PBS, NPR Will Join Forces on Web Programming, Promotion

It seems a natural fit, but the nation’s two main public broadcasting entities, National Public Radio and television’s Public Broadcasting Service, have only rarely collaborated. Now, under an initiative announced Monday by PBS President Pat Mitchell, the two will join forces on Web programming, e-commerce and cross-promotion to their seemingly like-minded audiences.

The initiative, billed as a “strategic alliance,” stops short of new on-air programming ventures, although the two have put together a fund to explore joint productions.

When Mitchell joined PBS from CNN last spring, “I was shocked to find we didn’t have any kind of working relationship” with NPR, she says, partly a legacy of some past bad experiences. “There were all these reasons everyone kept putting forward of why it couldn’t be done.”

But Mitchell and NPR President Kevin Klose thought there would be significant advantages to working together, not the least of which is that NPR has been much more successful than PBS at drawing younger audiences. Under the agreement, which Mitchell unveiled during the Television Critics Assn. meeting in Pasadena, the two will co-produce live Web site programming, including guest chats. Beginning in the spring, the PBS Web site will carry NPR’s hourly news updates and other NPR content. In addition, each organization’s Web site will feature the other’s merchandise and, starting in July, there will be more promotions for PBS shows on NPR and vice versa.

The harder part will be creating joint programming, Mitchell said. “We can’t just say we’re going to take [NPR’s] ‘All Things Considered’ and make it a television show.” Last November, however, the two collaborated on a live pre-election “PBS/NPR Voters’ Guide,” featuring news personnel from both operations.

In other news, Mitchell said PBS will not immediately make changes to its national schedule based on the pilot schedule test currently underway in seven cities. The test, which has moved some PBS shows from their long-standing time slots to see if more viewers will tune in, had been scheduled to end in April, but Mitchell said the data have been inconclusive. The test will keep running, she said, with plans to have a new schedule in place in the fall.

Mitchell also unveiled “Public Square,” an ambitious multimedia project that will include a two-hour weekly series, covering everything from the arts and popular culture to politics, religion, economics and history. The program, expected to debut in early 2002, will include a major Internet site and local community aspects as well. It will use interviews, analysis, documentaries, investigative reports, music and performance to create what Mitchell calls an “interactive national conversation” and a new PBS approach to its public affairs commitment.

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PBS has enormously high hopes for the program. “If ‘Public Square’ works out to be what I and we envision, it will be the thing that puts public television back in the conversation again,” Mitchell said. “Hopefully, it will not look like anything on television right now.”

The program, which is a joint venture with the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, still has a big fund-raising challenge ahead. It will be produced by a new nonprofit organization under the direction of Michael Sullivan, executive producer of “Frontline.”

Other new programs announced Monday by PBS include “Egg,” a weekly New York arts program that will be offered nationally to PBS member stations starting in April (some stations around the country, including KCET-TV here, have been airing the show, which will now officially join PBS’ schedule); a Bill Moyers investigative report on the chemical industry, to air in March; and the April airing of Steven Spielberg’s Holocaust movie “Schindler’s List.”