Executive at CNN Taking Helm at PBS

One day last March, Pat Mitchell, the president of CNN Productions, was in her Atlanta office wearing one blue and one black pump, a mix-up that had happened as she’d run out the door that morning to give a speech. And she was telling people about it.

That ability to laugh at herself may serve her well as she tackles what can often be the overly serious business of the Public Broadcasting Service, of which she is expected to be named president today. She replaces Ervin Duggan, a former Federal Communications Commission member, who resigned Oct. 31 after 5 1/2 increasingly contentious years in the post.

At Time Warner-owned CNN, the 57-year-old Mitchell oversaw such productions as the 24-hour award-winning “Cold War,” the less successful “NewsStand” newsmagazines and such Ted Turner pet projects as a history of Native Americans. She turned down much more lucrative offers, friends say, including one from an Internet venture, to jump into the caldron of public broadcasting. Mitchell, who experienced a setback at Time Warner last year when the company changed its mind about launching a women’s cable channel that she had been developing, didn’t return calls for comment.

A former on-air reporter, “Today” show substitute anchor and talk show host who in recent years has become a respected documentary producer, Mitchell knows well the rapidly changing competitive environment that PBS faces, with multiplying cable networks gnawing away at its documentary, science, arts and children’s programming franchises. Last year, for example, PBS launched a new digital kids’ channel whose main competition is a similar venture, Noggin, owned by Nickelodeon and the Children’s Television Workshop, producer of PBS mainstay “Sesame Street.”

But Mitchell also will have to prove herself an adept manager as PBS--an organization of about 175 fiercely independent, often demanding, member stations without the centralized control mechanisms that exist at commercial networks--struggles with building enough consensus to effectively compete with its much larger and better funded rivals.

“For us to be effective, it is not a question of PBS dictating to anyone what we’re going to do, it’s a question of PBS helping a consensus to be built among our stations,” said interim PBS President John Swope in January, as he described what the search committee was seeking.

Although she was the unanimous choice of the search committee, Mitchell still will be an outsider coming into the complex, somewhat peculiar PBS environment. Even before her official appointment, many already have started lobbying for her to appoint a deputy from within the PBS system.

PBS Hopes to Fill Long-Vacant Top Posts

Just having a new leader will be a step forward for PBS, which has been without executives in several key positions, including the top programming post, which became vacant in May when Kathy Quattrone quit to join Discovery Health Media. Mitchell’s extensive industry contacts are expected to help PBS fill the programmer’s post, despite that job’s relatively small salary.

Meanwhile, PBS was expected to announce today that it has hired Cindy Gertz, vice president of shareholder relations at the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp., also known as Freddie Mac, as its chief financial officer, a post that has been vacant since June. And PBS has finally hired a director of children’s programming, a post that has been unfilled since 1998, although sources declined to name the new hire, who comes from commercial broadcasting.

Under Duggan, PBS fended off congressional critics who called for its privatization, and it reemphasized its educational mission and diversified funding sources. The Department of Education, for example, will spend $16 million this year on PBS programming, including the new, much-anticipated “Between the Lions” series to teach reading, up from $7 million five years ago. PBS’ operating revenues increased $22 million last year; this year operating revenues are expected to total about $309 million.

But Mitchell’s challenges will be many, from helping the system find financing to making the costly conversion to digital broadcasting to diffusing the debate over PBS partisanship that lingers after last summer’s disclosures that some PBS stations swapped mailing lists with many Democratic and some Republican political groups. Although PBS has a strong identification with quality programming and broad support among the American public, some shows are tired and the offerings are uneven. The several-times-yearly on-air fund-raisers known as pledge breaks have been criticized in particular for overly commercial music shows and programs promoting self-help gurus.

Whether Mitchell is successful in building consensus will affect what PBS is able to put on the air. One of its essential problems is this: For PBS to get high enough ratings to attract the outside corporate support needed to produce its shows, it needs a core of programs that run at the same time nationwide, so that they can be promoted nationally, in much the same way broadcast networks do. But many managers at local PBS outlets have resisted giving up the autonomy, which they say helps them better meet local needs, to a central authority.

With a budget cobbled together from viewer contributions, corporate underwriting and government subsidies, in recent years public television has grappled with finding the right balance of commercialism to allow it enough funding while still staying true to its mission. For example, to attract corporate underwriters, some stations, and programming producers, want 30-second commercials, double the 15-second limit imposed on shows under the PBS umbrella. One heated debate these days concerns whether stations should continue to refer to themselves as “noncommercial” or begin calling themselves by the more flexible term “nonprofit.”

Friends and former colleagues of the Georgia native say the fact that Mitchell succeeded at holding her own in eight years at the freewheeling, male-dominated culture at CNN and its parent Turner Broadcasting System bodes well for her ability to maneuver in the PBS system. A master politician with an extensive network of industry contacts--from Jane Fonda (recently separated from Mitchell’s boss Ted Turner) to Robert Redford, on whose Sundance Institute board she sits--Mitchell is also “as good as they come at listening and reaching out and incorporating ideas,” says one industry executive who knows her well.

A high-energy personality, Mitchell appealed to the search committee for her breadth of experience. She has been the arts correspondent for CBS’ “Sunday Morning,” produced documentaries on women in war for PBS cable rival A&E; network, and oversaw Turner’s National Geographic specials, another genre in which PBS competes.

With her talk show background (she hosted the Emmy-winning syndicated “Woman to Woman,”), she has the potential to be an effective public advocate for PBS.