Time is ‘Now’ for PBS’ new host

When Bill Moyers retired from the PBS newsmagazine “Now” last month, the program lost a little bit of star power and a lot of intellectual muscle. Since Moyers’ departure, the program has reduced its length from one hour to a half-hour slot weekly and has abandoned its cushy New York studios to go on the road with new host David Brancaccio.

On tonight’s broadcast, “Now” introduces its latest change in the form of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the third child of the late Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and an environmental lawyer at the Natural Resources Defense Council. Kennedy narrates a segment on mercury contamination tonight and is set to become one of a stable of regular contributors to the show.

Kennedy’s debut with “Now” comes at a pivotal moment for the program, as its producers address the question of how they intend to move forward post-Moyers. During his three years hosting “Now,” Moyers traded in his fireside-chat manner for political commentaries that sometimes openly criticized the policies of the president, making him a favorite target of conservative media watchdogs. But he balanced the political with his trademark philosophical and cultural passions, probing the minds of poets, writers and religious leaders.

“There’s no question that the heart and soul of the last three years was Bill Moyers,” said “Now” Executive Producer John Siceloff. “We talked every week about how to give an arc of meaning.... What we were going on then and will continue to go on, is the idea of presenting a civil discourse ... having someone carefully explain their views and how they arrived at them.”

Having spent the 10 years prior to his arrival at “Now” as the host of public radio’s business program “Marketplace,” Brancaccio may still give some the impression that he’s a business reporter -- more likely to elaborate on the Dow Jones than, say, the lyrics to “Amazing Grace,” as Moyers once did in a PBS special.

Brancaccio, who joined “Now” in 2003, said that although he would be less likely than Moyers to wear his political views on his sleeve, he learned a lot from his former co-host.

“We do the tough-minded reporting,” Brancaccio said, “but we also try to lift up, and we’ll be doing more and more of that this year.” Brancaccio said he wants to find “people who decided not to just sit in front of their television sets drooling, and in fact connect with their communities in some way.”

Siceloff describes the previous “Now” formula as moving from the “urgent to the reflective,” or from news segments to in-depth interviews on the arts and spirituality. It’s the reflective part that’s hard to imagine without Moyers.

While Brancaccio will reach out to the religious and political leaders Moyers relied on, Siceloff said, “he will also reach out to the issues of ordinary Americans,” especially as their lives are affected by public policy decisions.

Brancaccio admitted that making television out of that kind of material is daunting -- one viewer told him she calls the program “Kill Me Now,” he said. “I don’t want to be the kind of show everybody wants to have seen but nobody can bear to actually watch. [But] if you find the right narrative,” ordinary lives “become very vivid on television.”

Brancaccio said he expects that ratings will be down for the period immediately following Moyers’ departure, but he added that viewership has reached the 2.5 million mark and that the program performs well during PBS’ pledge drives -- an important indicator for PBS on the success of its programs. And to lighten the tone, starting in March the program will occasionally fill the entire half-hour slot with features on people in the arts.

And, of course, there’s Kennedy, who will lead a cast of regular contributors including civil rights attorney Constance Rice, former Maine Gov. Angus King and former Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Christie Whitman, who has a very different approach to environmentalism than Kennedy.

“There’s so much bitterness in partisan politics,” Brancaccio said. “I don’t want to tell people who to vote for -- I actually don’t care who they vote for. I want them to have facts.”

Kennedy, for his part, agreed that the show needs to present facts that the public is not otherwise getting. “We don’t have a huge philosophical gulf between the red states and the blue states,” Kennedy said. “We have an informational deficit.”

At a recent presentation for the Assn. of Television Critics in Los Angeles, Kennedy leaned forward in his chair and pointed his finger at media members as he spoke about pollution, our country’s natural resources and corporate interests.

“These are important issues, and most of them are being ignored by the American press,” Kennedy said. “The mainstream press is letting down us, the environment and American lives.”

Broadcast news, he said, is “giving us Laci Peterson and Michael Jackson and Kobe Bryant, but they’re not giving us the stories about the women who are contaminated by mercury.”

So while Brancaccio is on the road making friends with ordinary people, Kennedy will be doggedly working to address that information deficit -- for “Now” viewers or anyone who will listen. “I’m going to keep doing what I’m doing,” Kennedy said. “I’m going to be dying with my boots on, fighting these guys.”