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Corporation for Public Broadcasting Oversight and a Look Into Public Broadcasting in the Digital Era
Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet
Ms. Pat Mitchell
Mr.
Chairman, I am grateful for the opportunity to provide you and this esteemed
Committee of public television stakeholders an update on PBS's activities
and to respond to your questions. Much
of what we know as broadcasting has changed in the 35 years since Congress
created public broadcasting with a singular and vitally important mission -
which we hold as strongly today as we ever have. As stated in the Public
Broadcasting Act of 1967, it is our mission to use the miracles of modern
communication to create miracles of teaching and learning; to provide a forum
for diverse voices that commercial media might overlook or leave out; and to
use our unique, non-commercial licenses to create content and services that
inform, inspire, educate and engage. We
pursue this mission today in a far different world than the one in which
public service media came into being in this country. You
may remember those "dark ages" when you actually had to get up out of your
chair to change the channel. And
in those days, there were only a handful of channels to choose. Now,
there are hundreds of choices, and television is only one choice among other
compelling forms of media: the internet, DVDs, VODs, TIVOs, video games, and,
of course, movies and radio. Additionally,
the media landscape is merging and converging, resulting in more concentration
of ownership, creating ever more powerful gatekeepers. While at the same time,
with the digital revolution to which this committee and PBS are committed,
comes the promise of more choices, more interactivity, and more viewer
control. What
is PBS's role in such a media universe?
I submit to this Committee that it is more significant, more essential
than ever before. It
is impossible in these few minutes of formal testimony to include all that PBS
and the 349 member stations - local public television stations in your
districts - are doing to carry out our special
mandate, but I'd like to offer a few examples and facts to support
this Committee's stake in our proud past, in the relevant work we pursue
today and in the plans we have for the future.all based on the founding
principles of using media to enrich the lives of our constituents and to impact positively the communities we serve. To
begin, we have stayed local. In a
world quite literally connected by an electronic nervous system, creating
enormous power for global media companies, public television is locally-based,
locally-licensed and locally-operated. In
fact, in many of the communities I have visited during my two-year tenure at
the helm of PBS, the local public television station is the last locally-owned
media enterprise in the community. This
matters. This means the best of
national and international content, delivered and connected to a community
through locally-originated educational programs and outreach activities.
This also means that our content and services are grounded in the
community's needs and values. Most
of the national programming that is broadcast on PBS is produced by local
public television stations, and, of course, member stations also produce
programming focused on their communities. Everyday in some way, public
television is connecting content with community, and there are many powerful
examples of how this can change lives. I could share a very large file of such
stories and viewer responses, that would make it clear that public television
is not just another channel to our supporters and shareholders. We
don't do this alone. We do it
in partnership with other community organizations, educational and cultural
institutions. We do this with web
content and curriculum materials. We
do this because for us, the greatest value of a program is often what happens
after the program is over and the television is turned off.
I'm
sure this Committee shares our concern about a coarsening media culture filled
with violent dramas, sexually explicit talk shows, and mindless reality
programs. Television has gone
from Ozzie and Harriet to Ozzy Osborne and from Firing
Line to The Weakest Link. Let
me assure you that all of us in public television are holding on to our core
values like a life raft in a turbulent sea. Those
values include providing a safe haven for children and parents - a place to
grow and learn. Three
generations of parents have raised their children with pro-social,
entertainingly educational PBS programs like Sesame Street and Mr.
Rogers. We continue to build
on that trusted tradition today with programs like:
This
September, we are launching pbsparents.org to provide a comprehensive
site on topics such as nutrition, health, discipline, age appropriate books and
games, and other issues we hope will help busy parents. And
through the Ready To Learn funding that Congress renewed and increased in this
year's ESEA legislation, PBS is also continuing to provide direct, hands-on
support to parents in the communities you and we serve. The
PBS Ready To Learn service provides more than 200,000 parents, teachers and
caregivers with free workshops, books and other resources to help them prepare
their children for school. The
results of Ready to Learn can make us all feel good about an investment of
taxpayers' dollars. Again, just a
few examples of impact:
Public
television stations take the educational part of our mission to heart and while
the actual services may vary, depending on the kind of licensee, all public
television stations support educational efforts, formally through
curriculum-based activities and school partnerships and informally through adult
learning services. Allow me again a few examples of the results of this work at
the local and national level:
When
you tally up all that PBS and our local stations do in the area of education, it
is much broader in scope and impact than might have been realized and, surely,
is another reason why PBS is essential and valued in each community. In
an event at the White House in May, President Bush recognized PBS's role in
education by celebrating the Ready To Learn program. He said, "Our goal
as a nation is to make sure that no child is denied the chance to grow in
knowledge and character from their very first years.
