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Publications
The View from the Top: P.O.V. Leaders on the Struggle to Create Truly Public Media
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On the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the groundbreaking PBS documentary series P.O.V., the Center for Social Media interviewed several of those who have led the project through its last two decades—Marc Weiss, Ellen Schneider, Cara Mertes, and Simon Kilmurry and Cynthia Lopez—on their goals, their challenges, and their vision for one of television’s most productive sites for imagining and innovating the future of public media. These interviews reveal a project driven not only by social concern but by a passionate commitment to fostering public knowledge and action. As it evolved, P.O.V. leaders consistently sought out ways to involve viewers—as active commentators, as sources of new information, as mobilizers themselves of public knowledge and action.
Related Links
- Public Media Frequently Asked Questions
- Frequently Asked Questions: Public Media
- In the Battle for Reality: Social Documentaries in the U.S.
- Digital Futures: A Need-to-Know Policy Guide for Independent Filmmakers
- Free Culture, Phase 2
- Beyond Broadcast: Reinventing Public Media in a Participatory Culture Rapporteur Report 2006
Discussion
This was an enormously well written and satisfying look at POV, one of the most important forces and showcases for independent personal and social documentaries. What an incredible parade of talent and dedication has nurtured this program over the years! And writing a report like this in such an engaging and compelling style is no small thing!
For some reason, the report reminded me of an earlier, long forgotten and momentous episode in the history of broadcast social documentaries in the US. When the Ford Foundation was considering funding the exploration of a PBS-like entity in the late 1960s, an early PBS precursor was called the Public Broadcast Laboratory. In 1967 or 1968, PBL broadcast two consecutive verite-style documentaries to a limited but national network, one titled “Birth” and the other “Death.” Even with PBL’s limited audience, it was a landmark broadcast and, for many audience members, was the first time they had seen a kind of film that had been previously been relegated to art houses and festivals.
Since I was 16 and new to the form, I don’t know how well the films would hold up if I saw them today. The first followed the birth of a baby and the second was a moving and painful account of a man dying of lung cancer. But I was never the same, shattered by the experience and thrilled by the possibilities of film, and I suspect that many viewers were comparably moved. So much so that a couple days ago I actually located the man whose child’s birth was filmed in the first 1967 documentary. He has a fascinating story to tell and I am planning to interview him.
It is significant, I think, that when the idea of a public broadcasting system was first being brainstormed, one of the first impulses was to broadcast two lengthy, uninterrupted, and very raw documentaries. It may be my imagination, given how much I was influenced by those PBL films, but I have always imagined them as a precursor that played a small role in leading the way to the national treasure that POV quickly became.
Steve Gorelick