Rock ’n roll pilgrimage

Admired series disappears into copyright limbo
Followup, 2008

The series contained so many musical clips that the producers apparently didn’t want to spend what it would take to extend their broadcast rights. For years, as a result, the series has not been available for broadcast or for purchase on DVD or videocassette. As a result, PBS’s online store began selling videos of Time-Warner’s rock history series not originally made for public TV, The History of Rock ‘N Roll. New York Times critic John O’Connor preferred the BBC/WGBH series. Buying extensive new rights to resume broadcasts of the famed doc series Eyes on the Prizecost hundreds of thousands of dollars in 2006.

Frontline: an ‘essential’ mechanism for telling serious stories

Frontline sometimes comes on like a multimedia prosecutor, revealing the evidence in pictures, voices and logic, and driving toward a conclusion. It’s usually a very sobering conclusion, too, because the series has increasingly specialized in reminding us of our society’s worst failings — war, cheating and lying in high places, racism, crime and predation of all kinds. On Nov. 5, [1991], Charles Stuart’s “Don King, Unauthorized” went after the boxing promoter — a man with two killings in his little-known past, who has collaborated with the media to paint himself as a harmless jokester with a funny haircut. On Nov.

Consultants advise spending shift to strengthen national PTV programs

[The Boston Consulting Group study for CPB] … gave public broadcasters an unfamiliar profit/loss sketch of their major functions. Local program production, which the report calls PTV’s largest single activity, takes 35 percent of its spending but brings in 16 percent of its revenue and accounts for 7 percent of its air time

David M. Davis memo, 1958: ‘This will not be just another television program’

David M. Davis, an early TV production executive at Boston’s WGBH, pushes his producers to excel in a 1958 memo. He later became a major grantmaker for the Ford Foundation and chief exec of PBS’s longrunning drama showcase, American Playhouse. Memorandum July 23, 1958

To: Tv producer-directors
From: David M. Davis
Subject: Creativity

I have a great concern that we are not all utilizing the creative imagination that we have to make our programs interesting, stimulating, and even exciting. It seems to me that many of us are in a rather deep rut on stock format types of programs, and that real attempt at creation is not taking place. I think that the lifestyle series which will be assigned to each producer on a rotating basis during the coming season will be very helpful in this regard since each producer will have an opportunity to develop his own program in the direction in which he wishes to go.