beats "Three's Company" or "Real People...
...In "Magic!!!," proposed by KCA-TV of St...
...Ironically, the programs that garner the greatest number of public television viewers, the crowd-pleasers and therefore the ones that work to pull in subscribers' pledges, are not the programs subscribers are paying for...
...Not only has public television successfully played hardball with a hostile Administration, it has also scored notable gains with the general public...
...Congressional ire at the first tactic led to the law providing for advance funding...
...In more than half the nation's homes, someone tunes in to a public station at least once during an average week, and in 1982 public television total income increased by almost 10 per cent over the year before...
...Independent producers who investigate issues in their own style, or who try to present the perspective of the participants in a controversy, often find themselves frozen out...
...More and more programs are frankly designed for wide-audience appeal—a process indistinguishable from the one that governs commercial television The impact on programming has been profound...
...Small stations and the CPB board are both arguing against acceptance of commercials, despite a pro-advertising appeal to Congress filed by larger stations on their own...
...Once we had a public television system that was really accountable to the public, we could begin to find out what a system of that sort might look like...
...Many stations in the Middle West hailed the recent comment of Joe Welling, director of the Ohio University Telecommunications Center: "The more we comport ourselves as being like commercial broadcasters, the more our reason for being, our difference, our distinction is weakened...
...Polaroid backed the new productions, and in return received some specially made short segments that can be offered to commercial stations as soft news in exchange for advertising time...
...Advertising is only the most visible aspect of public television's drift toward commercialization...
...Conservatives who had earned their credentials at such right-wing bastions as the Heritage Foundation and National Review were appointed to a shrunken CPB governing board...
...as they watch their traditional audience being chipped away by independent stations and rival services, they have an ever keener interest in keeping the public stations out of direct competition for advertising dollars...
...Some ingredients are missing from the public schedule, though...
...Even unconventional programming no longer stays in the public television bailiwick...
...And the evocative story of a courageous black woman, "Where Did You Get That Woman...
...Government, wary even of imposing any restrictions on licensees, came late—in 1967—and only half-heartedly to the structure that forms the backbone of most nations' television systems: a national public broadcasting service...
...Paul, Minnesota, magician Harry Black-stone Jr...
...But there hasn't been as much structural damage as the 1981 bluster would have led one to expect...
...candidate debates that aren't brokered by celebrities and that aren't confined to the two major parties...
...It's more difficult to place the blame for what's wrong or to find a way to fix it...
...And that, of course, is just how commercial television works...
...Among public television's biggest backers, ironically, are the commercial networks...
...Julia is now Network covers an antinuclear rally or a Solidarity Day protest, it must construct a new ad-hoc network to carry its reports...
...Meanwhile, local and regional news programs are vanishing from the public stations...
...Hodgepodge funding—local governments, corporations, foundations, and individuals make up the difference—guarantees that no one will be held accountable except the accountants...
...Why, the report argued, should the public pay for the entertainment of a few...
...Public television's major problems stem from the harsh economic facts of patchwork funding, but there's truth in Bill McCarter's tough talk: "Congress just isn't going to build a BBC...
...These shows are often well produced, attractive, and popular...
...And every piece of video journalism offered to public television must run a gauntlet of lawyers who scrutinize every idea and image for "balance," objectivity, fairness—and, let's face it, potential controversy...
...But the second tactic achieved its desired effect, since local stations are more likely than national headquarters to be run by conservative managers, and since stations typically have fewer resources for public affairs research and enterprising reporting...
...The producers hope this show will attract foreign distribution and possible pay-TV sales, and that it will provide upbeat pledge-week entertainment...
...What started as public television's covert commercialism has begun to come out of the closet—especially among the larger stations that could survive as viewer-supported entities even if there were no public system...
...With the aid of a $ 150 million grant from the Annenberg School of Communications, public television has launched an educational series designed for nonbroadcast and limited broadcast use...
...Congress compromised on the rescission issue, preserving advance funding for 1984 while cutting it for 1983...
...Sharon Sopher's controversial "Blood and Sand: War in the Sahara" and Helena Solberg-Ladd's "From the Ashes...
...What he pruned away was, by and large, the innovative and the offbeat...
...This particularly galls the Association of Independent Video and Filmmakers, which lobbied successfully for a 1978 ruling requiring public television to reserve "substantial" programming funds for independent producers...
...Perhaps it would not be good-looking, and probably would not be consistent...
...This, according to California Newsreel filmmakers, was the price that had to be paid for getting their independent documentary on the air...
...According to producer Michael Mears, it would assert the right to hold any opinion, no matter how unorthodox, in a democracy...
...CPB decided to pour most of its money into prime-time series produced by large stations—such programs as "Frontline," "Great Performances," and "American Playhouse...
...More and more programs are frankly designed for wide-audience appeal—a process indistinguishable from the one that governs commercial television...
...Discouraged Native American activists point to the difference between a program on Navaho weaving and a program that reports from the Native American community...
...Public programming is now being designed for its charm-appeal to sensitive subscribers...
...Still, the public medium showed much promise in its early years, undertaking experiments that were as exciting as they were risky...
...The diversification of public television isn't entirely in a commercial mode, though...
