By way of Jimbo, we found this amusing article in today’s NYT:
Television executives who gathered here last week for PBS’s annual meeting enthusiastically embraced projects such as the five-part “Women, War and Peace”
Of course, the first thing we were reminded of is the old joke about the end of the world and how it is reported by the various papers. (We’d always heard “World Ends: Women, Minorities Hardest Hit” attached to the WP; the canonical NYT hed was something like “End of the World Strikes Manhattan: Also Outer Bouroughs. <subhed>Midwest, Other States Afffected As Well.”)
But the key point of the article isn’t how happy PBS execs are with their new series. No, they’re worried because PBS stations are in financial trouble. WMFE terminated their PBS affiliation and sold the station to a religious programmer because they couldn’t pay PBS dues of “just under $1 million annually”.
KCET in Los Angeles went independent at the first of this year, also due to a messy dues dispute with PBS. We were previously unaware that Waco’s PBS station shut down last year. And the more stations that leave, the more dues go up for the remaining stations.
PBS’s programming budget is dropping by $5 million in fiscal 2012 to $202 million, according to the trade publication Current, partly because of losing KCET dues.
We don’t give money to PBS. We do watch a fair amount of PBS programming: “American Experience”, “Nova”, “Secrets of the Dead”. But when our local PBS station begs for money every other month, they don’t ask for money by presenting stuff we”d actually watch. Instead, they beg for money with multiple reruns of Dr. Wayne Dyer, the Three Tenors On Ice, “How to Learn to Play the Piano in Five Minutes Using Only Common Household Materials”, and other old warhorses that come out of the stable only during pledge time.
We’d suggest that this may be part of the problem for PBS. If they feel they deserve funding, show folks why. Instead of Nicholas Perricone, run a NOVA marathon. Bring out the old episodes of Julia Child. Do “American Experience” and “Nova” marathons. Have the courage to embrace who and what you are. Stop trying to fool people.