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"PublicTelevision Now and Later"
By Pat Aufderheide
Published in The Encyclopedia of Television,
November 5, 2001
Editor: Horace Newcomb
U.S. public television is a peculiar hybrid of broadcasting systems.
Neither completely a public service system in the European tradition,
nor fully supported by commercial interests as in the dominant pattern
in the United States, it has elements of both. At its base this
system consists of an ad hoc assemblage of stations united only
by the fluctuating patronage of the institutions that fund them,
and in the relentless grooming of various constituencies, although
PBS is emerging as a national image for the service. The future
of public broadcasting in America may in fact be assured by the
range of those constituencies and by public television's malleable
self-definition. It may come to be as much an electronic public
library as a broadcaster, as technologies to permit both storage
and interaction with viewers expand. It staked a claim to a unique
role in an increasingly diversified televisual environment by its
early 21st century claim to generate “social capital,”
identified as networks of mutually rewarding social relationships
in a community.
Public television has had a significant cultural impact since it
became a national service in 1967, an especially impressive achievement
given its perpetually precarious arrangements. Through its programming
choices, it has not only introduced figures such as Big Bird and
Julia Child into national culture, and created a home for sober
celebrities such as Bill Moyers and William Buckley, but it has
also pioneered new televisual technologies. Early achievements included
closed captioning and distance learning. It has recently pioneered
original digital programming, particularly in high-definition, and
the development of web-based extensions of television programs.
U.S. public television programming evolved to fill niches that commercial
broadcasters had either abandoned or not yet discovered. Children's
educational programming, especially for preschoolers; “how-to”
programs stressing the pragmatic (e.g., cooking, home repair, and
painting and drawing); public affairs news and documentaries; science
programs; upscale drama; experimental art; educationally-tilted
reality and docu-soap programming; and community affairs programming
all contribute to the tapestry of public television. In the course
of a week, half the television viewing homes in the U.S. turn to
a public television program for at least 15 minutes, and overall,
the demographics describing viewers of public TV more or less match
those of the nation as a whole. However, based on an annual average,
its prime-time rating hovers at 2% of the viewing audience, a rating
on par with some popular cable services but far below network television
ratings. Demographics for any particular program are narrowly defined;
overall they are weakest for young adults. Less heralded, but increasingly
important in public television's rationale, is its extensive instructional
programming and information-networking, most of which is non-broadcast.
In the critical design period of American broadcasting (1927-34),
which resulted in the Communications Act of 1934, public service
broadcasting had been rejected out of hand by legislators and their
corporate mentors. A small amount of spectrum space on the UHF (the
more poorly received Ultra High Frequency) band was set aside for
educational television in 1952. This decision was modelled after
the 1938 set-side for educational (not public or public service)
radio stations that had ensued upon rampant commercialization of
radio. In TV, as in radio, much of that spectrum space went unused,
and most programming was low-cost and local (e.g., a lecture).
After World War II, “educational television” evolved
into “public television,” around the concerns of Cold
War politics and the corporate growth of the television industry.
The Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 reflected in part the renewed
emphasis placed on mass media by major foundations such as Carnegie
and Ford, as well as the concern of liberal politicians and educators,
and in part an interest in communications technology by the nation’s
military-industrial strategists. The historic 1965 Carnegie Commission
on Educational Television, willed into being by President Lyndon
Johnson in search of a televisual component to the Great Society,
claimed that a “Public Television” could “help
us see America whole, in all its diversity,” and “help
us know what it is to be many in one, to have growing maturity in
our sense of ourselves as a people.” Many legislators and
conservatives, however, openly feared the specter of a fourth network
dominated by Eastern liberals. Commercial broadcasters did not want
real rivals, although they supported the notion of a service that
could complement theirs and relieve their public interest burden.
The service was thus deliberately created as the “lemon socialism”
of mass media, providing what commercial broadcasters did not want
to offer. The only definition of “public” was “noncommercial.”