The public broadcasting system has excelled in carrying out that
responsibility." And
we are so pleased that the First Lady has agreed to be the honorary Chair of
PBS's reading campaign this fall, which will promote reading and literacy
among all Americans. Someone
once described PBS as "programming from the neck up" - and while I agree
that we focus on the educational value of all the programming we distribute, I
would also go a little farther down and include the heart. Clearly, the PBS primetime schedule includes some of
America's favorite series: Masterpiece Theatre, NOVA, Frontline,
Antiques Roadshow, just to name a few of the ongoing series which make up
more than 60 percent of our total primetime schedule. In
this Congress, PBS has provided our member stations with nearly 8800 hours of
programming which includes approximately 20 percent in programs for children, 25
percent classified as adult education, 12 percent public affairs,
9 percent performance and art, 7 percent history and news, 5 percent in
science and nature, 4 percent drama and 1 percent independent film. We
receive about 3300 proposals a year for programs from both station producers as
well as independents and only about 400 projects get selected for broadcast in
primetime, and another 600 of so hours that come fully funded are sent out to
stations for their broadcast however they deem best for their communities. Our
standards are high, and we take very seriously our mission to bring diverse
voices, points of view and cultural backgrounds that might be missing from
mainstream media. This
year, PBS and CPB brought to American broadcast television the first primetime
drama series about a Latino family, American Family, which was just named
the best family drama on television by the Family Friendly Forum of Advertisers,
and our stations extended the value of this series by producing companion local
programs on different immigrant families in their communities. At
PBS, we are also committed to ensuring fair and balanced presentation of issues,
according to the principles set forth by Congress in the Public Broadcasting Act
of 1967. Gratefully, viewer surveys
- which we have shared with the leadership of this Committee - indicate that
our programming is largely perceived to be balanced and without bias.
For example, PBS's news program, The
NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, is consistently ranked by viewers as the
most trusted, most reliable and most objective of all the news programs and news
channels. But we recognize that
some members of this Committee have concerns about the perception of bias in
some PBS programming. We are
committed to understanding those concerns and to turning them around. It's
also important to us that PBS programming continues to receive more critical
acclaim and to win more awards for journalistic excellence than any other
broadcast entity. But the highest
award and acclaim for us and all of our producers is to know that public
television consistently chooses to focus on the subjects and issues that
Americans want to know and need to know, whether it is the global economy as in
the recent series Commanding Heights or life on the frontier in the very
popular Frontier House or reports from the frontlines long before the
conflict is a headline. The
importance of having a public broadcasting system with such a mission became
poignantly clear as we responded to the unprecedented acts of terror on
September 11. Mr.
Chairman, 48 hours after the terrorists' strikes on New York and Washington,
PBS served our adult audiences with the first in-depth profile of Osama bin
Laden. PBS was able to do this -
not because we had reporters ready with live feeds - but because our Frontline
documentary series had produced a bin Laden profile one year before he became
the world's most wanted man. In
the days after the bin Laden profile was broadcast, members of President
Bush's Cabinet, Congress and even the Queen of England requested copies of the
documentary, and that program, along with an in-depth series on the history of
the Muslim faith, also produced months before, contributed to our understanding
of WHY did this happen; WHY were we
so unprepared? WHY did they hate us so? PBS
was invited to screen these documentaries for a rare bipartisan gathering of the
House Republican Conference and the Democratic Caucus. I
said then, and I remind the Committee now, that being prepared to serve in bad
times means serving in good times as well, with the kind of content and services
that may gain relevance because of crisis but were not and cannot be created
only in response to one. And
yet, in this dramatically altered and dynamic media
landscape, you may hear the question raised from time to time, "Do we
need public television when we have all those cable channels and all the new
channels that will come with digital?" My
answer is, "More than ever." Indeed,
what good are more choices if they are just more of the same? While
it is true that more choices slice the viewer pie thinner and thinner, at PBS we
are committed to the depth of our relationship with viewers and online users
rather than simply the number of them. Although
it bears repeating that on any given night PBS has twice the viewers of most
cable channels and on a recent Saturday night, we actually attracted a larger
audience than the ABC network. And,
many are surprised to learn that PBS holds a leadership position online as well
as on television, with 12 million visitors each week spending an extraordinary
average of 45 minutes on PBS.org. This
makes it the most-visited dot-org site in the world. But
while we are pleased with the numbers of viewers and visitors, we do not judge
our success by these numbers alone. That
is a measurement that must define success for our commercial colleagues, but we
have an educational and public service mandate to fulfill.
We
will be putting that mandate first as we approach the promise of digital.
You will hear much more about public television's plans for digital
from my colleague at APTS, but let me just add that we have been committed to
high definition programming since 1998, and starting this fall, nearly all PBS
content will be future-proofed for high definition broadcast.
Many
of our early digital adopters are already multi-casting, providing new
educational services and more true choice; in other words, added value in every
format of content or service delivery. That
is how I see what we do, Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee.
I see a singular, much-needed alternative to all other media enterprises
that must, by design, judge their services by how much profit they return to
their stockholders. Our
bottom line is different. Because
of your support, and the support of viewers like you, we can pursue the use of
media, the power of mass communications, with a focus on public service, with a
commitment to creating value, not for stockholders, but for all Americans who
are in fact the real shareholders of public television and the Public
Broadcasting Service. I thank the Committee and am happy to answer any questions.
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