The First Amendment; David O. Ives

The First Amendment and a free people weekly examination of civil liberties in the media in the 1970s produced by WGBH radio Boston in cooperation with the Institute for democratic communication at Boston University. The host of the program is the institute's director Dr. boated Ruben. My guest for this edition is David. Oh I was the president of the WGBH Educational Foundation which for everybody in Boston means channel to Boston the flagship station the hallmark station in our minds many of our minds of the public television and radio system. It also means eighty nine point seven FM. All right. It means that too. DAVID Oh I have is a trustee and member of the Executive Committee of the Eastern Educational Network and the Boston Community Media Council and of a number of other organizations in our metropolitan area. He is also in his past has been the vice chairman of the board of managers of the Public Broadcasting Service and a working reporter for The Wall

Street Journal the Salem Evening News and other organizations electronic and from the print media. He's a Harvard man and because of that I'm going to ask you the tough question first DAVID Oh I've. What is the reason that the expectations that people have about public broadcasting are not matched by the general view that the expectations are being met. Right. I can't really answer that question unless you're going to be more specific about it because I could describe any expectations and I guess you'll have to tell me when I say stations you think let's say. Benjamin no hooks expectations. When he was an FCC commissioner that public radio and television would be able to transit classes and problems of our society and reach out in such a way that it was both a street corner college

and the Harvard University of broadcasting. Well I think that where I'd begin and that is to say that one of the problems with public broadcasting and this applies to radio as well as to television is that it has been the subject of very very high expectations by very large numbers of people and in the beginning everybody thought that all you had to do was to put a good professor in front of a microphone or in front of a camera let him or her go and then you would in the body politic would rise in wisdom and education. And it took a long time to get over that notion that this medium had that kind of magical quality. Reality came to it many years later and it became sort of a swear word in our business to say this program is nothing but a professor in front of a blackboard. And oddly that whole thing has come sort of full circle now and it wasn't until the

british showed us with things like civilization and particularly the ascent of man that the original notion we had was a very good one. But in order to make it work you had to put tremendous resources at its disposal and you had to have absolutely superb people. So when you took Jacob Bronowski and you gave him one of the best producers in Britain and you gave him two years to produce 13 programs. What came out of it was the ascent of man not only a television series but a book and a major work of Culture and Information. And that it seems to me is one of the ideals we ought to be looking toward in this country. And I regret to say that almost everybody concerned with Public Radio and Public Television has their sights much too low. They simply think that this is the tendency is in some sides to think that this is a relatively small and relatively unimportant operation that ought to be given a certain amount of funds. And I want to do some of the jobs that

commercial television and radio don't do. My view of it is that that's only a half truth or some truth in that. But what a real society like the United States the richest most varied the most potentially. Perfect society the world has ever known in my view ought to say to itself. How what is the best possible use we can make of communications in this country. Is the commercial television and radio system the best use we can make of this electronic medium and media. And I think any honest person would say for heaven's sake no part of this problem as you point out is funding that you don't have the the funds you've never had the funds to do it no matter how much money Congress gives you it's you're always anticipating more than you actually get it staggered funds through the year your various times literally begging through all sorts of innovative methods to get the public's support. If you had the funds. Let me just pose a theoretical question if you

had the funds could you provide a news program. That in essence was essentially distinctive from the three commercial networks and could you provide a service that might unify the politics or the political situation a little better that might make people understand their roles a little better or might increase participation. Is this a dream that public broadcasting could do this if the funds were available. It certainly is my dream and I think the place to look for the model his PUBLIC RADIO ALL THINGS CONSIDERED is an extraordinary program utterly different than anything done on commercial radio and in my opinion people listen to all things considered if they can stay there the whole hour and a half are marvelously much better informed than by listening to the kind of snippets of news you get on commercial radio stations. So I would agree it's a tremendous program. It's a wonderful book. Some people think that that model can be translated directly to television. I doubt that because

television is a different kind of medium. But I am very strong in thinking that we ought to try something like that and given the NRA the right amount of funds I think there's no doubt that public television could mount a nightly news program that would take significant numbers of serious minded people and they those people exist in every class and part of society to our screen and would watch and get a tremendous amount more out of it. Two things are going on in that direction that are very encouraging I think. If we had more money. One is the MacNeil-Lehrer Report on television which really does dig into issues as know both of those people. There are very few diet they are compatible. They they have good briefing work before they go on the air. They're not afraid to ask the tough questions. And yet one gets the sense that. If the money was available for the commercial networks to have that kind of a

