PBS Puts Local Stamp on National Shows

When Pat Mitchell took over as president of PBS in the spring, she said one of her goals was to better utilize the Public Broadcasting Service’s web of local member stations in PBS programming.

On Tuesday, PBS announced two programs designed to do just that. “Life in Bold” will be a weekly series spotlighting what PBS called “America’s everyday heroes,” whose stories will be provided in part by local stations. Meanwhile, starting in 2002, PBS said stations will have the option of including local segments in its weekday children’s show “Zoom.”

PBS, which wants to find new programs that appeal to younger audiences, also announced that it has picked up the brief Fox summer series “American High” and will air new episodes of the reality series about life in an Illinois high school beginning in April.

“Life in Bold,” a one-hour magazine series, will premiere in fall 2001 and each week will present three to five stories about people “who face change and challenges in their communities and schools, in medicine and technology, and in government and the arts.” Designed to bring new voices into the public television mix, the stories will vary from first-person narratives to essays and performances, provided by independent producers and PBS stations. In an unusual move, it will be co-produced by Oregon Public Broadcasting and ABC News’ “Nightline” and hosted by “Nightline” correspondent Michel Martin.

Despite critical praise for the series, “American High,” produced and directed by filmmaker R.J. Cutler, lasted just four 22-minute episodes on Fox. Cutler and his team spent a school year gathering documentary footage of 14 students at suburban Chicago’s Highland Park High School, combining it with footage of their parents and students’ own video diaries.

PBS said it will air 14 27-minute episodes, all of which will contain new material. The episodes will be seen in pairs, with the second episode of one week repeated as the following week’s first episode.

Separately, PBS said it has hired Alyce Myatt, program officer at the MacArthur Foundation, as vice president of programming for the Midwest region, part of PBS’ reorganized programming department whose goal is to make it easier for producers to bring projects to PBS. Cheryl A. Jones, previously at Discovery Communications, was also named to a new post overseeing PBS’ program development process, and she will also act as a liaison to the independent film community.

In a step that it hopes will end some of the past complaints, PBS is in the process of moving its program submission process to the Internet, so that producers can more easily track the progress of their proposals and PBS itself has a better handle on what projects it has in the pipeline.

The public broadcaster also recently held its second “programming summit,” put forth by Mitchell as a way to get system executives and producers thinking creatively about what goes on PBS’ air. Among the conclusions was that the system needs to have more public affairs programming, particularly live shows, with both local and national input.

One such experiment, “Time to Choose, a PBS/NPR Voter’s Guide”, airs next Wednesday. The two-hour exploration of election issues will use both national analysts and questions and input from local stations in five cities around the country, and will combine for the first time the expertise of PBS’ “The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer” and “Frontline” and the news department at National Public Radio.