Fight Over Public TV Pie : Independent Producers Want a Bigger Slice

On three separate occasions in the early 1980s, independent documentary film makers Rob Epstein and Richard Schmiechen pitched their idea and a sample reel for a film on slain San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk to the Corp. for Public Broadcasting. And three times CPB, the nonprofit organization that distributes federal funds for public television, turned them down.

Epstein recalls being told that the film about the gay supervisor who was assassinated along with Mayor George Moscone in the fall of 1978 was “too provincial. . . . People at CPB just didn’t see the drama of it, the merit of it, the possibilities in it. I’m not sure how it got lost in the process.”

Between the second and third applications, the film makers received $100,000 from Nonfiction Television, a unit of public-television station WNET in New York--about a third of what they needed for the 90-minute production. After their third rejection from CPB--the last time because, they were told, they couldn’t apply more than twice on the same project--they went back to the grueling task of outside fund-raising, the bane of an independent’s existence, and finished the movie.

“The Times of Harvey Milk” aired on PBS in November, 1985, following a theatrical release. It had already won the 1984 Oscar for best documentary feature, and would garner three Emmys for public television.

As the decade-old battle between independent producers and public television comes to a head in Congress within the next few weeks, the case of “Harvey Milk” and related sagas are being pointed to by a highly mobilized National Coalition of Independent Public Broadcasting Producers as reasons for changing the process by which they get funded.

The matter is being debated now because this is public broadcasting’s year of congressional review, when the House and Senate must “reauthorize” funding ceilings for noncommercial television and radio for the three-year period beginning in fiscal 1991. In doing so, they can stipulate new ways for the money to be spent.

At center stage is funding for “independents”--how much, who controls it and what is an independent, anyway? The subplot is program content--what gets funded and doesn’t, and what the public sees--or doesn’t see--on the 327-station public-television system.

“If it weren’t for WNET, a film like ‘The Times of Harvey Milk’ might not have made it onto public television,” Epstein argues. “There are so many films I can’t begin to think of making because of the (CPB) funding restrictions. And you end up making films for potential funders. It limits your vision . . . and consequently it presents a limited view of the world.”

Nonfiction Television, which had lasted five years, disbanded in March, 1984.

Donald Ledwig, president of the Corp. for Public Broadcasting, says that because a quarter of the funding of Nonfiction Television’s documentary fund came from CPB, it deserves some credit for the production of “The Times of Harvey Milk.”

At the heart of the squabble is the definition of independent .

Barry Chase, PBS’ news and public affairs vice president, likens the dispute to the “Israeli-Palestinian conflict. If you can’t agree on definition, you’ll never agree on a solution.” Alluding to the smaller independents, he said: “We ourselves sometimes call them orphans.”

Different definitions beget contrasting statistics, and which definition is used determines whether public broadcasting is living up to its mandate--under the 1978 Public Telecommunications Financing Act--to earmark a “substantial amount” of CPB’s program dollars for independent producers.

Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles), former chairman of the House telecommunications subcommittee, said “substantial” meant 50%. House and Senate conferees, meanwhile, defined independents as “producers not affiliated with any public telecommunications entity, and especially the smaller independent organizations and individuals who, while talented, may not yet have received national recognition.”

Lawrence Sapadin, national co-chair of the independents’ coalition and director of the Assn. of Independent Video and Filmmakers in New York, which numbers 4,500 members nationwide, contends that producers who are truly independent have editorial, budgetary and copyright control of their work.

“Independent producers create films and television programs from a personal vision shaped by their experience and concerns,” he told the Senate communications subcommittee in March. “They work outside the mainstream of commercial production, often spending years on their work.”

The three-tiered public broadcasting complex--CPB, PBS and the National Assn. of Public Television Stations--uses similar language about independent producers having “no affiliation with a public or commercial broadcasting licensee,” and having “control over the budget and content of the productions.”

But an independent who produces for public television, as defined by Ledwig, is also “subject to oversight by CPB or its designee” to satisfy CPB’s “mandate as steward of federal funds.”

“By design, much of CPB’s support for independents goes through the major program series” such as “Frontline,” “Wonderworks” and “American Playhouse,” Ledwig testified before the Senate subcommittee, which “ensure the highest standards of journalistic and artistic quality and production standards.”

