KUNC
Friends group keeps control of Colorado’s KUNC
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A 20-day campaign to retain local control of KUNC generated more than $2 million in pledges from some 2,000 supporters.
Programs/Content
PBS version of ‘reality TV’ distills drama from real life
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As provocatively staged “reality TV” series explode on the commercial networks, PBS is expanding its own slate of what it calls “observational documentaries” in the network’s reinvention under President Pat Mitchell. In April [2001], American High, a fast-paced docusoap series dropped by Fox last summer, will lead off a new weekly PBS strand targeted to teens and young adults. Then, in the fall, Senior Year, a 13-part series that PBS execs promoted to television critics during the January press tour, will take over the same Wednesday 10 p.m. timeslot. This summer P.O.V. also will present Fred Wiseman’s 1968 film High School, a national broadcast debut that was also promoted at the press tour. With American High and Senior Year, PBS aims to create a new strand, “so the audience can find it and know it’s going to be there,” and keep tuning in, said John Wilson, senior programming v.p. PBS has scheduled repeats of American High through the summer, and is considering a second run of Senior Year after its debut.
Programs/Content
Better Saturday competition seen for the kids audience
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In a bid to expand its children’s franchise into an increasingly competitive daypart, PBS on Sept. 30 will launch Bookworm Bunch, a block of six new animated series slated for Saturday mornings. Produced by Toronto-based Nelvana Communications, Bookworm Bunch is PBS’s first offering of original children’s fare for weekends — when stations traditionally program their own selection of how-to programs and other fare. PBS created the block as a distinctive alternative to the rock ’em-sock ’em, boy-oriented fare aired by other broadcast networks on Saturdays. “It’s a tremendous thing that PBS is doing — something that’s almost revolutionary — in presenting American children with an alternative to what I call ‘toxic television,'” said Rosemary Wells, author of Timothy Goes to School, one of six children’s books to be adapted for TV in the new PBS Kids block.
Programs/Content
PBS President Pat Mitchell: ‘I think I’ll be learning every day of the year’
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Since she was hired as PBS president early in February [2000], Pat Mitchell has met with 60 or 70 of public TV’s managers, and station board leaders as well, in trips to stations and at the APTS Annual Meeting. To oversee station relations, she hired the network’s former board vice chairman, Wayne Godwin, away from Cincinnati’s WCET (he starts work this week at PBS). And she’s expected to announce further initiatives starting next weekend at the PBS Annual Meeting in Nashville. Mitchell, a longtime producer in commercial TV, was previously head of Time Warner’s CNN Productions, based in Atlanta. She still has yet to pack her household and move to the D.C. area.
System/Policy
For the first time, a producer leads PBS
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PBS’s new president is Pat Mitchell, departing head of CNN Productions and
Time Inc. Television, whose appointment was ratified by the PBS Board Feb. 4. She is the first producer to take PBS’s top job, and is as comfortable in
front of cameras as behind them, having performed in numerous on-air roles. Her major projects for CNN included the Peabody-winning Cold War,
a 24-part documentary series that she executive produced with Jeremy Isaacs,
and Millenium: A Thousand Years of History, also supervised with Isaacs. A search committee reached an “enthusiastically unanimous” decision to recommend
Mitchell as the best candidate for the post last week, said Wayne Godwin,
committee co-chair and president of WCET in Cincinnati.
Programs/Content
Nonprofits courting DBS for set-aside channels
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A ground-floor chance to secure channel space on direct broadcast satellites is opening up for noncommercial organizations that have the wherewithal to deliver educational or informational public-service programming. DirecTV, the largest DBS system, has set a Sept. 1 [1999] application deadline for prospective programmers to be considered in its initial selection of new channels. PBS, Internews, and Free Speech TV are among the nonprofits vying for the space. DBS services–a once-crowded field of competitors that has merged down to two major players–are under orders from the Federal Communications Commission to allocate 4 percent of their video channel capacity for noncommercial educational programming.
Children's programming
Is Tinky a gay role model for boys, or a purple toddler in full play?
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International stardom has not been easy for Tinky Winky, the Teletubby recently “outed” by the Rev. Jerry Falwell as a gay role-model for children. First there was a big flap in England, shortly after the show’s 1997 debut, over the dismissal of the actor playing Tinky Winky. Producers said he had been too rambunctious on the set. But the actor apparently endeared himself to viewers by flamboyantly waving the now-notorious red handbag, and did not go quietly. The Sun, Britain’s largest tabloid, launched a campaign to reinstate the actor, but to no avail.
