Excellence Suffers as PBS Pursues Dollars

The tune is familiar--it’s the one now known throughout the civilized world as “Hello Mudduh, Hello Faddah.” But the words, sung by a reedy, painfully earnest male voice, are new:

“People always try to please you,

People always hug and squeeze you,

When you’re little, life’s exciting,

So the thought of growing up becomes inviting.”

At first blush, this sounds like a bad joke, or somebody’s wicked little parody. In fact, it’s a selection from the bestselling CD of Helmut Lotti, an alarmingly sincere Flemish tenor and former Elvis impersonator who is one of the many musical underachievers who have become popular on public television.

If you doubt that we’re living in musically confused times, clearly you have not been watching enough public television.

As PBS struggles for ratings and dollars, the network increasingly is becoming home to the sort of schlocky musical acts that it was created to provide respite from. This is causing confusion among the network’s viewers, and anxiety among some of its executives.

Public TV, of course, always has been associated with, and to a great extent defined by, its musical programming--from “Live From Lincoln Center” and the Metropolitan Opera to the pleasingly eclectic “Great Performances” series and other worthies.

But many of PBS’ new wave of musical acts are, to put it gently, from a less exalted tradition. A short list of these acts would include, but is not limited to:

* The excitable keyboard player and New Age musical evangelist known as Yanni.

* The flamboyantly costumed Dutch violinist and orchestra leader Andre Rieu.

* The likable but stylistically overreaching Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli.

* The breathtakingly talent-free piano noodler John Tesh, a former TV personage whose precise musical genre has resisted identification.

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In a different but related category would be the late bandleader Lawrence Welk, whose old cornball network shows are in regular circulation at many PBS stations.

To this list must be added Lotti, a smiling, slightly androgynous singer who, in his blend of frantic eagerness and utter lack of personal irony, will remind many people of a young Liberace. Then again, Liberace actually had a fairly decent technique. What can PBS possibly be thinking about?

What it is mainly thinking about, of course, is money.

These artists primarily, although not exclusively, are served up during pledge drives, those interruptions three or four times a year when regular programming gives way to a full-court press for dollars. Yanni, Rieu, Lotti & Co. bring in heaps of money.

One PBS executive concedes that Lotti “makes his skin crawl.” Another says he regards a lot of the music pledge programs as “dreck.” But on public television, as in the wider world, dreck sells, and sells briskly.

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The question is, might the short-term gains from these performers be coming at the expense of the long-term integrity of the PBS nameplate?

Some of the more contemplative of the public television moguls--both at the network and station level--are beginning to realize they are facing a dilemma: The new cheesy music programming that provides them with the wherewithal to do their “real” work might well be the undoing of that work.

“I’m exceedingly uncomfortable and often saddened by the fact that, in order to bring in dollars, we sometimes stray from the mission of public television, which is excellence and education,” says John Kerr, the on-air fund-raiser and development director at WGBH in Boston. “The dramatic question here is, are we unconsciously digging our own grave with this kind of programming?”

Already, certain core PBS supporters, including big-gift donors, have begun to make noises about withdrawing support in protest of what they regard as an acquiescence to lower standards.

These donors will not be pleased to learn that some local stations have begun to drop the “serious” music shows such as the Met opera broadcasts because they believe they can draw larger audiences with less “elitist” shows. The situation has a desperate feel, and it’s not likely to get better any time soon.

“You have to remember that PBS is hemmed in by severe financial constraints,” says Bob Goldfarb, a veteran music and media consultant in New York.

“In particular, the member stations have an immense additional financial obligation because they all have to be thinking about new studio and transmission equipment to allow them to get into digital technology. Also, many are feeling the effects of increasing competition from cable television. So PBS today is not always in a position to make abstract judgments about quality.”

To complicate matters, the fact that these artists appear on PBS is creating confusion about their artistic standing and, by extension, about the whole question of whether it’s possible anymore to speak of such a thing as “good” music. Tesh and Rieu fans assume, understandably, that their musical heroes enjoy the imprimatur of PBS.

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Other than sheer financial desperation, the rationale for putting these performers on the air is thin. The two most common rationales at the moment:

* That even the lamest pledge program can be seen as an aesthetic stepping stone to better things. In other words, forming a bond with John Tesh might lead to a fuller appreciation of Verdi or Duke Ellington. All honest people in the business--admittedly a dwindling group--know this is phony. It used to be thought that orchestral pops concerts would bring people into the hall who would then ripen into serious classical fans. It never happened. Today, orchestra managers don’t even pretend. They know pops concerts create audiences for pops concerts, period.

* That serious musical programming just doesn’t make people open their checkbooks. The favored current example is a recent special profiling the Italian mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli. As a pledge vehicle, it fell on its face.

It doesn’t seem to occur to anyone that perhaps the problem here is that Bartoli is an overrated, oversold commodity who--apart from a kind of strange, giggly stage manner and an almost freakish way of singing fast, running passages--is not an interesting artist.

What PBS has to do is locate, cultivate and showcase good, legitimate new musical talent in all categories. This is not as hard as it sounds.

There are brilliant young artists out there of all stripes--classical instrumentalists and singers and conductors, phenomenal young jazz players, Broadway stars-in-the-making, cabaret singers, ethnic and national performers of every conceivable tradition.

Build a program around singer Audra McDonald, or composer Adam Guettel, or conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen. The record companies would be happy to share production costs, just as they do for many of the current artists.

Instead of unearthing more third-rate European poseurs, PBS should commit itself to uncovering and showcasing the next Bernstein or Copland or Sondheim.

The Teshes and Rieus and Lottis of this world--if their fans are to be believed--will be able to take care of themselves.