...there was a storm coming," explains Lewis Freedman, a producer noted for innovative and offbeat programming, who headed the Program Fund at that time...
...The British pay $ 11.29 a year, and Canadians a whopping $ 18.65...
...in fact, many didn't even notice...
...While public television increasingly takes its cue from commercial television, commercial broadcasters are quick to pick up on the public system's successes...
...Contributing to the unexpected vigor of public television is the near-collapse of cable programming...
...Who is the public, and what constitutes the public interest...
...Not the people at PBS Enterprises...
...He threatened to withhold Federal funds, and he pushed through some structural changes designed to decentralize control of the medium...
...The United States is one of very few television-watching nations that have allowed commercial networks to define the medium...
...there is no time slot for them and no money...
...What individuals' dollars usually support is the unglamorous day-to-day cost of keeping a station running...
...Advertising would not only be "good news to those who do not believe in public institutions," Welling added, but it could stifle programs that "do not attract the audiences in which advertisers are interested...
...Viewers rarely complained, the stations noted...
...performs tricks and plays a shell game with the former president of the Public Broadcasting System, Larry Grossman...
...Irritated independents note that the prestigious journalism awards won by public television usually are for such genuinely independent productions as Meg Switzgable's "In Our Water," not for in-house "Frontline" shows...
...The Reagan era has brought new austerity, as much a product of recession as of chilling political winds...
...You've got to start with middle-class programming," he says, "because that's where the most people are at...
...Is Merrill Lynch the best possible user of the data delivery service potential in public television...
...But it also just might plunge in and do what commercial television never has done: provide information that people need if they're to play an active role in their own public lives...
...What public television is looking for in the way of programming is the same thing it is selling with a $ 10 million ad campaign visible in such magazines as Forbes and Scientific American—TV Worth Paying For...
...It certainly would not emerge tidily and full-blown...
...It's easy to complain about public television—almost as easy as it is to switch the dial at fund-raising time...
...Small stations can't attract as much advertising as large ones, and stand to lose proportionally more if Federal funding is cut off...
...This profit-making subsidiary isn't big—perhaps $4 million gross in 1984—but it is pioneering ways to turn public television's billion-dollar investment in physical plant facilities into profit...
...Warner Amex, a cable giant, estimates it will show $70 million in losses for 1983...
...But public television may face more serious danger right now as a result of its success than it ever faced as a result of right-wing pressure...
...last year, 60 per cent of them cut local programming and suffered staff reductions...
...In 1982, seven stations eagerly volunteered to take part in an experimental use of commercials...
...Several of its most prestigious recent projects have been in education...
...Some of CPB's new board members Pat Aufderheide, based in Washington, D.C., is a contributing editor of In These Times...
...Independent filmmakers weren't interested, arguing that "shock value" wasn't the same thing as reasoned discourse, and station managers simply refused to put their purchasing dollars behind a show that might alienate subscribers by advocating nudity or abortion or communism just for the therapeutic value of open discourse...
...And that is what it would take to make public television a taxpayer-funded —and, therefore, taxpayer-accountable— alternative...
...In the same vein, the Julia Child cooking series has been upscaled...
...Public television, dependent on the kindness of strangers, has found that it cannot afford to ask what the difference may be between serving the public and finding an audience...
...have not been as ideologically fractious as might have been feared...
...They stay safely in the middle ground of established "quality," whether it's Baryshnikov's ballet or a made-for-television version of Thomas Mann's Buddenbrooks...
...Well, who wants to know...
...When archconservative William Hanley was sneaked in as a recess appointment, the CPB actually launched a lawsuit against the Administration, but dropped it when his term was allowed to run out with no further action...
...The new hour-long McNeil/Lehrer program, backed with promotion funds from AT&T, expands news coverage along lines developed by networks...
...After eighteen months, they presented a glowing report, citing increases of up to 10 per cent in station income...
...And it watches "Nicholas Nickleby" and "King Lear"—shown on ad-hoc commercial networks arranged by corporations...
...Quaking after the first White House volleys, the CPB's own Program Fund made a strategic choice in 1981...
...As PBS employees beat the bushes for commercial clients, they don't waste much time worrying whether the public's resources are being used in the public interest...
...In Japan, citizens ante up $11.73 per capita for public broadcasting...
...independent documentaries that come out of the many communities and social groups that now have no effective voice...
...But in the United States, the Federal cost of public television has slipped in recent years from about seventy-six cents to fifty-nine cents per capita...
...But then, with a genuinely experimental and provocative system of public television, we might find out that it's possible to have both, m...
...Nicaragua" seen serving dinner in elegant surroundings, and has been joined by a wine expert...
...Freedman still believes he did the right thing...
...BY PAT AUFDERHEIDE The contribution of public broadcasting to society is debatable," the Reagan Administration declared in a 1981 report recommending drastic cuts in funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB...
...The season's first Presidential debate, broadcast by public stations, was hosted by commercial celebrities Ted Koppel and Phil Donahue...
...It would be possible to promote and value discussion...
...The system also has an aggressive entrepreneurial wing in PBS Enterprises, a new division with several branches and a staff of twenty-five...
...It would feature individuals with extremist and contentious beliefs challenging viewers to reexamine their own assumptions and values...
Vol. 48 • May 1984 • No. 5
