Programs/Content

Hull dived into the PBS archives, found himself among old friends

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After a year of combing through PBS’s archives, Ron Hull has uncovered a treasure-trove of programs worth reviving one way or another. Though he still spends part of each week in Nebraska, where he teaches a university class in international broadcasting, Hull has made considerable progress on his special assignment at PBS headquarters in Virginia: he has read through some 12,000 old file folders, come up with 850 programs that might be useful, and begun the gargantuan task of screening the first 10 minutes of these myriad possibilities. He’s been assisted in this by Nancy Dillon, assistant director of program data and analysis. The revival prospects that he’s found could come back through the National Program Service, be syndicated through PBS Select or PBS Plus or be offered as fundraising programs. When Bob Ottenhoff, PBS executive v.p., recruited Hull for this assignment last spring, he also asked the veteran programmer to look for shows that could be released on home video, sold overseas, or packaged for a dedicated cable service. The idea was to cull the archives for programs that could find new broadcast audiences or generate new revenue streams for PBS.

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PTV Weekend proposal by Lawrence Grossman, 1997

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In May 1997, former PBS President Lawrence K. Grossman put forth results of a study backed by the Markle Foundation. He proposed a compromise on corporate support: Public TV would be permitted to raise needed production money by selling on-air advertising two nights a week. James A. Fellows examined the issues in an analysis published by the fledgling Hartford Gunn Institute. Current also carried several news stories on the project’s origins. Current’s June 23, 1997, issue described the PTV Weekend (a.k.a. P2) proposal and featured a debate on the experiment between two station leaders.