Jack Shakely: How to Save Public Television
[Jack Shakely is president emeritus of the California Community Foundation.]
...Why is public television, both nationally and locally, awash in red ink despite its enormously popular programming while Nickelodeon (and its fellow networks including the History Channel, A&E, National Geographic and Animal Planet) are making money?
If you asked Dora, she could answer in a second — in Spanish and English: "Cable."
So now we come to my epiphany: PBS should market itself as a network to cable and satellite providers rather than having each individual affiliated station across the country offer itself for free....
Early public television (what we used to call educational television) was a delivery system in search of a product. From the first public television station in Houston in 1954, the operation was conceived as strictly a local affair, broadcasting educational programs into schools a few hours a day, always during school hours. Regular citizens couldn't even pick up the UHF stations without buying a converter box for their TV sets.
By 1960, there were more than 200 public television stations covering every major city in America, but no network. But though the public television stations in the 1960s didn't have a network, they became very good at joining forces to lobby Congress for money. In 1969, both the Corp. for Public Broadcasting and the Public Broadcasting Service, or PBS, were created, and American public television was off and running (ironically, however, the first public television national hit in 1969 was "The Forsyte Saga" from the BBC).
The national system for public broadcasting created back then was cumbersome and expensive. But it was the only system we had. It would be more than five years before premium cable network HBO and Ted Turner's WTBS "superstation" would change the delivery of television programming forever....
Public television hit its peak, both in viewers and donations, in 1987, and it's been a slow but steady decline ever since. From a peak of almost 3 million viewers, its Nielson ratings today seldom creep above 1 million. At the same time, cable's share of viewers has grown prodigiously, with some cable shows such as "The Closer" outdrawing its competition on the four major networks....
Read entire article at LA Times
...Why is public television, both nationally and locally, awash in red ink despite its enormously popular programming while Nickelodeon (and its fellow networks including the History Channel, A&E, National Geographic and Animal Planet) are making money?
If you asked Dora, she could answer in a second — in Spanish and English: "Cable."
So now we come to my epiphany: PBS should market itself as a network to cable and satellite providers rather than having each individual affiliated station across the country offer itself for free....
Early public television (what we used to call educational television) was a delivery system in search of a product. From the first public television station in Houston in 1954, the operation was conceived as strictly a local affair, broadcasting educational programs into schools a few hours a day, always during school hours. Regular citizens couldn't even pick up the UHF stations without buying a converter box for their TV sets.
By 1960, there were more than 200 public television stations covering every major city in America, but no network. But though the public television stations in the 1960s didn't have a network, they became very good at joining forces to lobby Congress for money. In 1969, both the Corp. for Public Broadcasting and the Public Broadcasting Service, or PBS, were created, and American public television was off and running (ironically, however, the first public television national hit in 1969 was "The Forsyte Saga" from the BBC).
The national system for public broadcasting created back then was cumbersome and expensive. But it was the only system we had. It would be more than five years before premium cable network HBO and Ted Turner's WTBS "superstation" would change the delivery of television programming forever....
Public television hit its peak, both in viewers and donations, in 1987, and it's been a slow but steady decline ever since. From a peak of almost 3 million viewers, its Nielson ratings today seldom creep above 1 million. At the same time, cable's share of viewers has grown prodigiously, with some cable shows such as "The Closer" outdrawing its competition on the four major networks....