12 AR THE NEW YORK TIMES, SUNDAY, OCTOBER 25, 2020Television
The greatest hits of PBS, which was formed
50 years ago to serve what were then
known as educational television stations,
could broadly be described as instructive.
“Sesame Street” and Julia Child and Ken
Burns, no argument. “Downton Abbey” and
“Antiques Roadshow,” well, they’re primers
on the management of inherited wealth,
perhaps a topic of some importance to the
service’s viewership.
I jest, a little. As a more-than-full-time TV
watcher I have a tremendous fondness and
respect for the Public Broadcasting Service
— and for the public-TV ecosystem that sur-
rounds it. They’re based on something PBS
and its member stations do more thor-
oughly than anyone else in TV: educate us
to be better citizens.
Given PBS’s nature, that education is not
a coordinated, eye-in-the-sky effort. The
service doesn’t make TV programs, and the
news, public-affairs and cultural shows at
its heart are produced by different mem-
bers of its amicable but competitive family.
“American Experience” (history),
“Nova” (science) and “Frontline” (inves-
tigative journalism, occasionally in collabo-
ration with The New York Times) come
from WGBH in Boston. The no-nonsense
daily newscast “NewsHour” comes from
WETA in Washington during the week and
from WNET in New York on weekends;
WNET also produces the interview show
“Amanpour & Company” with CNN. Los
Angeles’s KCET provides the environmen-
tal magazine “Earth Focus.”
Other parts of the mosaic are filled in by
noncommercial organizations that make
and distribute shows and that are allied
with PBS and largely invisible to the public.
The documentary showcases “POV” and
“America ReFramed” are produced for PBS
by the New York-based American Docu-
mentary. The most recent of Bill Moyers’s
invaluable series of shows was distributed
to PBS stations by American Public Televi-
sion, PBS’s smaller cousin, whose current
offerings include the African-diaspora doc-
umentary series “AfroPop.”
That was a bit of a laundry list, but there’s
a point to it. Decentralized, focused on its
glossier shows for fund-raising purposes
and, perhaps, wary of political turbulence,
PBS doesn’t package or promote its journal-
istic and documentary content (outside of
Burns’s marathons) as strongly as it could.
But the viewer who partakes of the breadth
of PBS’s public-affairs offerings will be
much better informed about contemporary
American life than the more numerous citi-
zens who depend on cable news.
In the last month or so, that viewer could
have watched an evenhanded comparison
of the political histories of Joseph R. Biden
Jr. and Donald J. Trump, as well as an ex-
amination of efforts at police reform in
Newark, on “Frontline.” The “Voces” series
offered a documentary on mobilizing Latino
voters; “POV” carried “The Infiltrators,”
about a pair of Dream Act immigrants who
got themselves arrested in order to see in-
side a detention center.
From “American Experience,” there was
a four-hour history of women’s voting
rights. This month, Ric Burns and Gretchen
Sorin’s “Driving While Black,” on the role of
the car and the road in African-American
life, and a “Nova” segment on the possibili-
ties of geoengineering climate change
called “Can We Cool the Planet?”
A couple of observations. First, those of
us who write about TV could do a lot more to
bring attention to worthwhile and, for the
most part, engaging shows like these. It
would be as simple, and as difficult, as step-
ping aside more often from the self-perpetu-
ating buzz pursuit that pulls so many eye-
balls to Netflix and HBO. Mea culpa.
Second, it is striking how often and
openly PBS programs pursue investiga-
tions or present information that is not
likely to please the overseers of the serv-ice’s (relatively small) federal subsidy, par-
ticularly during the Trump administration.
“Frontline,” in particular, has been tough
on the powers that be and their supporters
in recent reports like “United States of Con-
spiracy,” “The Virus: What Went Wrong?”
and “Growing Up Poor,” whose working ti-
tle was “Growing Up Poor in Trump’s Amer-
ica.” (PBS science and nature programswere also early accepters of the science of
climate change.) Explorations of injustice
and inequality may be presented in neutral
terms — probably more a result of institu-
tional culture than of political calculation —
but they are no less damning for that.
PBS and its noncommercial colleagues
are not the only places on TV to find tough-
minded, honest accounts of the fractious
American situation, and political content, in
particular, has exploded in recent years.
Showtime, with “The Circus” and “Desus &
Mero,” stands out, along with Vice, which on
TV can look like PBS’s poorly behaved
teenage sibling. But these efforts still tend
to be scattershot and, often, stronger on
emotion or drama than on authority.