Led by Sapadin and Lawrence Daressa, a San Francisco film maker and distributor, the coalition claims it is unfair for CPB to count as independent outside producers who work for programs such as “Frontline.” The coalition contends that “Frontline,” worthy as it is, follows a particular format and has ultimate control over the product. During “Frontline’s” first five seasons, the coalition adds, seven producers shaped 42 out of 75 programs.

Using its definition, the coalition says only 10% of CPB’s $36-million program fund in fiscal 1988 goes to so-called pure independents.

Using public broadcasting’s definition, Ledwig counters that about 46%-48% of program fund money goes to outside producers who, after all, work for public television series by choice. (The rest of the program fund is awarded to stations to produce national programming.) And PBS President Bruce Christensen estimated that last year, a third of PBS programming was devoted to independent work--using the broader definition.

Now the coalition is calling for a national independent program service as a separately funded entity within public broadcasting. Sapadin said it would have “the unambiguous mandate to fund the production, acquisition, promotion and distribution of independently produced programming. The service would operate as a risk fund, a laboratory in which the only criteria would be excellence, diversity and innovation delivered through all public TV distribution mechanisms,” he told the Senate subcommittee.

Such a service, Ledwig testified, “amounts to choosing programming on the basis of the status of the producer rather than on the quality of the program.” He added that “a set-aside for smaller independents is likely to result in an overbalance of single-episode, individual point-of-view, cultural or public-affairs documentaries that are very difficult . . . to use, schedule and promote.”

Meanwhile, the House subcommittee has come up with draft language redefining “independent,” and that has public television officials worried. According to draft language, an independent is someone “not affiliated with the corporation (CPB), PBS or a public or commercial broadcasting licensee or any consortium, affiliation or other entity that would include such a licensee. . . .” That would eliminate anthology series such as “Frontline.”

Congressional insiders were hoping that under legislative pressure, CPB and the independent coalition would quietly reach agreement as to a structure for independent funding prior to congressional “mark up” of CPB’s authorization bill. However, a batch of Senate amendments got in the way--and at the same time pitted CPB against PBS and the National Assn. of Public Television Stations. Ledwig calls them “radical” amendments. “I don’t know that they are as radical as CPB says they are,” PBS’ Christensen says coolly.

However they are characterized, they would significantly dilute CPB’s power. Under current law, 75% of the $144 million allocated to public television through CPB goes to the stations in the form of unrestricted “community service grants” while the remaining 25% belongs to the program fund.

The proposed amendments specify that 80% of CPB’s program fund go to the stations for national programming, leaving the rest for overall independent programming to be administered by CPB. Moreover, series that are more than 4 years old, such as “Frontline,” could not be funded out of that last pot of money.

Indicating the emergency of the matter, the Senate subcommittee proposed this week that the amendments would take effect in October 1989 or fiscal 1990, a year in advance of reauthorization.

The independent coalition doesn’t like the amendments either, because it wants 50% of the program funds for its independent service. Sapadin says the amendments would only “add to the already majority of federal funds flowing directly to the stations.”

Plans for a meeting between CPB and independents fell through last week, because CPB claimed the Senate amendments took away any excess money it might have had for the independents. Rep. John D. Dingell (D-Mich.), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, was reported to be “very disturbed” at that. In a letter to Ledwig, he wrote that the House telecommunications subcommittee would now have to “examine legislative solutions to the independent producer issue.”

On Tuesday, the Senate Commerce Committee will mark up the authorization bill.

The issue is more than mere funding, however; it is the choices that public television makes in programming.

In his testimony, film maker Daressa decried PBS’ “homogenized stream of cautious, bland, if sometimes worthwhile, programming selected to appeal to the narrow tastes of their corporate underwriters and the less than 5% of overall television viewers who are paying subscribers. . . . Independent producers have found themselves progressively marginalized . . . with no place in public television.”

For example, for their documentary “Dark Circle”--described by its makers as “an unflinching look at nuclear weapons and nuclear power”--Chris Beaver, Judy Irving and Ruth Landy raised their own money. They also paid for so-called “bump-up” money to transfer the film to television tape.

To round it out to a standard 90 minutes, the producers taped an interview with Rep. Pat Schroeder (D-Colo.), whose district is adjacent the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant. “That’s when we started getting into trouble with PBS,” Beaver said. “The introduction was declared to be politically biased.”

