KPBS does away with "A Way With Words"

[Bob_Hudson]

The longtime KPBS-FM weekend show A Way With Words has been given the boot. The most recent hosts were Martha Barnette and Grant Barrett. The program was picked up in a few other markets, but produced in San Diego by KPBS. What absolutely blew me away was the story which said this once-a-week, hour-long program cost $250,000 a year to produce! Mind you this is two people sitting at mikes taking calls from listeners, (I man this is not Prairie Home Companion) but apparently in public radio you can make a full-time job out of a one hour talk show (and there are probably producers, editors, and other assorted staff). I usually listened to this show whenever I could, although it suffered since the departure of original host Richard Lederer, who had brought Martha in as a co-host a couple years ago. But honestly, for radio station that gets money by begging for it, a quarter million a year for an hour programming once a week is shameful and KPBS did the right thing by dropping it. It actually was some of the best locally-produced programming on KPBS radio (which isn't saying much), but now maybe the $250K savings can be absorbed by dropping a few days of begging er, uh, fundraising. If they need some new programming, I will gladly do a once a week hour-long show for a mere $125,000 a year.

The Away With Words folks are now looking for new producers, an exercise I'm sure will be an eye-opening clue to their real worth on the market.

 

[jprg]

It's too bad about the show but I used to work at KPBS and I know for a fact that it didn't cost nearly that much to produce it.

 

[Lopaka]

Underfunding public assets so they underperform is a great way to browbeat the public into liquidating valuable public assets for the benefit of campaign contributors. Obviously if balancing the budget really meant anything they'd cut a lot bigger expenses than PBS. Its a tried and true trick. A simple change in the law would make commercial broadcasting possible on the FM band now reserved for non profit and educational broadcasting. The PBS TV channels could be snapped up, too. The prize they want more than any is the water system, keep your passport up to date in case they can pull that one off.

 

[sdwulfdawg]

It's too bad about the show but I used to work at KPBS and I know for a fact that it didn't cost nearly that much to produce it.

KPBS-AM/FM is a trainwreck.

They put on a good front but they are an overbloated organization with incompetent administration out to fleece their donors. When Doug Myrland comes on screen I want to puke.

 

[RadeoEngineer]

KPBS-AM?

 

[Lopaka]

Supposing PBS had good funding, what should its role be? What sort of programming would you personally like on it? "A Way With Words" was a real good show, it was educational and entertaining at the same time. Would you want purely educational--here is the history of the Crimean War, here is Organic Chemistry 101? Would cultural do it--all classical all the time? Or as a training ground for future broadcasters? Or should there even be a non-commercial band, a non-commercial service?

If it were up to me I'd want at least some investigative reporting, like Frontline for example, uninfluenced by commercial interests that might want to influence coverage or its lack on certain stories.

 

[Bob_Hudson]

I don't know if you remember, but there was a time when we called these the "educational stations" and in the pre-cable days when we had three network TV stations and nothing much else (well a couple of UHF's showing old movies and Dialing For Dollars) the "educational stations" filled a role in providing programming that was immune from the pressures of commercial broadcasting with its need to attract big audiences in order to attract big advertising dollars. The educational stations did also serve as a training ground for college students, but KPBS seems have nothing to do with its ostensible owner, San Diego State University, other than location.

It used to be that if you wanted to watch a nature documentary, you'd have to watch public television, but cable television has long since blown that out of the water. Same with in-depth coverage of public affairs/news (except on the local level, where no one except KPBS did that and now with the loss of Full Focus they've cut back on that).

If public television disappeared tomorrow about the only people who would mourn for long would be those who make their livings milking this form of welfare broadcasting. Ken Burns would show his stuff on a cable network and Suze Orman would probably start her own channel. Certainly KPBS-TV has not been the poster boy for support of public televisin.

 

[Lopaka]

Would we be safe in counting that as a vote for converting the non-commercial FM band and the PBS TV stations into commercial outlets?

 

[sdwulfdawg]

It's too bad about the show but I used to work at KPBS and I know for a fact that it didn't cost nearly that much to produce it.

KPBS-AM/FM is a trainwreck.

My brain said FM/TV but my fingers got creative and the brain in my fingers said AM/FM.

 

[Bob_Hudson]

Would we be safe in counting that as a vote for converting the non-commercial FM band and the PBS TV stations into commercial outlets?

Maybe a hybrid where they let them run 3 to 5 minutes of commercials in blocks around the hour and half hour (which they almost do now with some of the sponsor blurbs). The pledge week stuff is a real joke, especially on TV, and some actual commercials every 30 minutes would be much less annoying that the way they do it now. I think they've long since outlived any justification for taxpayer support (and what was the justification in the first place?????). I do listen to KPBS-FM more than any other San Diego radio station but frankly they could get rid of all local programming and such dinosaurs as Gloria Penner, and just run national syndicated programming and they'd save tons of money and no one would miss anything. When I was in Kansas City we had two public radio stations: on in KC and the other from nearby Lawrence, KS. The one in Lawrence produced a couple of good local programs, but for the most you had these two stations covering pretty much the same listening area running the same programs at the same time. I always thought that kind of duplication was an incredible waste of money. I think public stations need a big whack upside the head to force them to change. They are increasingly irrelevant. You only have to look at what they run on public TV when they really need to beg for money: it's all old peoples stuff - Lawrence Welk, 50's do wop bands, financial preachers with big toothy grins, etc.

On radio, it's likewise, and the popular programs are all older people talking to older people. As someone who is eligible for the senior citizen discount at Denny's, I like Click and Clack, Garrison Keillor (the very homily companion), Antiques Roadshow, but most of that, like other PBS programming, is produced by and targeted to aging white baby boomers.