Commercial TV often funnels its public-
affairs impulses into comedy and late night,
and the strongest program in the field,
HBO’s “Last Week Tonight With John Oli-
ver,” sits at the intersection of the two. “Last
Week” is one of the most essential shows —
along with “Frontline” — on American TV.
But in the commercial world, it’s an outlier.
(It has less than a quarter of the audience of
the far inferior “Saturday Night Live.”)
The presidential election has stirred even
the old broadcast networks, and they have
generated some decent politically minded
efforts in recent weeks, though again in the
soft shell of comedy. ABC’s “black-ish”produced a pair of election episodes that
had sharp things to say about Black disen-
franchisement. Fox, of all networks, offered
“Let’s Be Real,” a Robert Smigel puppet
show that savaged both Biden and Trump.
Telling uncomfortable truths may be in
vogue now, but PBS has been doing it con-
sistently for decades. “Frontline” pre-
miered in 1983; Moyers was a progressive
voice on PBS in a series of programs dating
back to 1971. “American Experience” has
been fleshing out the historical record since
1988 and has been a primary venue for Stan-
ley Nelson’s rich, continuing history of
Black life in America (including “The Mur-
der of Emmett Till” and “Freedom Riders”).
The record isn’t perfect — everyone will
have examples; my most recent one would
be the notably uncritical “Created Equal:
Clarence Thomas in His Own Words” from
this summer — but the record is peerless;
no one else in American TV comes close.
In a step toward promoting that heritage,
the service this month inaugurated an Ama-
zon Prime Video channel called PBS Docu-
mentaries that collects a lot of the program-
ming mentioned here. This being America,
you’ll need to pay a small monthly subscrip-
tion fee (plus the Prime Video fee) for the
convenience of watching all that noncom-
mercial, previously free content. It’s a fairly
small price to pay for an education.Where Viewers Become Better Citizens
An education is obtainable
from the comfort of a couch.
By MIKE HALEThe investigative
journalism of “Frontline”
includes reports on
President Trump, top,
and his policies.
“American Experience”
has shown films by
Stanley Nelson, above,
on Black life in America.SAMUEL CORUM FOR THE NEW YORK TIMESGWENDOLYN DIXON/WGBH-BOSTON, VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS50 YEARS OF PBSadding that if Congress cut off funding it
would be playing the pimp that forced PBS
into the “electronic equivalent” of prostitu-
tion.
Invoking Hardy may have helped fend off
that challenge, but the cycle of outrage and
political grandstanding has repeated over
the decades. In 2005, an episode of the chil-
dren’s program “Postcards From Buster”
featuring lesbian parents set off conserva-
tive complaints. Last year, a same-sex wed-
ding on the cartoon “Arthur” prompted an-
other round of criticism when Alabama
Public Television declined to air the
episode. And in 2012, Mitt Romney enliv-
ened a 2012 presidential debate by declar-
ing, “I love Big Bird,” but “I’m going to stop
the subsidy to PBS.”
President Barack Obama’s re-election
prevented Romney from canceling Big
Bird, but a different result in 2016 reignited
the funding wars. The Trump administra-
tion argued in a budget proposal that “alter-
natives to PBS and NPR programming
have grown substantially since C.P.B. was
first established in 1967, greatly reducing
the need for publicly funded programming
options.” But Congress restored the appro-
priation, which this year is $445 million, of
which roughly 70 percent goes to the sta-
tions, radio and television. (PBS gets a
small amount of direct money from the cor-
poration; in the 2019 fiscal year, it was about
$29 million.)
The most potent weapon in these battles
over the years has been the activation of Big
Bird, Elmo and characters from PBS’s other
children’s shows. They often make the trek
to Capitol Hill and have even testified at
congressional hearings.
But even as PBS has fended off these
funding threats, the culture wars and the
push for political balance have taken their
toll. PBS never did distribute that episode of
“Buster,” and an ambitious series of films on
America’s role in the world after Sept. 11,
2001, was criticized for being both too con-
servative and too liberal.
Funding Model Under Threat
Politicians’ threats to slash federal funding
make headlines, but that money does not
come close to bankrolling PBS shows. The
life of the public television producer often
means spending years trying to coax foun-
dations and corporate sponsors to provide
support, and local stations have come to
rely on donations from their (older) view-
ers. That financial state of affairs has hob-
bled PBS’s ability to compete and skewed
its programming choices.
Over the decades, PBS has seen many of
its best programming ideas copied by its
commercial competitors, who’ve nabbed
some of its audience, too. Particularly
younger viewers.