In May, 1986, PBS’ Chase notified San Francisco’s KQED that he had decided not to air the film nationally.

Today, Chase says Schroeder wasn’t the issue, but rather “journalism problems.”

“You never hear from anyone in the nuclear power industry, in the nuclear weapons industry; you never hear from those who were attacked,” he said. Besides, PBS had aired “a spate of nuclear weapons-related programming, nuclear power, nuclear freeze, almost a decade earlier, virtually from the same point of view.”

In a letter to KQED, Chase wrote that “the film’s structure and narrative leave no question about where the producers stand on all these issues,” and the PBS official named them: the dangers of nuclear technology, nuclear weapons manufacture at Rocky Flats, nuclear power at Diablo Canyon, nuclear weapons testing as it affected atomic veterans, nuclear warfare as it affected Japanese survivors.

“They think they’re all bad things,” Chase wrote of the producers, “and (left) little room for inclusion of any material suggesting that these issues may involve dispute and complexity in areas such as jobs, economics, alternative energy sources, military threat from foreign powers, etc.”

“Dark Circle” was aired by Turner Broadcasting in December, 1986. In 1987, KQED and KBDI, the public television station in Denver, showed the program as well. “Here was public broadcasting, which is supposed to present a variety of viewpoints, (virtually) closed down,” said Beaver, “and Ted Turner, this private entrepreneur, came through.”

Pamela Yates, a leader in the independent coalition fight, acknowledges that funding she received from CPB in 1980 for her film “Resurgence: The Movement for Equality vs. the KKK,” helped launch her career. But she ran into problems with a subsequent production, “When the Mountains Tremble,” about a Guatemalan Indian woman who “began her life as a migrant peasant and became a leader in the fight against the dictatorship. We spent six months shooting in Guatemala and covered the whole spectrum.”

Within public television, “When the Mountains Tremble” became known as “When Stations Tremble.”

The movie did not air until CPB allocated $50,000, or “as much to produce as CPB contributed to the entire 90-minute program,” for a discussion program afterwards. Yates says the movie aired because she engendered a letter-writing campaign. PBS’ Chase disputes that.

The wordplay on the name “did become a joke,” Chase concedes, “but the letter-writing campaign had nothing to do with our decision. I can’t convince her of that. It’s a no-lose situation for them. If PBS does run something, you can always claim pressure; if it doesn’t, martyrdom. It was the first look at Guatemala, but certain actors’ voices made the bad guys seem worse, and the music was clearly manipulative. . . .”

During the 1986 firestorm over the nine-part series “The Africans,” when National Endowment for the Humanities Chairman Lynne Cheney withdrew NEH’s funding credit, Christensen staunchly defended the idea of point-of-view programming. “To PBS, balance means over the course of the entire broadcast schedule,” the PBS president said at the time. “It’s not a balancing within every program.”

Nothing has changed, Christensen said in a recent interview. “If we know there is something in an individual program that will redress a particular issue, if it’s something we believe ought to be said, we get it into the program if we can.

“It’s not as much when the mountains tremble or when the stations tremble but when Congress trembles,” Christensen said. “That’s the sort of program that probably generated as much mail to and as much reaction from many in Congress as I’ve read since I’ve been at PBS. The reaction from conservative members was outrage. . . . Does it (such reaction) have an effect--did it, will it? Sure, and you still put it on the air.”

Public television soon hopes to redress some of the independents’ complaints with several new series comprised of independent productions.

Starting July 5, there will be a weekly, hourlong documentary series, “P.O.V.” (point of view), presented by the group of stations, including KCET Channel 28 in Los Angeles, that produces “American Playhouse.” A 16-program series, “American Experience,” begins Oct. 4.

Chase estimates that in news and public affairs alone, PBS airs about 100 hours a year, or one to two hours a week, of one-time-only documentaries outside a series.

To anyone who suggests public television is “too safe, too timid” (as former CBS media critic Ron Powers has said) or indeed too wrapped up in political considerations, CPB’s Ledwig has a ready response. “We go for the innovative. We don’t go for the wacky stuff simply because it’s wacky. . . .”

Wacky? “I shouldn’t have said that. We go for good quality, innovative, qualitative and diverse programming. Anyone who doubts that, look at the end of our programs (at what we fund), at our little logo, OK?”

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