program the ditch it as quickly as possible. Well I think they would and I think that's a reality programs that deal with tough issues with serious news in a way that the MacNeil-Lehrer program does provide more than most people really want. I have a kind of cynical theory about television news which is that people watch it. Simply to make sure the world is still there or to be cast but the horrors of the airplane crashes and fires and things and point around the world and I want to make sure that the negotiations between Sadat and Begin took place as they said they were going to. And I don't think people derive very much from the ordinary television news program. In fact in many surveys have shown that the average person when queried the next day can't even a single item he saw on the news the night before. Not one single item. And I think that's a lot different than newspaper reading. And somehow it seems to me commercial noncommercial public television has got to

develop and would develop if it had the resources. A very different kind of news program that would require more time but would provide ever so much more information for people who who are willing to devote the time and the reason I asked about this and perhaps pressed a little bit on that point was because as I think of public television WGBH Channel 2 in Boston I think of the advocates I think of Nova I think of the world program series and so on. And then I know that there is at the same time a certain amount of alienation which the general public is manifesting toward all television. A certain amount of alienation which is festering over to to public work and I'm wondering if that is true whether we are now at a plateau point and we have to make a breakthrough with new

kinds of programming. Tying cable eastern western part of the United States reaching out for London Paris and Kuala Lumpur getting them the MacNeil-Lehrer Report. So that has visuals even though it's on a 24 hour basis that sort of thing. Yeah I would I would generally tend to agree with that. And the old phrase for that kind of thing was the global village you know television was going to connect the whole world and we would all feel part of that same tiny community. My feeling is that the village sense is not going to come to us for very long we've all got more provincial since television came and I think we have anybody ever imagined. That's right and it probably was there all along we didn't realize it. And I think that the growth of ethnic pride in a regional city and community neighborhood pride is an important aspect of what's going on in the country. So long as it isn't it isn't hostile. But I think the positive sides of that one deeply encouraging if you take a look at in Boston the you know what a Rican community here

has just has got tremendous pride in what they're accomplishing. And that's the kind of thing that I hope all communities in this country can start developing to get back to the specifics of what may be coming. As you probably know public broadcasting is about to get into the world of satellite transmission. Most of the public television stations are on satellite transmission now all of them will be by early 79 radio will be on very shortly after that. And suddenly we have the capacity and it will slowly increase to deliver very much larger numbers of programs and more varied programs than we've ever had before. And this is beginning to attract all kinds of excitement as to the possibilities of it. There's a thing called the public satellite service consortium I think it is in which. A lot of instructional entities and a lot of groups that have common interests are thinking of using this for transmitting programming and information across the whole country. And these are not

just straight universities or teaching organizations but groups of people such as nurses and and social workers and so forth which could engage in some very specific and special kind of programming. You have to watch out for that though because you remember when cable came along everybody thought well this is the finally everybody has a hundred different things he's interested in and his neighbor isn't exactly and everybody can choose. I think over the long run something really significant is going to happen in this country and there is going to be available to every household in the country a much broader choice technically anyway information that can come in. The big question is how we're going to get the information on it and how we're going to support it all because at the moment pay cable which seems to be flourishing is flourishing mainly in three areas if we our information is correct one is new movies or big time movies. Another one is big time sports events and big time entertainment

fan events. And third one is the kind of blue material that you get in nightclubs. Those are the things that pay off on cable. And those are not the things that public television and public broadcasting almost literally couldn't public television. And radio go into the publishing business as it were and and provide for these new cassette replaying machines there. The library of previous programs could they not provide a service to schools and universities materials could they not enter into agreements with print publishing houses for the reprints of texts and backgrounds and all the rest of it. You know the words. If we just take the university world without looking at other things there are eight and a half million people there ready to be serviced. The book publishers are going into the visual areas why is it that the the public radio and television people have neglected the fact that you communicate in all directions with your material and are ignoring the

tremendous profits which could go back into programming from cassettes from organizing publishing houses. You probably have 10 years worth of material now that could be weaned for sociology courses alone. Yeah that that's a good point and people have to I do that often. It doesn't seem on the basis of the little exploration that's been done that has that much profit in it. The amount of profit that you suggest and the other hand it certainly ought to continue to be explored because if there's any one thing that would make a big difference in public broadcasting is finding a source of income that would produce some return over and above what you spent wrote most frustrating part about the whole business although I keep saying most frustrating there are so many most frustrating is in our business I know I know full well that you enjoy it to the full so every time you use the word frustration I see that sense of excitement you know. Right. But one of the frustrations is when you do something good in public broadcasting it becomes just as hard to do the next thing and you don't get any return funds to help you go

on. This is one of the things that GBH is taking the lead on in trying to push into our system some sort of incentive grants so that when a lot of stations have used your material you get some sort of return from that and get a prorated share some money to go on and do something better the next time. But right now it's just frustrating. What would you like to produce. Looking ahead just in a 12 month period of a 24 month period would you like to produce that you know darn well you don't have the money for you probably won't. My top priority has been one for several years and that is when that's coming to the fore more and more on the pressures of various sorts. And the best simple description of it is an American masterpiece theater. The British have shown us how to do historical and drama and and works of literature brilliantly well they've just been doing it for years and years and years the actors are superb. Me to interject one little fact I'm a devoted follower but I believe that the Mayor of Casterbridge cannot pronounce his words and he's something a lot of them.

