PBS Jumps Headlong Into 1982

And now.. the late news….

Facebook is a great tool for finding old friends with whom you have lost touch.

Recently, I friended Marty Goldensohn.

Marty is, among many other things, Brian Lehrer’s producer. (Brian Lehrer for those outside NY or younger than 45, is a popular NPR radio host who also has a TV show).

Tonight, I am going to be on Brian Lehrer’s TV show – live, at 7:30 (so call in).

But this is not to pimp my own show (far be it from me to do that!)

I first met Marty in 1983.

I had just graduated from Columbia University’s J-School and found my first job at WNET/13, the public television station in New York.  Marty was the host of our weekly New Jersey based public affairs show called Mainstream.

Marty, as a former (and future) NPR radio correspondent with a golden throat was the perfect choice to host the show.

As it was my first job, I liked to wander the building, when we were in NY. WNET/13 was then ensconced in the Henry Hudson Hotel on W56th Street.  Just down the hall from the very expensive and complicated edit rooms were the offices of the then relatively new MacNeil/Lehrer Newshour.

I think they were in their first year of the ‘hour’, having been a half-hour prior to that.  The thought was that soon CBS, NBC and ABC would also go to an hour of nightly network news.

Those were the days.

I soon became friendly with many of the people on the staff.  To work there was my dream job.

Les Crystal was the EP and Linda Winslow was his #2.  I became friends with a young researcher named Jeff Brown.

Yesterday, The New York Times ran a story about the Jim Lehrer Newshour (Robert MacNeil departed some years ago – the show, not this earth).

28 years on, Linda Winslow has become the executive producer for the show and Jeff Brown occasionally hosts.

Shows you the power of sticking to one thing.

What was astonishing in the NY Times piece was the pace of change at PBS.  I would call it glacial, but with Global Warming, that doesn’t convey the meaning it used to.

The ‘online people’ are being merged with the regular (I suppose) people in one bullpen.  Well, that is a kind of progress, I suppose.  And the 75-year old Mr. Lehrer recently gave up his typewriter for a computer.  Yes…..

The thing about PBS is that it is not for profit. That is, it does not have to live and die by ratings. There are no commercials.

So they can afford to do things differently.

By differently I don’t mean writing the scripts on typewriters. That is a skill that is pretty much well understood in the world and sort of at a terminal point.

Rather, PBS could be on the cutting edge of new approaches and new technologies. It can afford to take risks. It should take risks.

It should be on the leading edge of where broadcast journalism could go –  a creative laboratory for the merger of new technologies and quality journalism.

They should have an army of tweeting contributors, they should be strongly interactive and create news based social networks; streaming video feeds online in real time, a constantly updated website, webcam feeds from their newsroom on a 24-hour basis, correspondents equipped with the latest in live feed real time video phones and much much more.

Instead it is a living, breathing museum of broadcasting.

Tragic.

Just tragic.

Come on Jeff. I remember you were a pretty radical thinker once… oh, 25+ years ago.