Documentaries
For subjects, documentary is “strong form of family therapy”
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Various people tried to prepare Juanita Buschkoetter for the public reaction to The Farmer’s Wife, filmmaker David Sutherland’s cinema verite depiction of the real-life struggle to keep her husband’s farm and their marriage afloat, but the reponse to the show’s debut this fall was far beyond her expectations. “I had no idea how many people would actually watch it,” she said in a recent interview — let alone the folks who would go far out of their way to drive by the Buschkoetter house, or send the family generous gifts. “Since the film, people come by to take pictures, pull in and talk,” Buschkoetter added. It’s gotten so she doesn’t want to leave her three daughters at home alone anymore. Since the eldest is now 12, she previously had found it safe to do so.
People
Henry Hampton: ‘He endured because his vision was so important’
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Henry Hampton, the visionary filmmaker who documented the history of the civil rights movement with the landmark PBS series Eyes on the Prize, died Nov. 22 [1998]. He was 58. Hampton recovered from lung cancer some nine years ago, but complications from the treatment that sent the disease into remission claimed his life. The official cause of his death was myelodysplasia, a bone-marrow disease.
Documentaries
‘Frontline’s first happy ending, ever’
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At first glance, the girding storyline is whether Darrel and Juanita Buschkoetter, a farming couple raising three young daughters in Lawrence, Neb., can realize Darrel’s dream of farming his father’s land …
Programs/Content
CTW finds its cable outlet: a venture with Nickelodeon
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In a partnership that aims to position educational children’s programs at the forefront
of the digital cable movement, Viacom’s Nickelodeon cable network and Children’s
Television Workshop last week announced plans to launch a new network for kids, to be
called Noggin. The long-anticipated channel will feature programs from each partner’s library,
including old episodes of the venerable Sesame Street, to serve both preschoolers
and school-aged children. Early plans call for it to run without commercials, drawing
revenues solely from cable-operator fees. “In an era when many television networks have abandoned their responsibility to do
more than just entertain, we are extremely proud to be joining with the long-standing
leader in kids’ educational programming, CTW, to bring Noggin to life,” said Herb
Scannell, president of Nickelodeon. “We hope to make learning cool, through
Noggin.”
Programs/Content
Eh-oh!
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Over the hills and far away, Teletubbies come to play. In Teletubbyland, a lush green landscape of undulating hills spotted with clumps of bright flowers, the world is safe and fun — a place to explore and learn through play. We know this because the sun baby, who rises over the set at the beginning of each episode, gurgles, coos and shrieks with pleasure at the adventures of the Teletubbies, four alien yet adorable, toddlerlike beings who live there, cared for and entertained by otherworldly gadgets. Teletubbies, the groundbreaking BBC children’s series that’s prompted both an outcry and a massive consumer craze since its debut last March debut in Britain, is about to arrive in the PBS schedule, April 6. The series is based on the premise — already much-debated in Britain — that very young children are watching television but don’t understand it, so they might as well have a show that’s designed for them.
Programs/Content
Teletubbies in Britain: craze, controversy and consumer frenzy
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Teletubbies haven’t officially landed in the U.S. public TV schedule yet, but they’ve already roused controversy in Britain and landed a great big licensing deal over here. Hasbro, makers of Playskool Baby and other major toy brands, will introduce a range of Teletubbies products–soft toys, figures, games, puzzles, bath toys and other items–by next fall. “It was important to find a partner who understands that young children need to be nurtured, not exploited,” said Kenn Viselman, president of the itsy bitsy Entertainment Co., which holds licensing rights to Teletubbies in the U.S. and Canada. Teletubbies, the children’s TV program that sparked both a craze and outrage in Britain with its debut on BBC2 this year, will begin airing on PBS’s Ready to Learn Service in April. If the British response to the show is any indication of what to expect from U.S. audiences, brace yourselves for a consumer grabfest of purple dinosaur proportions.
Programs/Content
‘Something was very wrong’
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Four days before the May 27 airing of “Innocence Lost: The Plea,” Frontline’s third documentary on the Little Rascals child-abuse case in Edenton, N.C., the prosecutor announced she was dropping all remaining charges in the long and troubling legal action. For producer-director Ofra Bikel and her colleagues at Frontline, the decision brought a rare sense of gratification. Over the past seven years, Bikel’s persistent scrutiny of a prosecution she had come to believe was unjust has made a big difference in many people’s lives. Whether the effect has been for the better or the worse depends on how close you live to Edenton, and which side of the Little Rascals case you want to believe. “It’s not very often that a television program can set people free,” commented David Fanning, Frontline’s senior executive producer.
