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PBS finds new focus under the microscope

By CHASE SQUIRES
Published July 14, 2005

JOIN THE DISCUSSION: We want to know what you think about PBS, and anything else on the small screen. Check out Chase Squires' blog for more inside scoop on the annual network show-and-tell, ask questions and add your own comments. Go to www.sptimes.com/blogs/tv

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. - PBS in recent years hasn't exactly been the television network of watercooler chatter.

No American Idol. No wardrobe malfunctions.

But a stormy spring of ideological crossfire and a whiff of congressional inquiry has made the Public Broadcasting Service a flashpoint for political discourse. The challenge now is to turn its hot-topic status into must-see TV for larger audiences than the long-time loyalists who love PBS for its high-brow news, nature, children's and arts programming.

PBS CEO Pat Mitchell pondered that irony Tuesday while talking to reporters at the Television Critics Association summer press tour. She also wondered if public outcry over potential cuts might have made a lasting impression on Capitol Hill.

"If that's the result, it would be terrific," she said. "Maybe the positive that comes out of all this is an understanding of our broad support."

Since spring, PBS and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting - which distributes federal funding among PBS, National Public Radio and public broadcasting stations and is supposed to be a buffer between lawmakers and broadcasters - have been hot political issues. The children's show Postcards from Buster drew fire from the Department of Education for an episode about a child raised by a lesbian couple. CPB chief Kenneth Tomlinson ignited controversy by investigating the possibility of a liberal bias at PBS, and Congress has started focusing on the public broadcasting budget, mulling potential cuts.

On Tuesday, an investigation into CPB expanded to include the abbreviated process that led to the hiring of Tomlinson - a former head of the Republican National Committee - last month.

In Beverly Hills to speak at the Television Critics Association on Tuesday, Mitchell said she is optimistic the Senate will counter funding cuts sought by the House. She sidestepped direct criticism of Tomlinson, but she cheered the fallout as a cry of support for PBS heard across America.

More than 5-million people annually donate to local public broadcasting stations, and supporters have been vocal in their defense of PBS this year, she said.

"What always impresses me is just the passion that people feel about PBS," she said.

PBS opened the three-week critics tour, the annual event when networks unveil plans for the coming season, with a lineup that seems to have more public appeal than usual. One producer discussed "co-branding" with a commercial news magazine; a promising documentary looks an awful lot like a reality show; and a Bob Dylan biopic is being treated with secrecy bordering on paranoia amid fears of digital piracy.

Digital pirates might be interested in stealing something from PBS?

It's the kind of secrecy that has become typical these days for major Hollywood releases starring the likes of Brad Pitt - who, by the way, has signed on to narrate a PBS series set for November.

Rx for Survival - A Global Health Challenge chronicles suffering in Africa and other struggling regions. Executive producer Larry Klein said the project, which took two years, could benefit from the fact that Live 8, Bob Geldof's global concert event, just made the issue hip again (nor will Pitt's tabloid-perfect relationship with Angelina Jolie hurt the hip factor).

PBS will present the three-night, six-hour production in concert with a Time magazine special edition on world health, which also coincides with a summit of experts on the issue, in November.

And though Mitchell said PBS is still hunting for money to keep producing highbrow Masterpiece Theater, the network seems ready to go after more mainstream tastes.

One major effort, a six-hour film called Country Boys due in January, follows two West Virginia teens struggling with poverty as they grow into men. It's not Paris Hilton, but it is gripping, intensely intimate, and it just might capture reality show junkies.

Another production, a November Secrets of the Dead episode titled "Gangland Graveyard," should appeal to the appetite for Mafia stories that catapulted The Sopranos to TV success. It features retired undercover FBI operative Joseph Pistone, the real-life "Donnie Brasco" who unraveled a Mafia family from the inside. Incidentally, Pistone's tale is intertwined with Pasco County, where a Holiday bottle club called King's Court played a prominent role in his story.

And then there's the September release of a two-part film No Direction Home: Bob Dylan, directed by legendary filmmaker Martin Scorsese, with previously unreleased footage of Dylan performances, studio sessions and interviews. Producers are so concerned about digital piracy and worldwide demand for the film (slated for DVD release a week before the Sept. 26 PBS debut) that critics are not being given advance copies; they must watch it in a theater in Beverly Hills this week.

People are talking about PBS. Now the network can only wait to see if they'll tune in.

JOIN THE DISCUSSION: We want to know what you think about PBS, and anything else on the small screen. Check out Chase Squires' blog for more inside scoop on the annual network show-and-tell, ask questions and add your own comments. Go to www.sptimes.com/blogs/tv

[Last modified July 13, 2005, 14:08:02]