Token start-up funds were provided. And the system was not merely
decentralized but balkanized. The current complex organization of
public television reflects its origins. The station, the basic unit
of U.S. public TV, operates through a nonprofit entity, most commonly
a non-profit community organization, state government (which provides
mini-networks for all stations in a state), or a university. Of
about 1660 stations in the United States, there are about 350 public
television stations, although less than 200 independently program
for their communities; the others mostly retransmit signals. Almost
everyone in the U.S. can receive a public TV signal. About two-thirds
of the public TV stations are UHF, still a significant limiting
factor in reception. About 40 stations now broadcast as well on
digital channels, as a result of the requirement of the 1996 Telecommunications
Act to use new spectrum given to each station for digital transmission.
Stations are fiercely independent, cultivating useful relationships
with local elites, though they often form consortia for program
production and delivery and to shape more general policy. A handful
of wealthy, powerful producing stations contrasts with a great majority
of small stations that produce no programming. In most major markets
there are several stations, with much duplication of PBS programming,
but occasionally “overlap” stations establish some distinctive
services catering to minorities and showcasing independent and experimental
productions.
The 1967 law also created a Corporation for Public Broadcasting
(the CPB) as a private entity, to provide support to the stations.
The governing board of the CPB is politically -appointed and balanced
(along partisan lines), and is funded by tax dollars. The CPB was
designed to assist stations with research, with policy direction,
with grants to upgrade equipment and services, and eventually with
a small programming fund. But the CPB was specifically banned from
distributing programs. This was designed to inhibit the creation
of a national network. The Corporation has, over the years, acted
as the lightning rod for Congressional discontent, since it is the
funnel for federal tax dollars. Congress has usually removed the
board's discretionary authority over funds rather than cut them.
As a result most of CPB's funds are now set up to flow directly
to local stations.
Despite governmental intent to keep public broadcasting local, centralized
programming services of several kinds quickly sprang up. Public
affairs services centered, just as political conservatives had feared,
on the Eastern seaboard. Resulting programs enraged then-President
Richard Nixon, who tried to abolish the service and did succeed
in weakening it.
Out of this conflict grew, by 1973, today's Public Broadcasting
Service, the first and still premier national programming service
for public television. Shaped in part by station owners who, like
Nixon, disliked Eastern liberals, it is a membership organization
of television stations. Member stations pay dues to receive up to
three hours of prime-time programming at night, several hours of
children's programming during the day, and other recommended programs.
Since 1990 stations have accepted a programming schedule designed
by a PBS executive. This policy replaced a previous system in which
programs were selected by a system driven by majority vote. Stations
were persuaded to cede power because overall ratings for public
television were declining. Although not obliged to honor the prime-time
schedule, stations are urged to do so, and increasingly constrained
by contract conditions to devote larger sections of their programming
to a common national schedule. This version of a common schedule
assists in enlarging the audience and enables stations to benefit
from national advertising. Other programming services abound, both
regionally and nationally, but none has the imprimatur of PBS.
CPB and PBS both provide funds for the development and purchase
of programming, but they do not make most programs. Producing television
stations, especially in New York, Boston, Los Angeles, and Washington,
D.C. have historically produced the bulk of programming. Public
television also depends heavily on a few production houses, both
commercial and non-commercial. Canadian production houses have risen
in importance, with favorable exchange rates lowering costs there,
and smaller stations are increasingly producing individual programs
and series, and working in producing consortia. Smaller television
and film producers, historically frozen out of commercial broadcast
television and typically constrained within formats on cable, chronically
complain that public television--their last resort and the only
venue for authorial filmmaking--slights them. They argue that their
work exemplifies the diversity of viewpoints and perspectives celebrated
in the Constitution’s First Amendment. Their complaints, coordinated
over a decade, finally convinced Congress in 1988 to create the
Independent Television Service, as a wing of the CPB, with the specific
mission to fund innovative work for underserved audiences.
Public TV's funds come from a variety of sources, each of which
comes with its own set of strings. Funding sources include, (for
fiscal year 1999) federal (15%), state and local (17%), universities
both public and private (11%), and private funders, subscribers
(26%) and corporations (15%). The federal appropriation brings controversy
virtually on an annual basis. Even so, the Corporation's budget
has, with few exceptions (notably the first Reagan presidency and
1995, with a new Republican Congressional majority), been regularly
increased to keep its total amount roughly steady with 1976 levels
measured in 1972 dollars. Public affairs programming has consistently
been the target of Republican and conservative legislators' ire,
and has caused public TV to be hypercautious in such programs. This
may explain why public TV has not developed an institutional equivalent
of National Public Radio's around-the-clock news reporting.