Development
‘The question of length is really settled’
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A movement among big-market stations to accept 30-second underwriting spots is turning up the heat on PBS to resolve longstanding discrepancies between national underwriting policies and more permissive practices at local stations. Some say six of the top ten stations are accepting the longer spots; others count 19 of the top 20. Among the stations now accepting 30-second underwriting messages are WNET, New York; KCET, Los Angeles; KQED, San Francisco; WCET, Cincinnati; WTVS, Detroit, and KRMA, Denver. The national underwriting that directly supports production of national programs has slipped in recent years, while local stations’ spot sales have grown–probably surpassing the total for national underwriting in recent years. “We can reach 80 percent of the U.S. population with 30-second messages on public television today,” said Keith Thompson, president of Public Broadcast Marketing, a firm that specializes in spot sales on public radio and TV stations.
System/Policy
Having ‘done the job,’ Carlson will depart CPB
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Richard Carlson, a Republican credited with defending public broadcasting from attacks by members of his party, announced Jan. 24 that he will leave the CPB presidency June 30 or before. He opposed overlapping stations and pushed new rules to limit grants to them–winning support among politicians but losing the backing of many station execs. He spoke up for objectivity and ideological balance in programs, while spurning demands that CPB take a more intrusive role in programming to detect and correct imbalance. He trimmed the CPB bureaucracy and paid a quarter of the staff to leave, changing its human face, with consequences not yet known.
Why public media?
‘It just feels like hearts coming out of my head’
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What do viewers and listeners have to say about public broadcasting’s purposes? You can work backward from their letters and calls to stations and producers about the field’s achievements. Relief from yappy dogsDear NPR,
Ever since I arrived in Ukraine in June, I have suffered acute NPR news withdrawals. Sure, I miss my family, my friends, and all those “things” that have come to represent my previous life in America — hot showers, clean tap water, brown sugar for my oatmeal and lighted stairwells. But I suspect that it is the lack of those familiar voices that woke me up each morning in Salem, Ore., that has made my transition in this country most difficult. Please send those tapes soon.
Development
Station coffers gain from advances in the pledging arts
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For the second year in a row, spring pledge revenues are up for public broadcasting stations around the country.The gains are a welcome relief to fundraisers throughout the system, who face the challenge of improving revenues from all other sources as federal funding declines. Development professionals from both television and radio say their recent successes are largely due to good programming and the increasing sophistication with which stations conduct on-air campaigns.Propelled in part by a sleeper special “Les Miserables in Concert,” public TV’s drive set a dramatic new record of more than $50 million raised nationally. 1992
1994
1996
Dollars pledged
$39.5 million
$38.3 million
$50.2 million
Number of pledges
598,150
525,082
603,724
Average pledge
$66.14
$73.03
$83.14
Break minutes
291,374
331.357
340,795
Dollars per minute
$135.78
$115.73
$147.28
Stations reporting
133
135
155
Source: PBS
Tallies aren’t available for public radio, but stations generally report results that kept pace with or bested the inflation rate. While many stations set new records, the gains were mostly modest compared to last year’s, when congressional threats to public broadcasting’s federal funding spurred donations. Big stations around the country set aggressive goals based on last year’s results, and fell short.
Programs/Content
Job description: watch your step, make magic
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PBS’s chief program executive is a high-profile job that comes with a salary cap, a heavy workload and no excess of resources. But for seven months the c.p.e. has been a high-profile vacancy; the network is still seeking a permanent successor for Jennifer Lawson, who left the job in March with her deputy John Grant. Though many station programmers are pleased with the performance of the interim proprietors of the National Program Service, mainly former No. 3 programmer Kathy Quattrone, they eagerly await word that a new program impresario has been hired. So much about the future of public TV depends upon the distinctiveness, noncommercial values and viability of the NPS, and the c.p.e. is largely responsible for safeguarding those assets.
Development
House leader demands a plan; Senate backs higher numbers
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Having emerged from the first 100 days of the 104th Congress with most of its advance funding intact, public broadcasting is entering the most crucial stage in renegotiating its relationship with the lawmakers. Rep. Jack Fields (R-Tex.), chairman of the House telecommunications subcommittee, moved up the schedule for that stage in an April 5 meeting with top pubcasters, asking them to submit by the end of the month their plans for replacing the annual CPB appropriations that congressional Republicans want to eliminate. The Senate, meanwhile, declined to accept House leadership, voting April 6 to continue CPB funding at this year’s $285.6 million level for the next two years. CPB funding was one of the major sticking points that delayed final action on the Senate bill, as conservative Republicans sought bigger cuts and Democrats pushed for smaller ones. The legislation goes next to a House-Senate conference committee, which will have to hammer out substantial differences in the two chambers’ proposed cuts for CPB and other programs. (The conference will be scheduled after the House returns from recess May 1; the Senate returns a week earlier.)
While substantial CPB funding for fiscal years 1996 and 1997 seems likely, the big question is now whether the field will receive any federal aid at all in 1998 and beyond.