News surfaced this week that PBS plans, starting this fall, to insert promotional messages and corporate and foundation sponsor spots within a few core programs, rather than just between shows. Executives defend it as a way to keep viewers from defecting during the long bunched-up breaks at the end of each hour -- but this strategy carries its own risks. Besides, there's an easier way to reduce viewer turnout...
The PBS interruptus policy, initially, will be introduced only during the WGBH-produced series Nova and Nature. So it's not as though we'll break for a corporate message just as someone dies in his guest bed on Upstairs, Downstairs -- at least not yet. But as slippery slopes go, this one is greased lightning. Open the floodgates, and it's not difficult to predict what will follow.
To be honest, I'm less upset about this than I would be if Turner Classic Movies adopted the same policy, because watching movies uninterrupted there is that network's supreme service -- and supreme joy. But PBS, over the years, has diluted its own standard of excellence to the point where complaining about breaks in its programming seems less pertinent than complaining about the programming.
I trace the slide of PBS to the cancellation, many years ago, of American Playhouse, a program that was so visionary, so inspired and inspirational, so varied and so bold, that it embodied everything public television was created to provide. Its demise was due more to timidity and conservativeness from local member stations, most of them southern and rural, than any other reason.
As it turned out, American Playhouse turned out to be the canary in the PBS coal mine. Frontline, American Masters and American Experience all deserve credit for maintaining the once-high standards of public television, and even Great Performances and the former Masterpiece Theatre, under its many umbrella titles, occasionally still manage to deliver something great, or a true masterpiece.
But would any of those shows get funded and scheduled if offered to PBS stations today? What's the last great addition to public television, in any daypart? Go ahead. I'm waiting.
John F. Wilson, chief programmer for PBS, was quoted by Elizabeth Jensen in The New York Times as saying that the interrupting-programs ploy was necessary, because otherwise, during the lengthy promo and corporate message blocks between shows, "It's almost as if someone pulled the fire alarm and they scrambled for the exits."
You know how to keep people from scrambling for the exits between programs, Mr. Wilson? It's easy. So easy, in fact, it can be whittled down to three little words:
Make better shows.