I don't know if you agree with that. I don't know whether that's the only has an odd character rising that guy very odd. I spent many many many months of my life in England. Well I've heard that accent outside of reading but it is a mysterious one especially in the earlier episodes. It may be that Alan Bates is trying to take on a regional accent that he really can't handle that's just a myth. Yeah right. Anyway if we could do an American Masterpiece Theater and this would apply to radio as well as television. That I would go for it in a minute and I would go for it for a lot of different reasons. One it would be a tremendous showcase for what's American and we really need that. If we could develop that showcase Congress would think that would have simply terrific. We would have on the air once a week something reflecting the best in America American history sort of an alliance with the Theatre Guild or some organization like that could be I don't know what the alliances would be the main thing would be to get the competent television stations and any other organizations producing on a regular basis serial drama

which would be based such as we are now have just completed the shooting on the scarlet letter. It's just absurd to think that the classics of American literature are not being shown to the American public. But the scarlet letter for what I read is an enormous undertaking. That's a very point it's a huge undertaking it's costing us two and a quarter million dollars to do that for four hours and the people who are from Hollywood we brought in to help us with that claim that they couldn't when they saw the budget they said you can't do that for a third of that cost him with your ambitious plan for three times the cost. Not for three days. We then went in the most terrible trouble and cutting down the budget and we cut slashed and we did. We've I think we're finally going to come through with something very close to our budget. But it's going to be a tremendous job. And there is nothing coming along behind the scarlet letter. There have only been really three things in all of public television the Adams Chronicles first of which was done by New York a couple years later we had the best effect three years later I think the best of families done my Children's Television Workshop. Now the Scarlet Letter and that's a period of about six years. Well that's just pathetic for a country

as powerful and well financed as this. We can't even find the money to focus on our own heritage. And as I remember reading the Chronicles left the New York crowd reeling and gasping for years afterwards because of the Herculean effort that went into that it did indeed end there Larry Grossman president of PBS was making this point just the other day. When you go into something like this it's always a terrible struggle to get into it for the first two or three or four episodes you struggle you make mistakes and you lose money once you get going on it. The thing is ended and the whole team gets disbanded. Then you have to go back through this laborious process took just two and a half years to raise the money for the Scarlet Letter. And once we get the thing done and on the air next spring we'll be so exhausted we will take another two and a half years to get going so you know the British of course and many European countries have this license fee. That will be hind it now when they produce the Masterpiece Theater they're able to go. Of course the English have the advantage they can go to one city pretty much which is the central london of the theatre. But they have this fee is there any substitute we could make it. Is the crew still in Congress that

Congress must come round to an assured funding to to fund public radio television in the national interest or is that politically still beyond the horizon. Well you've put your finger on the problem and both positive and negative. I think the answer does has to lie in Congress because I think the cost of this thing a well beyond any other source that we can so far think about if maybe we get at this publishing thing and the revenues will be so big that it would do would do the trick. But Bill McGill who is the head of the new Carnegie Commission which will report in January of 79 has said that in his Been opinion public broadcasting needs a billion and a half dollars a year in order to do the job that everybody expects it to do all the millions of jobs everybody expects it to do. So what is that a third of an aircraft carrier. Oh you know to use that oh yes sure sure. I'd feel a nuclear submarine cost but it's it's so in that area and an aircraft carrier three times and we're dealing in terms of two hundred forty

million people. Yeah yeah. And as Rob Rogers the former chairman of PBS we're seeing these I think you seem high but think of them in terms of the number of people who watch and even now a program like Nova is watched by three or four million people a week. And and although Nover is a high cost show the dollars cents per person reached is very very low it's cost efficient. Somehow we've got to get the people in Congress to say to themselves This is good for America and it's worth doing and we want to support it. We don't have any champions there the woman in fact we have people who seem to be turning somewhat hostile though I'm a little suspicious of Nova because one of the programs or series dealt with outer space. And one point I was convinced I knew what they were talking about. I've since discovered I don't get it. So skillfully done. When they showed me that huge machine that just beamed these little dots back and forth over miles of inner cable and whatnot what that proved I was in rapt attention by point though is that if I were ten years old that program

would be enough to turn me toward technology might have me end up at MIT my. The program as a catalyst was was marvelous. Yeah and it's exactly the kind of thing that public broadcasting can do. Nova is sort of a model Michael Emerson or to call him and he went over to your AP decided that having been to the BBC looked things over there on a leave of absence for nine months he came back all excited about doing an American version of horizon but doing it better. And that took off and now it's settled into the schedule as one of the programs that the stations want most will try to do the same thing with World. We certainly could do the same thing with Masterpiece Theater. The best thing about Masterpiece Theater. American masterpiece that it is that no one station or no one entity could do it all you had to parcel it out and you'd want a station in Dallas to do something about the Southwest and Denver to do something about the Indians on the planes and in Chicago to do something about the seething city growing out of the railroads and in Florida to do something about the Seminoles and in New England to do the scarlet letter and

