‘Great Performances’ at 15 Endures on Public Television

Cultural TV programming has come and gone during the past 15 years, but public television’s “Great Performances” series endures. In the opinion of many on the cultural scene here, it now is “the only game in town” for fine-arts performance programming.

The series launched its 15th anniversary season last month, promising 26 weeks of the kind of diverse fare that has become familiar to PBS viewers of programs and series such as “Brideshead Revisited,” “The Shakespeare Plays,” Wagner’s “Ring” cycle and “Dance in America.”

“We have created a place on television for a generation of artists and they, in turn, have created a place for themselves among a generation of new audiences,” said Jac Venza, executive producer and creator of the series, which debuted Jan. 24, 1974, with a Lincoln Center production of Maxim Gorky’s play “Enemies.”

“When we began,” Venza continued in a recent interview, “the great performing artists were not thought to have a place on television, and they thought of the medium as a humiliating place where you appeared only to make money. We’ve changed all this.”

Venza recalled “the huge holes” in cultural programming on the commercial networks during the early days of public television. “The only dancing you saw on television were the dancers behind Carol Burnett!” he said.

Said Stephen Kulczycki, KCET’s vice president for programming, in praising Venza and the series:

“ ‘Great Performances’ is one of public television’s finest contributions to America,” says Stephen Kulczycki, vice president for programming at KCET Channel 28 in Los Angeles. “Like any arts organization, they have had to perform a balancing act between presenting the highest quality (and) continuing to exist within the commercial marketplace. But the series has produced an extraordinary body of work for television that could not have existed otherwise.”

The series has its critics, both within public television and the arts community here. The gripe voiced most often is that the series has come to operate with a “survivor mentality” that resists risk-taking.

However, none of the critics contacted by The Times would comment on the record, because, each said, the series represents their only TV outlet here and they wished to maintain a good working relationship with Venza and his colleagues at WNET-TV.

Venza, a mercurial yet plain-spoken man who is widely regarded as the essential element of the performance series, acknowledged that funding has been an ongoing strain, and not only for “Great Performances.” He pointed to cable TV’s short-lived cultural channels, CBS Cable and ABC’s ARTS, which eventually evolved into the Arts & Entertainment network--”with the emphasis on entertainment ,” Venza said.

“These ventures were based on making profits, and the arts (in this country) have never been able to survive without subsidies,” he observed. “It’s been hideous for us at public television too, with a lot of our energies having to go into finding (financial) partners, rather than into more programs.

“What we need is a strong enough funding base so we can make long-range commitments to commissioning leading artists to do more special work for the series,” he said.

Nevertheless, Venza said the current season is one of his most ambitious. The series already has presented dance, opera and popular-music programs, and this week it turns to drama. Beginning Friday, “Great Performances” presents “Tales From the Hollywood Hills,” a three-part series based on the short stories of John O’Hara, Budd Schulberg and F. Scott Fitzgerald. First up is O’Hara’s “Natica Jackson,” starring Michelle Pfeiffer. The series was produced by KCET.

Other shows planned for this season include a two-part Gershwin concert, featuring Baryshnikov, Leonard Bernstein and Liza Minnelli (Nov. 27 and Dec. 4); a production of the South African play “Asinamali,” which previously was staged in Los Angeles at the Mark Taper Forum (Dec. 11), and “Christmas With Flicka,” featuring mezzo-soprano Frederica von Stade (Dec. 18).

Due in early 1988, Venza said, are performance shows by tenor Luciano Pavarotti and jazz musician Dizzy Gillespie, plus a biographical portrait of Humphrey Bogart by his former wife, Lauren Bacall.

According to Venza, the series is on “solid financial footing” for the future, in spite of the announcement earlier this year that the series’ longtime corporate underwriter, the Exxon Corp., plans to withdraw its support at the conclusion of the current season.

The budget for the 1987-88 season falls in a range, as have previous annual budgets, of $8 million to $12 million, he said, explaining that production deals on individual programs cause “fluidity” in the budget. The funding has come from Exxon and the Martin Marietta Corp., each of which contributed $1.2 million; the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which put up $2 million, and public television stations, which together anted up $3.7 million.

Public television funds represent an increase of more than $1 million over last season from both CPB and the stations.

“The money from Exxon had come to be taken for granted, but when we asked for more, we got it,” said Venza, calling it a vote of confidence by the country’s 300 public television stations. He also said that the Martin Marietta Corp. has committed $1.7 million for each of the next two seasons. Additional corporate underwriting is being sought.