Marvin Kitman

Commercial-free public TV? Not on Marvin's screen

In this story: Lines get blurry Kids inundated, too Noncommercial? RELATED STORIES, SITES

(Los Angeles Times Syndicate) -- The "Buena Vista Social Club" movie on PBS stations Thursday night was made possible by "a generous grant from Buena Vista Carneros Estate Winery," as the press releases say.

In gratitude, the last time the movie was on public TV, I was toasting the generosity of Buena Vista by drinking a bottle of its Very Limited Carneros Grand Reserve Chardonnay, which I had rushed out to buy for the screening, along with the Buena Vista pinot noir, merlot and cabernet sauvignon. It's a long movie.

Somewhere between drinking to the Sonoma, California, winery's good health and its continuing prosperity, it occurred to me: Perhaps PBS was being over-generous in allowing the Buena Vista people to underwrite something so closely linked to their own name. Wasn't this, uh, a little commercial for the noncommercial alternative to its traditional rival, commercial broadcasting?

Was this a first step to product placement, which we regularly see in commercial broadcasting? Coca-Cola, for example, this summer paid $25 million to the WB for the right to have the kids in its "Young Americans" series downing Cokes in each episode.

Would it be so much trouble for Jim Lehrer to pop open a can of Pepsi before reading the news every night on "The Jim Lehrer News Hour"? Ed Murrow used to smoke cigarettes while doing his prestigious CBS News shows, you know.

Couldn't Russell Baker knock down a few Bud Lights during his intros to "Masterpiece Theatre" -- I mean, if the price was right?

I don't know why I was surprised by this apparent blurring of the lines between commercial and public TV. There is a tradition of this sort of great undertaking on our alternative to commercial TV.

I still remember a station guide from December 1997, plugging a show called "Creating Ragtime" in conjunction with the E.L. Doctorow show on Broadway. Isn't this the usual technique of commercial TV, called "a tie-in" with a big show, such as "The Lion King" and "Beauty and the Beast" on Disney's ABC? "Creating Ragtime" was one big promotional piece or commercial for the musical; I hope the channel had a piece of the action.

The same issue in my files has an article on Chase's corporate sponsorship of some series. "It mentioned Chase 14 times," recounted Herb Jue, a math teacher at City College of New York who sent me the issue. "Gimme a break. Was I reading an annual report?"

The smell of commercialism is reaching my nostrils more frequently on so-called commercial-free public TV. I was watching a program the other night -- don't remember which one -- and it was underwritten by those public-TV lovers at Chase. A few well-chosen words about how friendly and nice they are. Then they came back with a second totally different message about better relationships. More reasons to bank with Chase. That was the chaser.

I'm a Chase customer. Maybe if it wasn't spending my money on public TV it wouldn't be raising its fees all the time?

The Chase commercials were interrupted by commercials for Saab. Now don't get me wrong -- I used to own two Saabs at the same time; parked in front of my house, they were known as the Saab sisters -- but this was the same commercial they were using on commercial TV.

My grandchildren came over the other morning, and they turned on children's TV on PBS. This used to be a commercial-free zone, where kids could at least get a head start growing up in a healthy, noncommercial environment.

Not anymore. Now the kiddie hours are cluttered with more brand names than you see at a mall. Everything from Rice Krispies to Teletubbies merchandise is being sold to kids on public airways. Any morning I expect to see the Teletubbies prancing around with commercials on the TV sets on their bellies.

Has anyone else noticed how the commercialism is getting more brazen, blatant and bloated on noncommercial TV? In a way, commercial-unfree public TV is worse than commercial TV; the ads are so sneaky. With what they call "enhanced underwriting," the spots have grown from "the following program is brought to you by a grawnt (yes, grawnt) from Mobil" -- which I still think is the best ad ever written in 12 words or less -- to full-blown productions showing products and services that could and do run on commercial TV.

I would criticize them for selling out their principles, if they had anything left to sell after 30 years of pushing the envelope. The only problem today is that they are selling themselves short.

Public TV executives take pride in their "market savvy." They are in danger of breaking their hands pounding themselves on the back for getting ever more great corporate names to sponsor their shows: Kellogg's, Iomega, Minwax: They are dancing down Madison Avenue coming up with unique deals, such as allowing public TV viewers like us sign up for Sprint Long Distance when they pledge to their local stations.

But public TV rates for commercials are too low, judging by the continuous cash-flow problems that we hear about in pledge drives. They are the model for dot.com bankruptcies.

Everywhere, commercial broadcasting networks are flourishing -- except PBS.

But, you say, it's a noncommercial system. Really? It's time to get rid of that fiction. Congress is in the process of dealing with the fine points that define public TV. The Noncommercial Broadcasting Freedom of Expression Act (HR No. 4201), already passed the House, 264-159, on June 20, redefining educational television to include religious broadcasters. A rider in the Senate version of the bill could allow them to become honest and sell commercials. We viewers would hardly notice the difference.

Can you imagine a public TV free of those onerous pledge drives? No more mail and phone-call shakedowns from the station asking how come you didn't send in renewals.

End the sham. Make the corporations pay for the right to fill our minds with gratitude and other reasons to rush out and buy their products. It's long past time for public TV to come out of the closet.

While I'm being constructive, here is another way to improve the financial situation: All of our cultural shrines are getting trendy new names. The latest to join baseball parks and hockey arenas is the Oscars. According to Variety, for a cool $75 million, Kodak will have its name emblazoned on the new Academy Awards theater in Hollywood.

What is so sacred about PBS that it can't be renamed EBS (Exxonmobil Broadcasting System) for the right price? And the name could be put out for auction every three or five years to the highest bidder. There is always some environmental polluter or other corporation-in-trouble seeking to curry favor with the public-TV opinion-maker niche audience.

Kitman is the television critic for New York Newsday. His column appears regularly on CNN Interactive's Entertainment section. E-mail Kitman at MarvinKitmanShow@worldnet.att.net

(c) 2000, Newsday Inc. Distributed by Los Angeles Times Syndicate.

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Buena Vista Winery's Carneros Estate
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