 

[Lopaka]

I can see some potential uses for this public asset that might not have much if any commercial appeal but which would be helpful for the general society. English language courses--we have many immigrants who want to and need to learn English, learning its proper use would make them much more likely to become valuable workers contributing to our tax base. Citizenship classes for immigrants, with obvious benefit. Cultural integration--again, mainly to help immigrants become Americanized, and if the population projections for California for 2050 are correct, having as many people as possible integrated into the now dominant Anglo culture will be very helpful. Work training courses, such as food handling, the benefit is obvious. There actually would be nothing at all wrong with setting up a camera and tape machine and just rolling while a teacher or professor delivers a lecture and air it at 2:30 a.m., students could tivo it. Anything that makes education function more smoothly and efficiently only helps broaden and strengthen the tax base, spreading and lightening the burden on us all. A practical life course for young people covering a wide range of topics--how to fill in a form 1040, how to rent an apartment, how to cook and sew and do a laundry, shopping skills, practical economics, how to buy a house, etc. But seeing financial gurus basically doing infomercials on PBS now is worse than worthless. It is one of the basic lessons of life, you need to spend money to make money, it is called investing.

 

[Bob_Hudson]

seeing financial gurus basically doing infomercials on PBS now is worse than worthless.

Man, that just nails it right there.

 

[Bob_Hudson]

Turns out it actually did take them a whole week to produce their one hour talk show because it was not done live. Apparently based on emails and phone calls they would select listeners to appear on the show and then call them back, tape segments and put them together into one show. I actually had begun to wonder about that after the new co-host appeared: many things did sound canned and it turns out that's what they were. It also explains why the hosts were able to seemingly pull out of mid air the often obscure origins of some words. I thought they were just really smart and/or had some sort of quick computerized database.

After learning about this I did some checking and found that Car Talk is also taped (on Wednesdays, 10 days before air date) using a similar process to get "callers" but the answers are unrehearsed.

Now I suppose that someone is going to tell me that when Chevy Chase used to shout "Live, from New York, it's Saturday night!" that I was actually watching a taped version

 

[K6JHU]

Now I suppose that someone is going to tell me that when Chevy Chase used to shout "Live, from New York, it's Saturday night!" that I was actually watching a taped version

If you were on the west coast you were

 

[SDRadio]

gee you'd think it was just a promotional copy - not for sale .....

 

[John McNary]

I don't know if you remember, but there was a time when we called these the "educational stations" and in the pre-cable days when we had three network TV stations and nothing much else (well a couple of UHF's showing old movies and Dialing For Dollars) the "educational stations" filled a role in providing programming that was immune from the pressures of commercial broadcasting with its need to attract big audiences in order to attract big advertising dollars. The educational stations did also serve as a training ground for college students, but KPBS seems have nothing to do with its ostensible owner, San Diego State University, other than location.

It used to be that if you wanted to watch a nature documentary, you'd have to watch public television, but cable television has long since blown that out of the water. Same with in-depth coverage of public affairs/news (except on the local level, where no one except KPBS did that and now with the loss of Full Focus they've cut back on that).

If public television disappeared tomorrow about the only people who would mourn for long would be those who make their livings milking this form of welfare broadcasting. Ken Burns would show his stuff on a cable network and Suze Orman would probably start her own channel. Certainly KPBS-TV has not been the poster boy for support of public televisin.

Sorry, Bob, but that is total crap.

PBS television is the best.

And it fills a critical need.

I don't like Suze or the financial gurus either, but people donate more money to PBS stations when they are on than at any other time.

Expecting KPBS to exist merely to train broadcasting students is very 1950s thinking.

In a world where Daystar and Trinity and the other religious people are allowed to gain tax-free status - using public airwaves at what is in essence a public subsify - then the pennies we pay for PBS and NPR are well, well worth it.

 

[Lopaka]

There's value to a journalistic perspective that is not influenced by commercial considerations. There was a case recently in which reporters were denied permission to report that the product of one of their network's advertisers had been shown to cause cancer, a product already banned in Europe for that reason. "Free press" should actually mean "free" or it is nothing, it is worthless, it is just an entertainment medium anesthetizing the public with endless breathless reports about Paris Hilton's latest eye shade. People should have the right, the ability, to access facts that may be inconvenient for networks and advertisers; when it comes to something like food additives that cause serious illness it is literally vital. Nobody wants to make their children sick.

 

[SDRadio]

There's value to a journalistic perspective that is not influenced by commercial considerations.

That sums it up for me. KPBS and PBS stations on TV, along with NPR stations fill a valuable niche. I like Tom Fudge; often listen to him on the podcast from 'PBS. As an owner of a HDRadio, I'm groovin' the salad mix on KPBS-HD2. KPBS-HD3 could bring a full time classical (and commercial free) station.

Bob, you are right about the shows on cable. Last month we cut Directless TV by choice. So, our house is in the minority of watching TV on the old fashioned antenna -- mostly because the HDTV over the air is superior to cable, and satellite. But I digress here ....

KPBS-FM and the multi-stream stations are well worth the $45 a year I give them.

I hope that helps ....

C

 

[Bob_Hudson]

There's value to a journalistic perspective that is not influenced by commercial considerations.

PBS does not tackle any news issues the "commercial" news outlets would not touch, especially at the local level and probably just as much so at the national level. KPBS radio and TV news breaks are lame rehashes of the same types of stories Metro News serves up. I do enjoy a lot of the daytime national public radio programming, but it skews toward middle-aged, middle-class (or upper middle class) white liberals and I often wonder who is going to be listening it in ten years (old-age, pensionless white liberals who ignored Suze Orman and didn't save for the future)????