THE NEW YORK TIMES, SUNDAY, OCTOBER 25, 2020 AR 13Television
“Would you like to subscribe to public tele-
vision or would you prefer a knee in the
groin?” asks a reporter with a microphone.
“I’m not quite sure,” a man in an uncon-
vincing wig answers.
This surreal exchange was part of a 1975
pledge spot for WTTW, Chicago’s PBS affili-
ate, created by and starring Graham Chap-
man and Terry Jones of “Monty Python’s
Flying Circus,” which had made it to Amer-
ica the year before on public television. In
most scenes, the interviewee gets the knee.
Running a public television station has al-
ways meant asking viewers — viewers like
you! — to give, generously. Over five dec-
ades, PBS stations have found ways to
nudge, cajole, guilt-trip and straight-up beg
potential supporters. (As methods go,
threats of violence are rare.) Public televi-
sion appeals have sweet-talked their way
into episodes of “Seinfeld” and “The Simp-
sons.” When PBS presented its history of
comedy, “Make ’Em Laugh,” in 2009, it
opened the satire episode with Billy Crystal
parodying pledge breaks.
But for many stations, the pledge drive
has become a brand-identity paradox. To at-
tract the most money to support their mis-
sion of quality television, many stations di-
verge from their usual lineup and resort to
pledge programming of more doubtful mer-
it — infomercials, specials that promote
pseudoscientific advice, music documenta-
ries that exist just to push you to choose a
six-CD set as your “thank you” gift. Some
stations have more recently pushed back
against lengthy, on-air pledge drives, but
the ritual remains stubbornly popular,
bringing in new subscribers while selling
out DVDs of “Aging Backward 3.”
The pledge break actually precedes PBS
itself. In the 1960s, Hudson Stoddard, a vice
president at WNET, New York City’s then-
fledgling public television station, went on-
air himself to ask viewers for donations.
During PBS’s earliest years, affiliate sta-
tions, which WNET soon became, handled
fund-raising on an individual basis. But in
1975, PBS created its first coordinated
pledge drive, “Festival 75,” offering special
programs like “The 1975 Ski Jumping
Championships,” “An Hour With Joan
Baez,” “The Grover Monster-Jean Marsh
Cartoon Special” (in which a Muppet and a
creator and star of “Upstairs Downstairs”
showcased animation from “Sesame
Street” and “The Electric Company”). The
event raised $5 million, which came to $6
million with matching grants (more than
$24 million and $29 million in today’s dol-
lars).
During a drive, a station interrupts its
programs with in-studio breaks, usually
one per hour. Celebrities, national and local,
stop by to proclaim their love for public me-
dia and plead for your support, while volun-
teers in the background answer phones.
“Become a friend,” Frank Sinatra said
during a 1979 break for the Las Vegas affili-
ate, kissing his pinkie-ringed hand and wav-
ing it toward the camera. The likes of Julia
Child, Tony Bennett, Deepak Chopra and
the male two thirds of Peter, Paul & Mary
have all stopped in to chat on-air at various
stations and take the occasional call.
The format has persisted from decade to
decade. Watch clips — YouTube has plenty
— and you can see the same sorts of volun-
teers picking up the same sorts of phones on
the floors of similar studios decked out with
similar banners. Only the hairstyles
change. (Barely.)
But from the 1980s on, pledge drives have
ballooned in frequency and length. Many af-
filiates hold four drives annually, most of
them lasting multiple weeks. Some stations
regularly spend a fifth of the broadcast cal-
endar trying to generate donations.
The reason? Donations from individuals
keep stations afloat, providing on average a
quarter of station revenues, much more at
smaller stations. As Jerry Seinfeld said in
the 1994 “Seinfeld” episode “The Pledge
Drive” (the one where Jerry appears on a
PBS affiliate and Kramer accidentally
bankrupts Jerry’s grandmother), “There’s
no joking about the financial crisis here at
PBS.”
In return for their generosity, viewers can
choose a gift, typically station swag or a re-
corded program. In the ’80s, Stoddard de-
veloped the first station-logo tote bag, al-
lowing donors to signal virtue as they
schlepped groceries. Early bonuses like vi-
nyl records and VHS tapes gave way to CDs
and DVDs. “Sesame Street” dolls are avail-
able. Also socks patterned on Bob Ross’s
happy trees.
On the website of WDSE, the Duluth,
Minn., affiliate, you can click through more
than 46 pages of possible gifts. Nicole Stern,
the membership director there, treasures
her Mister Rogers heat change mug. “It’s a
picture of Mister Rogers in his suit,” she
said. “And then you pour a hot beverage in it
and it magically transforms into his signa-
ture cardigan sweater.”
The programming during pledge week fa-
vors a big-tent aesthetic that explicitly aims
to entice new viewers. But that targeting
skews very boomer. A sampling of program-
ming from recent drives: “Fever: The Mu-
sic of Peggy Lee,” “Suze Orman’s Ultimate
Retirement Guide” and “Let’s Talk
Menopause.”