About half the funds for public television come from the private
sector. Viewers are the single largest source of funding; their
contributions come, effectively, without strings and so are especially
valuable. These funds are often raised during “pledge drives”
in which special, highly popular programming is presented in conjunction
with heartfelt pleas for funds from station staff, prominent local
supporters, and other celebrities. Pledge programs--self-help celebrities,
opera singers such as Placido Domingo, a Harry Potter-themed program--reflect
the genteel image of the service. Stations have also found some
success with Internet pledging, another indication of upscale tilt.
These pledge drives are supplemented, in many markets, with other
fund raising efforts such as auctions or special performances. The
tenth of viewers who become donors tend to be culturally and politically
cautious, and the need to cultivate them skews programming to what
venerable broadcast historian Erik Barnouw called the “safely
splendid.”
Business contributes about a sixth of the funding, but its contributions
have disproportionate weight in shaping programming decisions, because
business dollars are usually given in association with a particular
program. Public broadcasters openly market their audience to corporations
as an upscale demographic, one that businesses are eager to capture
in what is known as “ambush marketing”--catching the
attention of a listener or viewer who usually resists advertising.
The hallmark PBS series Masterpiece Theatre was designed from logo
to host by a Mobil Oil Corporation executive looking to create an
image for Mobil as “the thinking man's gasoline.” Conflict
of interest issues ensue, as do questions of allowing corporations
to set programming and production priorities. (If stations hadn't
aired “Doing Business in Asia,” a series sponsored by
Northwest Airlines, which has Asian routes, what else might they
have been able to do with their time and money?)
These pressures in combination have made the service vulnerable
to political attack from both the left and right as elitist. After
Nixon accused the service of being dangerously liberal, many broadcasters
scanted public affairs and presented “safe” cultural
programming, only to be accused by the Reagan administration in
1981 of providing “entertainment for a select few.”
Reagan's attempt to cut funds also failed, although the administration
succeeded in rescinding advance funding that had been designed as
a political “heat shield” after Nixon's attack. In 1992,
Senator Bob Dole (R-Kansas) threatened to hold up funding for public
broadcasting on charges that it was too liberal, and succeeded in
making broadcasters nervous and forcing CPB to spend a million dollars
on surveys and studies that changed nothing. In 1994, following
on the Republican victory in Congress, House of Representatives
leader Newt Gingrich (R-Georgia) and Dole both targeted CPB for
rescission, on grounds that it was both elitist and liberal.
At the same time, the variety of funding sources, along with the
decentralized structure, militated against mission-focused planning,
in the prolonged industry turmoil that marked the last years of
the 20th century. Multichannel television in cable and satellite
successfully eroded much of public television’s traditional
niche, although public television continued to hold the 30% of the
population does not receive pay television as a unique audience.
Commercial investors, hungry for content, increasingly invested
in public TV, and public TV entities have searched out commercial
partners. New technologies posed hypothetical opportunities while
requiring extensive experiment and innovation. Stations were forced
to invest in digital technology without business plans or public
subsidies for programming, as a result of a push largely by commercial
broadcasters for expanded spectrum. In 2001, the Federal Communications
Commission permitted stations to carry advertising on and make money
from ancillary (non-broadcast) services on digital channels, such
as voice messaging and data transmission.
At the beginning of the 21st century, economic, political, and technological
forces finally converged to refocus public television’s role.
PBS attained a clearer agenda-setting role within the diffuse bureaucracies
involved in public television, effectively controlling the national
schedule and radically revising its prime-time lineup for the first
time in two decades. It aggressively branded the public television
environment as “PBS” by such measures as creating websites
for all programs but refusing to show competing websites on air;
carrying the PBS “bug” on channel feeds; outreach and
educational campaigns and materials; and public relations with opinion-makers.
The ascension of Pat Mitchell, a veteran of commercial cable TV,
as PBS president in 2000, brought crisper decision-making and more
direct competition for programs with commercial channels, as well
as the “social capital” campaign. Producers within and
for public television more frequently entered into co-productions
internationally, both with public service and commercial partners,
and worked harder to retain intellectual property rights. The challenge
of developing and programming digital channels has created new financial
pressures and new business plans. At the same time, stations have
individually experimented, with local partners, with extended educational
services, including distance learning, and with becoming nodes of
community networks.
