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Public TV always needs money, but now ideas, too

By Carl Heintze

Public television seems to be running out of money ... and ideas. Maybe the two go together. Or, to put it another way, you can have ideas, but it's hard to turn them into reality unless you've got the money to do so.

Whatever the reason, in the past year or so public television in the Bay Area has increasingly resorted to pledge breaks in lieu of regular programming. These usually fall in the evening hours and consist of well-worn programs being served up with regular breaks in the programs at which talking heads beg people to send in pledges of support.

Pledges, if realized (and some, I suppose, aren't) get rewarded with "gifts," really come-ons designed to get one to part with some money to support public TV. And often the "gifts" are keyed to the programs run during pledge breaks--books, for instance, or CDs or even coffee mugs.

There's nothing wrong with asking the public to support public television. The public, of course, also supports it (well, sort of) through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, funded with tax monies. But these days most of this so-called public support actually is corporate. It's not far removed from the commercials that plague proprietary television and, on occasion, public television stations actually run commercials. When they don't, they run an agonizing number of "promos," promotions which also aren't far from commercials and which are designed to get one to watch a particular program.

Pledge breaks used to arrive semiannually, but as the money situation for public television has worsened, they have become ever more frequent. They also have become increasingly baffling.

They seem to come without rhyme or reason, in the middle of the summer, for instance, when no one is watching television, during the World Series or around Super Bowl time.

I don't know who schedules them, but the scheduling doesn't make much sense.

The San Francisco Bay Area has three public television stations: KTEH, which used to be owned by Santa Clara County and which is now on its own; KQED, the granddaddy of them all and a pioneering facility in San Francisco; and KCSM, owned and operated by the College of San Mateo.

The three stations cover approximately the same territory and compete for the same pledge dollars. They sometimes even carry the same programs, occasionally at the same times. And, because the Public Broadcasting System schedules pledge break material at certain times, they all do pledge breaks at approximately the same time and with a lot of the same shows.

The shows, because there is little money for new programming, tend to be repeated at least once and sometime more often during pledge break time, leading to a certain monotony for the viewer who has to be really loyal to watch the same show (the Glenn Miller Orchestra, for instance) that showed up only a few months ago and which probably will be back in the fall.

Coupled with all this is a lack of new programming during regular non-pledge break times. Because PBS doesn't have much to work with, it can't do much nationally. Some local stations, notably KQED, have made efforts to try new shows: California Connected, for instance, and Check Please, a kind of guide to upscale San Francisco restaurants.

They also have come up with Josh Kornbluth, a pop-eyed interviewer of dubious merit, but such shows are the exception. Mostly, as always, PBS falls back on old British television shows, sometimes remaking them into a U.S. image.

For instance, Antiques Roadshow, which has been on the road around the country for four or five years, qualifying and valuing antiques, is a copy of a similar British show. Even Monty Python has been sort of revived in a new format for local Python fans.

And then there are the numberless British situation comedies. KTEH runs an inordinate number of these, reviving them over the years even though they are obviously dated. Good Neighbors, for instance, was made back in the '60s and yet it still shows up now and then. As Time Goes By and Keeping Up Appearances have been through at least three runs and are still going strong.

What kind of a future does public television have in the Bay Area?

Well, my guess, is an abbreviated one. Public, that is, governmental support, is unlikely in view of the other financial problems with which the nation is wrestling at the moment (and also because a lot of Republicans think PBS is a liberal prisoner).

KQED and KTEH have announced a kind of partnership, apparently not very financial but sort of brotherly. So far, though, its effects have not been very evident. KCSM seems to be doing better than KTEH (which also has merged with a Watsonville station), but the plain fact is there is probably one too many public television stations in the Bay Area.

Killing one probably is not going to help the other too much, though. Until someone figures out a way to get more money into new programming and to wean PBS from its British ties, nothing much is going to change.

The pledge breaks are just going to go on and on, probably with diminishing results, using the same old tired shows, turning off those remaining viewers who have loyally stood by PBS over the years.

And that's a shame, because these days we need public television more than ever.