Attempts to woo a new generation have
had mixed success. When Fox canceled
R. J. Cutler’s teenage reality series “Ameri-
can High” in 2000, Pat Mitchell, PBS’s new
president, brought it to public television, a
bold move given PBS’s median viewer age
of 55 at the time. She also tried to cut back
on British drama by reinventing the venera-
ble “Mystery!” with American dramas. But
some donors, and thus stations, objected to
the raw language and sexual and drug con-
versations in “American High” and they
forcefully pushed back against the “Mys-
tery!” plan.
The runaway success of “Downton Ab-
bey,” which ended in 2016, eased some of the
pressure on the PBS budget and drew dona-
tions to local stations. But any boost they
got was temporary. Indeed, “Mercy Street,”
PBS’s first original drama in more than a
decade, was abruptly canceled in 2017 after
two seasons when the funding fell apart.
“We have not solved our funding model,”
said Sharon Rockefeller, president and chief
executive of WETA, the public broadcaster
in Washington, who has been in public
broadcasting for more than four decades.
PBS, under Kerger, is pushing to bolsterits foundation, but that won’t be enough.
The system, Rockefeller said, is “fragile.”What Comes Next
Money woes may be a constant in the his-
tory of PBS, and the encroachment of their
commercial competitors shows no sign of
easing. So there have been plenty of propos-
als for PBS’s future, most arguing for a com-
plete do-over — including focusing on dig-
ital-first local news, or sticking to children’s
content only.
But a more expansive vision, tailored to
all the places PBS remains distinctive,
could provide a programming blueprint for
a sustainable future (if not a financial one).
A vision that connects directly to its original
mission, updated for a wired world.
Smith, the documentary film producer
and president and co-founder of Firelight
Media, said that for independent filmmak-
ers, particularly those of color, PBS re-
mained vitally important. PBS films air for
free and PBS invests in engagement cam-
paigns, connecting documentary work with
communities through local stations.
Lynn Novick, a collaborator with Ken
Burns on “The Vietnam War” and other
films, and the director of “College Behind
Bars,” said no other outlet would allow afilmmaker to come up with an idea and
spend 10 years getting it right. PBS, she
said, is “creator driven, more than top
down, not an executive saying we need a
documentary on the Civil War.”
The past seven months have unexpect-
edly underscored another area where PBS
remains unique: education.
In March, days before 600,000 Los Ange-
les Unified School students were sent home
because of the pandemic, PBS’s Kerger re-
ceived a call from Austin Beutner, the dis-
trict’s superintendent. PBS and its area sta-
tions quickly marshaled educational re-
sources for students with limited or no
broadband access. Dozens of other public
stations and school systems nationwide
have followed suit.
Meanwhile, PBS LearningMedia, an on-
line educational platform for teachers and
students, has seen its users more than dou-
ble this school year, compared with the pre-
pandemic average.
In June, as Black Lives Matter protests
generated national conversations about
racism, PBS dug into its back catalog so
films like Firelight’s “Freedom Riders”
could begin streaming again. New pro-
grams about race include “The Power of
We: A Sesame Street Special.”
“It is rather stunning to see how very rel-
evant our original mission is today,” WETA’s
Rockefeller said. “In the midst of this pan-
demic, public television is delivering free
education content right into homes, con-
necting people with arts and performances,
giving context to our history, and providing
clear news and analysis.”
She added: “When other outlets are
scrambling to create programming about
the complex and troubled racial history in
our country, we already have a rich library
of programs and educational resources al-
ready at hand because examining our his-
tory and our culture has been a part of our
mission all along.”
For Kerger, the last few months have pro-
vided a “clarion call around service,” which,
after all is built into PBS’s name. “This is a
moment when the country was looking for
us and here we are,” she said.
The challenge for PBS going forward will
be to sustain that focus. It means convinc-
ing donors that service and an hour of
nightly news and math programs for home-
bound students are equally worthy causes
as sending a pledge to support a favorite
costume drama. Corporations will need to
be persuaded to underwrite difficult exami-
nations of the country’s racial tensions, not
just “Antiques Roadshow.”
Leaps of faith that the money and audi-
ence will ultimately be there will need to be
taken. But for PBS to thrive another 50
years, reinvention seems a necessity.CONTINUED FROM PAGE 7
PBS Showed TV the Future but Is Wary of Its Own
The founders of “Sesame
Street” were joined by
Big Bird and other
recipients at the 2019
Kennedy Center Honors.MIKE THEILER/REUTERS.