The September 11, 2001 terrorist events proved a test of the role
of public television in national culture, and it demonstrated public
television’s strengths and weaknesses. Immediately the service
demonstrated its lack of newsmaking ability, since few stations
had any ability to do live coverage. However, in following days
public television turned out to be the place to go for thoughtful,
well-researched documentary, some of it on rerun with high ratings,
after low-rated debuts. The teams that produced these documentaries
demonstrated the value of deep investment in the subject matter,
and were able to draw on contacts and outtakes to produce more public
affairs quickly. PBS created an information-rich website with a
page for storytelling that expanded quickly and many links to local
stations websites, where users could contribute to charities and
support organizations. Thus, the service’s functions as high-quality
programmer, educational resource and community network node were
showcased.
An improbable, many-headed creature, public TV is unlikely to disappear
even under political assault. It is also unlikely to suddenly become
a service that a plurality of Americans would expect to turn to
on any given evening. It is likely to become more commercial in
its broadcast services and more entrenched--and defensible as taxpayer-funded—in
its infrastructural and instructional services.
Further reading
* Aufderheide, P. The Daily Planet. Minneapolis, MN: University
of Minnesota Press, 2000.
* Avery, R., and R. Pepper. “The Evolution of the CPB-PBS
Relationship 1970-1973.” Public Telecommunications Review
(Washington, D.C.), 1976.
* Baker, W. and Dessart, G. Down the Tube: an Inside Account of
the Failure of American Television. New York: Basic Books, 1998.
* Bullert, B.J. Public Television: Politics & the Battle over
Documentary Film. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press,
1997.
* Carnegie Commission on Educational Television. Public Television:
A Program for Action. New York: Harper and Row, 1967.
* Engelman, R. Public Radio and Television in America: A Political
History. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1996.
* Gibson, G.H. Public Broadcasting: The Role of the Federal Government,
1912-1976. New York: Praeger, 1977.
* Horowitz, D. “The Politics of Public Television.”
Commentary (New York), December 1991.
* Hoynes, W. Public Television for Sale: Media, the Market and the
Public Sphere. Boulder, Colorado: Westview, 1994.
* Katz, H. “The Future of Public Broadcasting in the US.”
Media, Culture and Society (London), April 1989.
* Konigsberg, E. “Stocks, Bonds and Barney: How Public Television
Went Private.” Washington Monthly (Washington,D.C.), September
1993.
* Lapham, L “Adieu, Big Bird: On the Terminal Irrelevance
of Public Television.” Harper's Magazine (New York), December
1993.
* Lashley, M. Public Television: Panacea, Pork Barrel, or Public
Trust? New York: Greenwood, 1992.
* Ledbetter, J. Made Possible By…: The Death of Public Braodcasting
in the United States. New York: Verso, 1997.
* Macy, J.W., Jr. To Irrigate a Wasteland. Berkeley, California:
University of California Press, 1974.
* McChesney, R. Telecommunications, Mass Media, and Democracy: The
Battle for the Control of U.S. Broadcasting, 1928-1935. New York:
Oxford University Press, 1993.
* Ouellette, L. Viewers Like You: The Cultural Contradictions of
Public TV. New York: Columbia University Press, 2002.
* Pepper, R. The Formation of the Public Broadcasting Service. New
York: Arno Press, 1979.
* Rowland, W. “Public Service Broadcasting: Challenges and
Responses.” In, J. Blumler and T.J. Nossiter, editors.
* Broadcasting Finance in Transition: A Comparative Handbook. New
York: Oxford University Press, 1991.
* Schmertz, H., with W. Novak. Goodbye to the Low Profile: the Art
of Creative Confrontation. Boston: Little Brown, 1986.
* Somerset-Ward, R. Quality Time? The Report of the Twentieth Century
Fund Task Force on Public Television. New York: The Twentieth Century
Fund, 1993.
* Starr, J. (2000). Air Wars: The Right to Reclaim Public Broadcasting.
Boston: Beacon Press.
* Stone, D. Nixon and the Politics of Public Television. New York:
Garland, 1985.
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