REMEMBER THE AUDIENCE?:

Reaching out or caving in?: New shows spur charges that PBS is trying to appease conservative critics in Congress (Mark Jurkowitz, August 30, 2004, Boston Globe)

Tucker Carlson and Paul Gigot are more than just new PBS hosts. They are central figures in an ideological war. "I've been accused of being an instrument in some conspiracy," says Carlson, one of CNN's "Crossfire" conservatives, who anchors a new public-affairs show on PBS.

"I don't want to be anybody's tool for balancing something," adds Gigot, the editor of The Wall Street Journal's famously conservative editorial page, whose PBS show debuts next month.

Public television -- home of Big Bird, "Frontline," and Jim Lehrer -- has traditionally been a lightning rod for conservative complaints about liberal bias. But these days it is the left that is unhappy with the programming mix and fretting about a right-wing conspiracy.

The evidence, they say, is in a series of ominous lineup changes. In are conservatives such as Tucker and Gigot and possibly cultural commentator Michael Medved. Out is liberal icon Bill Moyers, who is retiring from "Now With Bill Moyers" after the election, although the program will continue in a shorter format.

"I definitely think that PBS is trying to appease conservative critics in Congress," says Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, who calls PBS president Pat Mitchell "the captain of the noncommercial Titanic. Instead of throwing people overboard, she's grabbing conservatives on board." [...]

Michael Pack, a former independent filmmaker who is now the CPB's senior vice president for television programming, is considered a conservative in public TV circles. Asked how he feels about being in the middle of an ideological storm over PBS, Pack says, "If you're going to make public-affairs shows, that's what happens. I think we as a system have shied away from controversy."

Pack makes no bones about what he sees as the need to shake up the menu. "One thing I feel strongly is public television needs to bring in new people, new life," he says.

What they're caving in to is popular taste, which has grown more conservative. There's a funny bit in the film The Mighty Wind where the PBS programmer talks about how bringing in any viewers who aren't baby boomers--the folks who've turned the network into an unending cycle of self-help shows and reunion concerts--whould be fantastic.

Posted by Orrin Judd at August 30, 2004 10:31 AM