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  SAINT PRESERVE US

(November 14, 2001)  
By Kathy Newman, Pittsburgh City Paper

Last week, a close friend gave me a precious gift: a 4-inch high fluorescent statute of St. Clare of Assisi. I'm not Roman Catholic, but even if I were, this gift was not in honor of my spiritual commitments. Rather, St. Clare of Assisi is none other than the patron saint of television, as established by the Pope in 1958.

St. Clare was a radical feminist for her time. Born in 1194, she rejected the marriage her family had arranged when she was 18 years old. Inspired by the teachings of St. Francis (who founded the order of Franciscan monks), she ran away from home with her cousin Pacifica in order to take a vow of poverty. However, women were not allowed to beg or to live without a "fixed abode." So Clare started an order of nuns and established the rule for living in poverty as a woman. She died two days after her rules were approved by Pope Innocent IV; she was 59 years old.

This may seem like an odd resume for the woman who 705 years later would become the patron saint of the most commercial medium ever known. But Clare was given this distinction because during the last 28 years of her life, which she spent as a bedridden invalid, she claims to have seen an image of a Mass which she was too ill to attend; the image was projected onto the wall of her convent.

Because of her ability to see, she is also the patron saint of embroiderers, eye disease, eyes, gilders, goldsmiths, good weather, laundry workers, needle workers, telegraphs, telephones and TV writers.

What I love about St. Clare is that she represents not only the medium, but also the people who work in it, in addition to the laundry workers, embroiderers and goldsmiths, Like many patron saints, she has a kind of working-class appeal.

Meanwhile, a local struggle is emerging that also concerns class, television and, possibly, divine intervention. On November 7 a local group known as Pittsburgh Educational Television (PET) released a business plan for the public TV station WQEX Channel 16, which is currently owned by WQED. WQED has been trying to sell WQEX to private interests for many years, but PET has been fighting this effort, claiming Pittsburgh is large enough for two public stations. (The stations have been broadcasting identical programming since 1997.)

The PET business plan criticizes WQED for not living up to its mission to serve the entire Pittsburgh community. WQED's highest-rated shows, for example, include program about cooking, doo-wop singing groups and yoga. Gone are such important programs as Labor's Corner, which aired on WQEX in the late 1980s.

PET proposes that, under new management, WQEX could air programs deemed too radical for mainstream public broadcasting. WQEX could, for example, bring to Pittsburgh the program Mental Engineering, which lampoons commercial advertising.

Most appealingly, this plan argues that local colleges and universities could become major partners in a new WQEX. Students at Carnegie Mellon University, where I teach media studies, would benefit from such a partnership. Some have already begun producing their own television shows; with an outlet like WQEX they could have a larger audience and get genuine professional training.

The struggle to free WQEX from WQED has been a long one. Happily, forces on the side of more diverse public broadcasting in Pittsburgh are at their most articulate and most organized. You can do your part by writing a letter to the FCC (for guidelines on how to address the letter and what to include, see http://www.save16.org).

To return to the subject of Catholicism, I confess I am no disciple of public television as it currently stands. But I'm all for having a local station where smart, progressive groups could create interesting, low-cost television shows. So get writing and don't forget to add a few appeals to St. Clare: This is one cause which will need some serious grassroots organizing and possibly a little prayer.

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