thus you would have had both the political things you need and which are to appease the various congressmen who want money going to be iconic area of the country and you take advantage of the one of the phenomena of our time which is the regional theater the regional repertory theatres like the Guthrie on the Trinity Square playhouse here in Providence which is first class and we've done some work with them a couple of darn good things on public television and the San Francisco theatre that Purba Shakespeare. What what's what what's Kiss Me Kate based on. You're asking if you're going to cut me I know you know I'm doing The Taming Of The Shrew Jamie is free and I want tomorrow. Michelle then was and we just got to start tapping those resources which is so rich in this country. Here you can you know it when you mentioned Kiss Me Kate to my mind was filled with Alfred Drake and trees are Mars and so you can see that

just threw me off there for a moment. One of the great musicals of all time. Yes it was. Well I thought it's a very weak show but it was a great musical in its early days. I gather that you're you're genuinely optimistic. How do the people who manage the industry the the public industry when they meet together what was their strategy. Are they equally optimistic as a group or pessimistically optimistic. Their strategy at the moment is sort of a clue to one of the problems has been in public broadcasting since then since the beginning. And their strategy at the at this time which is the fall of 78 is we've got to get together fellas and make sure we have a consensus on which way we're going. Last spring when the financing act of 78 was coming up. It turned out we didn't know really what the score was. We were dealing with different characters in Congress. We were dealing with a new administration. We went with the administration and when the administration's bill got to Congress it was simply turned

away from the House Committee in the Senate committee to Duce their own bills about three weeks before the hearings a total surprise. We didn't really know that was going on or if we did know it was going on we didn't pay enough attention to it as a result the bills came through with a lot of things which scared us. Now we have to some degree headed those off it looked as though they were trying to get control of programming in various ways. I think they were but I think we've raised the flag and the human cry really enough to to stem that to some degree. But in this so-called rewrite of the Communications Act which is coming coming along and may or may not get anywhere more of that ominous sense that there are some people who think they can run it better if Uncle Sam gets his hands on it and is right there and we end public television and radio have got to make sure that we are all together on what we're doing and that once again exposes this odd sort of squabbling that goes on in public broadcasting between those who think that their local station should make every decision for themselves even by sort of a sort of a

system wide vote. And. And that's all programming decisions should be made by the managers of the station and by others who recognize that it is a high ideal but really doesn't get it is because that theoretically produces camels but not necessarily creative programs. Yeah that's the point and this argument goes on back about oh yes we could do it if we just had the rights and you can't force programs down our throat. The other guy's name but we've got to get good programs for the people who give us more money and so forth. And it's a basic sort of philosophical problem which we have a very hard time dealing with. There's a new move in the whole system now that's very encouraging because the gun who used to be the general manager of WGBH is heading up an effort to try to decide to develop a real system consensus on how the public television system should be organized and run. And if we can do that and get consensus as we did on how to run the satellite from the ground up from the from the stations up to the to the to the whatever central organization we've got to have there's a chance we can get it to run right. At the

moment there's just so. There are so many conflicts and so many stresses and strains that it's very easy for Congress to say you guys have to get your act together so we know what to do and we're going to tell you. And the trouble is that the people who were telling you were members of the staff of the Congress who don't have close contacts with what's going on who look at it from a side who are subject to pressures of one sort or another from political groups who are coming to them and telling them we're not getting our share of the pie. And it's a very tough political settlement that you're learning about lobbying and Erling about pressure groups and you're learning about how a bill becomes a law and you're learning about lining up your own congressmen that can represent you and I guess is all part of a preparatory period that you have to go through the hard knocking period. There's a theory that has so long as you're under 200 million in Congress nobody pays any attention to you once you get over 200 million boy watch out years they'll start telling you what to do and we're just at that point now where maybe you know we will be in couple years you should have four grants of hundreds have to think. I think that's right.

Well I want to thank you very much David O president of the WGBH Educational Foundation because you've done one thing for me. I've learned an awful lot that I didn't know. And I think the thing that I've learned is that the approach to public. Radio and Television is not entirely theoretical but entirely practical and that you are on the firing line you know and and the battles have just begun. You're my current interest. Yeah. And so I thank you again for this addition. Bernard Reuben. The First Amendment and a free people weekly examination of civil liberties in the media in the 1970s. The program is produced in cooperation with the Institute for democratic communication at Boston University. Why didn't you GBH radio Boston which is solely responsible for its content. This is the station program exchange.