anotherguy said:
ag, come to think of it, I spent my collegiate years in Memphis and watched WKNO quite often. This was between '88 and '91, and even then, the station was experimenting with commercial TV reruns, such as "St. Elsewhere" on Sunday nights for a spell. If I'm not mistaken, I remember even a first-run syndie commercial show, "Fight Back With David Horowitz," hosted by the L.A.-based consumer advocate that apparently the other stations in town wouldn't touch, probably out of fear of offending potential advertisers (pretty much de rigeur for yet another conservative Southern market). The show aired on Saturday evenings, and one night, I remember distinctly seeing the fee plugs at the end of the program, which apparently the VTR/control room crew had forgotten to edit out or cover up! I thought, "hey, this isn't a PBS show. That's not supposed to happen." And I was right. Turns out, apparently somebody else saw it and complained to station management, because when I tuned in again next week, the plugs had been noticeably cut out, going straight from Horowitz's good-bye to the end credits, with a giveaway break in the music. Of course, the difference here was that station management thought the show was a true public service and not, as the syndicators intended, mere entertainment.
As for your diagnosis about why WKNO didn't continue the one-season experiment, I think both your speculations are correct. The two do not in any way necessarily exclude each other. Obviously, the classic shows didn't bring in the pledge money anticipated, like they might have 10 or so years earlier during the original Nick at Nite/TV Land retro craze. However, I am sure they did bring enough complaints and threats from big or influential donors, for the very reasons I stated in an earlier post on this thread. Namely, "if you're going to fill the sked with old junk like that, why should I/we give money to you? This station is supposed to be about serious public affairs, arts, culture, and children's education. Seems like it's getting too far away from its original purpose. Public tax money and private philanthropy should not be used for things that the private sector (read: cable) can provide just as well, if not better." These days, forget about OTA stations of any kind doing that stuff, with Netflix and YouTube. Things have changed so drastically in the eight years since then.
The NPR ruckuses a year or so ago has already damaged pubcasters' reputations with many Americans; risky stunts like this would just be adding fuel to the fire, IMO, without guaranteeing any appreciable financial return. Of course, you can bet that in some places, some PDs/managers are so insulated from public opinion by bureaucratic, civil-service-like protection that they don't give a you-know-what. That's probably the case with WKNO, being licensed to a community NGO instead of a governmental agency (always has been), so that station certainly doesn't feel the kinds of pressure that, say, their neighbors in Arkansas and Mississippi, both statewide networks funded by state government, would. He who holdeth the purse strings holdeth the throne.
I think the fact that PBS has survived up to this point, despite all the bad management and the nearly-lethal competition from 5,000 channels and new media, is nothing short of a miracle, or pestilence, depending on your point of view.
