Originally published in Current, Aug. 19, 2002
"The best of American television can be traced to this one man," said Nova Executive Producer Paula Apsell, referring to her boss and the latest winner of CPB’s annual Ralph Lowell Award—Peter S. McGhee, who retires this month as v.p. of national production at WGBH, Boston.
McGhee accepted the medal at the PBS Annual Meeting in June as recognition "of my work, and of your work, of all our work" [text]. He has overseen and in many cases launched some of public TV’s most ambitious documentaries as well as enduringly popular entertainments—no less than a third of the PBS schedule.
He worked in public TV nearly four decades, since four years after earning his master’s degree in journalism at Columbia University. McGhee joined National Educational Television, New York City, in 1964 and moved to WGBH in 1969, becoming manager of its national production effort in 1975. Since then he has helped build on the earlier successes of Nova and Masterpiece Theatre while launching Frontline, American Experience, Antiques Roadshow and numerous landmark limited series.
McGhee gave this interview in his office on vice presidents’ row at WGBH. Along the walls were things he’s been given: an azure-painted chunk of the Berlin Wall in a frame and a large photo of McGhee in his youth, displaying a striped bass he caught. He spoke with Current editors Karen Everhart and Steve Behrens. This is an edited transcript.
‘What we try to do . . . is say something new’
In your Lowell acceptance speech you said commercial broadcasting, because it chases the largest possible audiences, has the effect of embalming fluid on the public—and that’s even worse than being a vast wasteland!
I don’t think it’s an idle wasteland. I think it’s an active evil in society. Now those are strong words, but I think it is a destructive entertainment.
It’s a combination of the mesmerizing quality and the mindless entertainment. It displaces the possibility that people will do other things that might be more valuable to them and their families—like talking to one another, or raising their children, or any number of things, even becoming active in civic life.
Obviously, there are exceptions. There is good in commercial television and in cable, but on the whole I think the net value of commercial television and cable is negative.
If I didn’t work in television and just watched it, I would still have that opinion.
Nevertheless, commercial TV is the norm in this country, so public TV has always had to justify its existence. Now its opponents say that it’s not different enough to bother pledging or sending tax money to CPB, and some insiders worry that they’re right. Is public TV distinctive enough to make the case for support?
From my perspective, what public television programs can do, what they should do and what we try to do here—is to say something new. To not simply regurgitate what is already known. In our history programs and science programs, we try to actually advance understanding beyond where it was up to that point. That sounds grandiose, but in fact that is what we try to do.
That’s why the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Science Foundation give money to us. When NEH gives us a grant, among the conditions we have to meet is that we’re actually advancing scholarship.
And your ongoing series sometimes revisit topics two years later or five years later, when new information turns up in research or in the news.
I think it is a distinguishing feature of public television that it does that. Distinguishing it from the History Channel or Discovery, which essentially take things that are already known and re-hash them as entertainment.
Whether it’s history or current affairs, we’re trying to go beyond what is known. It may be very modest in a biography of Lyndon Johnson or Einstein—but we try to advance understanding of that figure.
I don’t know any other way to do it but to ask, "What are the interesting, important issues?," try to be educated about what they are, and try to find people who can excavate in those areas in an original, interesting way, so that the program contributes to the viewers’ understanding.
That’s where I think the case for public television rests. We are the only users of the spectrum that at bottom don’t make decisions based upon bottom-line considerations.
We have a kind of immunity that no commercial enterprise has. We may have our own vulnerabilities but are immune from the imperatives of the commercial world. By which I don’t mean that we don’t have to make income meet expenses, but we’re not subject to the threats of stock- or bond-holders.
Are there ways that public TV should try to further distinguish itself?
The highest and best purpose of public television is to be a gadfly to society. It would be best if public television could be a more constant annoyance to a relatively complacent and self-satisfied country.
Now, the conundrum is how could such an endeavor be funded by that same country.
Is the distinction of public TV visible enough to the average viewer?
I don’t know anybody who watches both who can’t tell the difference between public television and commercial television.
The vice chairman of PBS said recently at a board meeting that the public is confused about commercialism on public TV because when they watch the History Channel, they see "PBS-quality shows" that are interrupted by ads. And this makes them think that PBS is becoming more commercial. And this vice chairman of PBS was a media guy—Alberto Ibarguen, publisher of the Miami Herald.
Yes, he’s a media guy. I don’t imagine that he watches the History Channel. If you watch what we do and you watch what they do, you won’t be confused about which is public television.
How much does it blur or damage PBS’s identity when its programs go on to other channels, as Sesame Street and This Old House reruns have done?
I can see that in the best of all possible worlds public television would hold on to them, and the producers wouldn’t have to fund their new productions from the re-licensing of their old productions. But you get this effect where public television is not able to keep up with the cost of producing new programs. The producers become co-funders.
To support programs for public television, WGBH pumps in something like $10 million from overseas distribution of old programs, home video sales and from commercial activities that we engender. A good chunk of it has been the licensing of This Old House on cable and in commercial syndication.
That $10 million is not coming from public television. If the system could pay for its appetites, then Sesame Workshop, for example, wouldn’t be forced to find other means of going on producing.
I’m not saying that it’s great that This Old House can now be seen on other channels, but the things that it has enabled us to do in the way of new programming make it a net benefit for the system.
How often do you have to weigh those kinds of decisions—of licensing a library to someone else to develop income for new programs?
This Old House is a bit of an exception. It is the most popular program after Antiques Roadshow, and it has never had any system money in it. So as a producer we have been free to treat it that way. We are not free to sell broadcast licenses outside public television for programs that the system has shared in the costs of producing. We sell them abroad or on video, but we don’t distribute them on cable or elsewhere. The income we do get from them generally is shared with PBS.
The interview continues Ratings and system funding
Web page posted Sept. 4, 2002
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