PBS STATIONS NOT RESPONSIVE TO LOCAL COMMUNITIES.

PBS Wants To Be A Center For "Social Capital."

Jerold M. Starr is executive director of Citizens for Independent Public Broadcasting, a grassroots campaign to improve broadcasting. He is also, professor of Sociology at West Virginia University

This is the fourth in a series of essays. Links to the first three installments are posted at the bottom of this page.

At the PBS Annual Meeting last June, Director Pat Mitchell trumpeted a new article and unveiled a new “Programming Plan: 2001-2002.” Mitchell declared, “Public television can and should offer a unique experience – one that builds trust, creates connections and encourages citizens to take action, become involved, and build the social capital that characterizes healthy communities.”

The concept of “social capital” is taken from the work of Harvard professor Robert Putnam (author of “Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community”) and Putnam was at the meeting to explain it. For Putnam, social capital represents “connections among individuals – social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them.” Also referred to as “civic virtue” and “community,” social capital “makes us smatter, healthier, richer, and better able to govern a just and stable democracy.”

Putnam’s thesis is that social capital has eroded significantly in American life. Generational differences notwithstanding, Putnam places much of the blame on television which not only “steals time,” but breeds “lethargy and passivity.” Does this make him a curious choice to address PBS? Not necessarily. There is nothing inherent in television that should discourage, rather than encourage, civic participation. I recall when I was growing up, seeing documentaries, news coverage and even meeting announcements that both educated and inspired me to get involved with movements in my community. As media scholar Pat Aufderheide reflects, public broadcasting could be “a public project executed through broadcasting ... using mass communications as a tool of public life.”

Tragically, that is not what PBS seems to have in mind. Inspection of the programming plan reveals the same old wine in new bottles. The goal is to attract “social capitalists who we [PBS] have identified as the most likely target viewer/user to become sustainable public television supporters.” As put by journalists Karen Everhart Bedford, “Public TV leaders have seized on the concept as a tonic to reverse PBS’s sagging audiences and membership numbers.”

Putnam himself said he doesn’t like the term “social capitalists,” which clearly reeks of commercialism. In his view this should not be merely about “re-labeling,” like a new slogan for PBS pledge drives, but rather “thinking outside the box about how to blend electronic forms of communication with other forms of communication to widen the circle of people interested in community affairs.” If it is just “a new slogan,” says Putnam, “that won’t have any significant payoff at all.”

PBS station managers are oriented “toward a narrowly defined audience of upscale viewer-check writers” who end up “substituting for the public as a whole.”

Promoting civic engagement remains a foreign idea at PBS, however, where the common language has become “focus groups,” “ratings,” “cumes,”(i.e. cumulative ratings) and “branding.” In fact, PBS programmers have requested a major increase in annual primetime hours designated for PBS National Program Service carriage from 350 to 550. This would cost the stations five percent more in program assessments and be implemented at the expense of local programming discretion at a time when only a handful of stations have a local nightly news presence and the most distinguished of these, “Newsnight Minnesota,” has shut down.

What is most revealing about the PBS programming plan is not what is there, but what is not. Nowhere is it acknowledged that all stations are required to have active Community Advisory Boards (CABs) “to advise the governing board of the station whether programming and other policies ... are meeting the specialized educational and cultural needs of the communities” they serve and to make such recommendations to meet those needs. Mandated by Congress in response to public pressure in 1978, CPB regulations specifically state that a major purpose of the CABs is to provide for “effective public participation in planning and decision making.” This clearly is the place foe community leaders to connect stations to active citizens and build social capital.

Researching CABs a few years back, I spoke to Pat Rudebusch, the CPB official then in charge of overseeing them. She said the main problem with the CABs occurs when you have the “old way of thinking ... usually among the management that any kind of outside involvement is bad because they will control programming.” Nevertheless, she recommended CABs in four major cities that she considered good models.

I examined station materials and interviewed activists in all four cities. Not one of these boards seemed to be having any impact on programming or policy. Management appointed all members and two CABs met only occasionally. My own service on the CAB of WQED-TV Pittsburgh convinced me that these entities were little more than black holes of volunteer energy kept on the books only because they are required by law. When it comes to programming, according to public broadcasting executive Willard Rowland, Jr., station managers are oriented “toward a narrowly defined audience of upscale viewer-check writers” who end up “substituting for the public as a whole.”

Former KQED-San Francisco CEO James Day once observed: “the greatest force for blandness is not the government; it’s the stations.” There have been numerous cutting-edge public affairs series offered free by satellite downlink to PBS member stations over the years that only a minority have seen fit to carry. Such programs addressed community issues that are part of the PBS mission, but typically ignored; in the workplace (“We Do the Work” and “Livelihood”), in the gay and lesbian community (“In the Life”), and human rights around the world (“Rights and Wrongs” and “South Africa Now”). A new show, “Mental Engineering,” dissects broadcast commercials to educate consumers and keep corporations honest. It is carried by only 50 of about 350 PBS member stations.

In 1993, Harper’s Editor Lewis Lapham, himself a former PBS producer, characterized the system as “the Holy Roman Empire during the last days of its decaying hegemony – 351 petty states and dukedoms, each with its own flag, own court chamberlain and trumpet fanfare.”

Social capital? America needs it and PBS is positioned to contribute. First, however, it will have to liberate itself from the commercial culture that has taken hold and explore new ways both to support itself and to serve its publics.

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