PBS WRESTLES WITH ITS IMAGE AND FUTURE MISSION

A square peg of public service being forced into the round hole of mass-market appeal: That’s the image that hung in the air during the three-day annual meeting of the Public Broadcasting Service that came to a close here Wednesday.

“The underlying concept of publicly owned, nonprofit, publicly funded radio and television is just contrary to this Administration’s world view,” Rep. Al Swift (D-Wash.) told the gathering of representatives from the nation’s 314 public TV stations.

The commercialism promoted by the Reagan Administration’s free-market economic policies has hit public television hard:

--A proposal before the Federal Communications Commission would allow many cable operators to drop public television signals from their systems. The proposal would replace the strict “must-carry” rules that previously required a cable operator to pick up all local broadcast signals. If approved, the new rules would, in effect, permit cable operators to compare a local PBS station’s ratings with those of other local stations to determine if it should be carried on the system or be replaced by another programming service that might generate revenues for the operator.

--Federal funding remains unstable. While the appropriation to the Corp. for Public Broadcasting, the agency that disburses federal funds to public TV and radio stations, is due to climb $40.5 million to $200 million next year and to $214 million in fiscal year 1988, the White House continues to press for a phase-out of federal support for public broadcasting by 1992. The administration recently tried to get a recision of $44 million from the 1988 budget but Congress rejected the suggestion.

--Public broadcasters are grappling with their own attempts at commercialism. These range from sale of sponsor-paid advertising time to the establishment of a new PBS Home Video Service that will test-market videocassette sales beginning in the fall.

At the same time, the importance of public television’s mission--to provide the sort of educational, informational and special-interest entertainment programming that the commercial networks don’t--is growing. Because of a decrease in governmental regulation and restrictions, “commercial broadcasters . . . may come to act solely like entrepreneurs interested only in the bottom line,” Rep. John D. Dingell (D-Mich.) told the gathering.

With all those challenges before it, PBS looked to basics for a sense of optimism.

“When it’s all said, you turn on the television and say, ‘Will we have programs on next year that will be better than last year?’ The answer is yes,” said PBS President Bruce Christensen. “Ultimately, you judge your success by what’s on the screen.”

Last fall, the PBS prime-time schedule boasted not a single major U.S.-produced series. This fall, by contrast, PBS will air “The Africans,” a nine-part series co-produced by WETA in Washington and the BBC; “The West of the Imagination,” co-produced by KERA in Dallas, and “The Mathematics Series” from the Children’s Television Workshop, producer of “Sesame Street.”

The latter show, said PBS programming chief Suzanne Weil, will help children learn about math, much as “The Electric Company,” another production of the Children’s Television Workshop, helped them with reading. The show will have a magazine format with a repertory of seven actors.

Of “The Africans,” Weil said, “This is not a pretty little travelogue.” The series is hosted by Ali Mazrui, a native Kenyan who is a professor of political science at the University of Michigan. Mazrui’s thesis is that contemporary Africa represents the influences of Western and Islamic cultures as much as its own indigenous heritage.

Talk about one particular program left the broadcasters laughing. Garrison Keillor, host of the popular radio show “Prairie Home Companion,” appeared at the closing banquet and regaled the audience of about 400 with tales of his recent PBS experience. A TV version of “Prairie Home Companion” was broadcast last Saturday.

The question remains, however, as to where future funding of such programs will come from. Besides the White House’s recommended cutbacks, PBS officials here said that the Gramm-Rudman budget-balancing bill potentially could lead to the elimination of $56 million in public broadcasting money for fiscal year 1987.

Some public television executives, such as William Kobin, president of KCET Channel 28 in Los Angeles, see “enhanced underwriting”--limited commercial spots--as “the only possible new source of funds for public television.” Kobin estimates that enhanced underwriting could contribute as much as 5% of an individual station’s budget.

PBS already is involved in leasing satellite time to outside businesses and in selling and leasing videotapes to schools and libraries. It is working now to determine how local PBS stations could go about marketing videocassettes.

The problems are many, but few solutions were forthcoming at the convention. “It’s a democratic organization,” one PBS representative said. “And decisions in a democratic organization take time.”

PBS and its sister lobbying organization, the National Assn. of Public Television Stations, are, however, working hard to make their problems known at the Federal Communications Commission. Lengthy comments were filed with the FCC last week objecting to the proposed new rules regarding what local broadcast stations a cable operator must carry.

The FCC is expected to render its decision in June, said Baryn Futa, general counsel for the National Assn. of Public Television Stations. That will be the first crucial test of how PBS is faring under the new commercialism affecting all of television.

“It’s reasonable to ask whether public television will be around in the next five years,” said Christensen. “I think it will be.”