PBS: Above the Network Fray

Re “A Network Mastery Has Gone to Pieces,” May 12: As someone who has worked in commercial television as a writer and producer for over 40 years, I hate to see the Public Broadcasting System compared with the “competition.” It has no competitors. To say “the median age of its viewers is a demographically unappealing 55” is an irrelevancy, since PBS is not selling merchandise. The concept of “counter-programming” implies that PBS has to be in the ratings race. It doesn’t.

Commercial TV sells products. Pay TV charges subscribers. PBS is in a different business: The individual stations need only satisfy the wishes of their audience, their community and their private and public sources of funding.

PBS was “branded” long before the term became popular. Despite “better funded copycats,” PBS remains the only network that consistently presents classical music, opera, ballet, musical theater, jazz and traditional pop music as well as programs on the arts.

If PBS averages a 1.7 rating, that is as good as or better than most cable channels. The autonomy of PBS stations is in the great tradition of grass-roots America, “rooted in a local ethic and model unlike anything we have in American broadcasting.”

I have always thought of PBS as being like the BBC--above the fray. It should remain that way.

Ernest Chambers

Sherman Oaks

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PBS needs to make some definite changes if it expects to continue to exist. One thing that many people I know who watch PBS from time to time say is that the best programming is only during the pledge drives. Much of the rest of the time we see programs that are, at times, five or more years old. A lot of the money from the pledges is going not to programming but to administration--which isn’t any different than many other charities.

Its attempts at getting a younger audience by taking on canceled regular-broadcast programming failed to consider that there were reasons for the cancellations. If PBS wants to get a younger demographic, then there is programming that can get the younger audience. Try more music specials or films from the Sundance Film Festival or what worked in the past, such as programs similar to Carl Sagan’s on his view of the universe. If “Roswell” has been canceled, it may be a better program to take on for the younger audience. The only thing is, be careful about the time and day it is shown.

Alex Holub

Los Angeles

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I’m not surprised that PBS is on the verge of becoming irrelevant. Not because PBS is some “leftist” network. On the contrary. PBS will fade into oblivion because--with few exceptions--the right-wingers have succeeded in their goal, and PBS turns somersaults to prove its “mainstream” credentials.

PBS offers the same kind of corporate news programming that corporate television feeds us. The airwaves do not need more “McLaughlin” discussions or Wall Street reports, more white male talking heads with conservative points of view. We need alternative media that are brought to us independent of business and political interests, not by “journalists” who move through the revolving door from Washington and Wall Street to infomercials that pose as newscasts.

The leaders of PBS can’t realistically be surprised by its demise, either. Many inside the network refer to it as the Petroleum Broadcasting System.

Steven Avalos

Los Angeles

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My wife and I are in that “demographically unappealing” age group mentioned in the article. We have cut off our support of KCET since it has decided to pursue the younger age groups and copy the other TV stations with programs that are uninspired and sloppily researched. We see programs that only show the “politically correct” position on logging, oil exploration, abortion and homosexuality. PBS has lost its direction and purpose. It should be pursuing the age group that pays its bills no matter how unappealing that age group.

Larry Petrucelli

Torrance