The PBS executives I spoke to trumpeted
a few new offerings like “The Avett Broth-
ers at Red Rocks” and a Prince special. “It’s
not just about Andy Williams anymore,”
Jerry Liwanag, the vice president of fund-
raising programming, said. But it is still
mostly about Andy Williams. And Neil Dia-
mond. And John Tesh. And Paul Simon.
Simon, however, isn’t really the problem.
Concerts like his and specials like “River-
dance 25th Anniversary Show” and “Down-
ton Abbey Live!” remain on brand for PBS.
But affiliates also schedule shows of more
dubious value, like nostalgia-driven music
retrospectives and health-and-wellness
content that “Nova” fans might wonder at,
like “How to Live Forever With Gary Null.”
Some of these shows are produced by
PBS itself. Affiliates acquire others from
private distributors. “Not every program
that they acquire would be something that
we would deal with at a national level,” Li-
wanag said diplomatically.
The infomercial-like format, nakedly
transactional, does a better job than, say,
“Frontline” of convincing some viewers
that they just have to have the associated
book or the DVD, theirs with a $60 donation.
“I mean, it’s programming that is specifi-
cally designed to raise dollars,” said Susan-nah Winslow, a vice president of develop-
ment at KLRU, the Austin, Texas, affiliate.
“And ‘Antiques Roadshow’ is not.”
The changes in programming and the in-
terruptions to the regular schedule have
generated a backlash that Mister Rogers,
were he living, might find quite unneighbor-
ly.
“I’ve been in public media for almost 30
years,” said Jim Dunford, the senior vice
president of station services at PBS. “Ev-
eryone loves to talk about pledge and how
much they hate it.”
Cartoon characters, too. There’s a 2000
episode of “The Simpsons,” “Missionary:
Impossible,” in which Homer becomes so
infuriated by the drive he makes a fake
pledge of $10,000 in hopes of ending it. This
earns the murderous rage of Yo-Yo Ma, the
Teletubbies, Mister Rogers and even vari-
ous Muppets. “Elmo knows where you live,”
the puppet screeches.
So does PBS. And in recent years it has
piloted changes to pledge drives, experi-
menting with central phone banks and fi-
nally allowing one-click donation, which
routes money to the appropriate affiliate.
Some stations, responding to viewer frus-
tration, have innovated, too.
In 2015, when KLRU decided to move one
of its drives online, it led its announcement
with hate mail it had received. A represent-
ative missive: “The pledge weeks drive me
nuts!”
KLRU also made the decision to build
pledge around the station’s legacy pro-
gramming rather than some of the more du-
bious offerings. “We want to be the station
when we’re fund-raising that we are when
we’re not fund-raising,” Winslow said. ItsAugust drive did include some health and
wellness programming (in the 5 a.m. slot),
but prime time went to staples like “Nova,”
“Masterpiece” and “Country Music” by Ken
Burns.
WNET, the New York affiliate, has also
reimagined its pledge. “Pledge was suc-
cessful,” Neal Shapiro, the station’s chief ex-
ecutive, said. “But when we ran it in the tra-
ditional way, a lot of our viewers became up-
set about it.” In 2016, the channel moved
pledge to prime time on Thursdays, and on
the weekends, focusing pledge spots on or
around mission-driven programming, like
an “Independent Lens” special on Mister
Rogers or “Black America Since MLK.” Re-
sentment dipped. So did revenue, though
not by much — about 6 percent that first
year. It has continued to dip, reflecting a
downward trend even among stations stick-
ing to the new traditional format.
But the pledge drive isn’t going any-
where. Even the pandemic couldn’t kill it.
(For many stations, revenues are up as au-
diences remain captive.)
Imagine a world of well-funded public
media in which PBS affiliates didn’t have to
go, logo cap in hand, to beg for money every
quarter. Many PBS executives can. But
those I spoke to all said they would miss the
pledge drives. Stern at WDSE called pledge
week “the original crowdsourcing cam-
paign.”
“We are always working to serve the
needs of our community,” she added.
“These drives allow our community to then
support the public service that we provide.
It’s a beautiful symbiotic relationship.”
Put that way, it does sound nicer than a
knee in the groin.‘Elmo Knows Where You Live’:
Pledge Drives Through the Years
The interruptions to the regular schedule in favor of a hard sell and programming of dubious merit have
gotten on the nerves of some viewers for decades. But stations find it hard to quit them.
Need another tote bag?
For just a small
contribution to PBS, it
can be yours. Over five
decades of pledge drives,
like the one in 1989
shown below at WTTW
in Chicago, PBS stations
have found ways to
nudge, cajole, guilt-trip
and straight-up beg for
financial support.PBSBy ALEXIS SOLOSKIPBS; TOP RIGHT AND BOTTOM RIGHT, KQED; BOTTOM LEFT, KCET50 YEARS OF PBS.