Headlamp Pictures Blog

The following farewell email went out last Friday to the staff of Channel 13, New York’s PBS station. It’s a scorcher.

From Sam Topperoff:

Farewell Address May 21, 2010

Farewells are inevitable. This is mine.

I’ve been here, mostly at WLIW but a bit at WNET as a producer, writer, director for twenty-one years, even though most of you wouldn’t know who I am. I’m the tall old man who ambles through the halls usually deep in thought, or trying to seem so. During two decades at PBS I’ve done some good work and, like most of us I suspect, some stuff I’d like to have a chance to do over.

During the past two years, many, too many, farewell e-mails have come to me in this building. Their tone has bothered me: It was invariably polite, cheerful, brave and tentatively hopeful. Since they were from people who had been fired, young and even middle-aged professionals, it would have been foolish for them to reveal their anger or their pain, and certainly not in their interests to burn any professional bridges when they said goodbye here. I’m free to do exactly that. I’m very old and have put aside enough money while I unburdened amble out the door to 33rd Street . So let me light a small fire in my bridge-burning farewell.

What’s happened at Channels 13 and 21 under the new management has been simply awful, comically grotesque, if indeed so many lives hadn’t been affected. It is the painful result of equal parts ineptitude, insensitivity, and arrogance of gross proportions. If the previous Emperor was a patrician windbag, this ambitious Emperor and his Ministers are bereft of any clothes. They are clever, and that’s about it. The suspenders hold up nothing, certainly not a hopeful future for our public television stations in New York . Many of us, of course, know this, but it feels wonderful to actually hear myself say it aloud.

Who among us could not have “saved” the company through extreme austerity and taking away the jobs of so many good and loyal workers? True leadership would have led us through hard times and transformed the company at the same time. It is one thing to “spin” a web on the stage at Loew’s and then get bailed out by wealthy board members, quite another to come up with brilliant and humane solutions to very difficult problems, but that is what remarkable people with true vision do in institutions under siege. Notice, of all the cut-backs that were offered, none was for reduction of executive compensation to save a few jobs. Do I expect too much? Probably, but forgive me, I’m old and may be slipping.

The fact is I’m worried about the future of the stations to which I’ve devoted my last twenty years; certainly there’s no reason for confidence based on recent management decisions. I remember being stunned at a Trustees Meeting a while ago when Mr. Shapiro compared the NET.ORG he envisioned to the New York Yankees, and 450 W33rd Street to Yankee Stadium, “Home of Champions.” Really. You can’t make this stuff up. (Does that make the Upper West Studio our new, very expensive Yankee Stadium? And where does that leave Mets fans?) Staying with the sports metaphor, he began a recent memo, “Television is a team sport….” Well, if so, on what team does a manager not know the names of each and every one of his fellow team members, or have to hire an outside consulting firm to find out what his teammates really think. Leadership? Really? I guess this is teamwork in the ultra-contemporary sense, and as I said, I’m aged and hopelessly old-school.

The most galling offense and the saddest part of the story is how bleak the future looks for truly “Public” television in this city. On my commutes to work on the E and F lines and occasionally on the Number 7 train, I’d ask people if they watched PBS. Almost no one does. They said there was very little on the air that spoke to their lives. The New York public is not merely the “Upper” East and West sides. It is these “Others” too, millions of them. And during those rare times we do program for this other New York , we do it embarrassingly, in stilted, patronizing “other” fashion. In spite of my left-wing bona fides and my high falutin’ Doctoral degree, I see our general programming for the wider public as elitist and offensive in the extreme. (Not many of us, you realize, can afford those good seats at “The Home of Champions.”) But of course, when stations run on very rich people’s and Corporate money, how could it be otherwise? And when the corporation is directed by those very clever and very ambitious fellows whose careers will float them to good places no matter what, what else could we reasonably expect?

But there is a second station here-Channel 21. How easy it would have been to grow a vast, truly public audience with it. And how inexpensively. Unless of course, we don’t see or care about that audience; unless the “Public” mission is directed by guys who take limos and cabs and never ride on the subway like most New Yorkers. Public television indeed.

So as I walk away I look back over my shoulder at some good work, some wonderful times, and some very fine colleagues. But also in the darkness behind me I see a fire lighting the sky. A bridge is burning. It looks beautiful. There is great contentment in knowing truth…and even greater contentment in saying truth.

See you on YouTube.

Good night and good luck,

Sam Toperoff

I usually try to shorten reposted blogs, but this Gwen Ifill/Jay Rosen dialogue has really caught my interest. I’m convinced that public media needs to be looking at itself HARDER and with more real concern than we are. Because the tidal wave is about to wash over us… (for more background on the Ifill/Rosen story click on the “The Nobility is Annoyed” link near the bottom)

Cutting edge… 1962

Yesterday, while I was sitting at my kitchen table typing out my angry screed about Gwen Ifill, I was also listening to NPR, as I do every morning.

NPR happened to be running their annual beg-a-thon, their fundraising drive, which reminded me that Public Radio and PBS, the PUBLIC Broadcasting Corporation, are paid for by us, the listeners, or viewers. That is, PBS is ‘our’ network.  Viacom may belong to Sumner Redstone and NBC may soon belong to Comcast, but PBS belongs to us.  As Ronald Reagan said, “I paid for that microphone”.

This is particularly annoying when it comes to Ms. Ifill and the pure arrogance of PBS.

Initially irritated with Ms. Ifill and her cavalier treatment of Prof. Jay Rosen, I posted a response on her PBS’s website, on which she writes a blog.  I posted a response because the blog calls for comments. And even if responses are limited to 500 characters (think of this as a kind of super-twitter, I suppose), I was rather astonished that Ms. Ifill did not deign to publish my response.  I was so astonished,  I posted again. In fact, I posted five times.

Nothing.

Now, what responses did Ms. Ifill choose to post?

Here they are:

thank you Gwen the lone voice whispering reason in the wilderness

and

Thank you for your good job of hosting and presenting the views of the reporters on washington week. It is one of my favorite media presentations. I am not one who is pleased with the divergence from “Cronkite” news to opinion dominated media programs. I applaud the program and your hosting of it. I will continue to be a faithful viewer.

or this one:

Double thank you for reasoned, focused, in-depth reporting and analysis. Thank you for not letting us know your own opinions, and thank you for giving me the information I need to make up my own mind. Thank you for being you. We love you for your generosity of spirit and for being professional in your work. And lastly, thank God for PBS which allows us to get NEWS and not opinions! What in the world would we do without you.

You see. And all this time I thought Ms. Ifill was working for “Public” broadcasting.
She is not.

She is working for Pravada. Or so she seems to believe.  Perhaps she has confused ‘public’ broadcasting with ‘The People’s Broadcasting’ as in ‘The People’s Democratic Republic of China Broadcasting’.

Now, here is the interesting thing about ‘Public’ Broadcasting.

When it was founded in the 1960s, (thank you Ed Murrow), the technology of television and video was so expensive and so complex that it cost millions (even a lot then!) to put someone on the air and push that image through the em spectrum into millions of homes. So PBS gave voice to those who could not get onto NBC or ABC or CBS (as that was all there was).  It was a good idea for 1962.

But that was a long time ago.

The technology has changed.

Today, the Public uploads 23 hours of video to YouTube every minute.

The Public posts 240 million blogs on the web.

The Public has something to say.

Perhaps in the 21st century Public Broadcasting should be reflective of what the Public is talking about.  Perhaps Public Broadcasting should put itself front and center of the new technologies that are liberating millions of voices. Perhaps Public Broadcasting could be about becoming a publisher and editor for those millions of voices and giving them a larger and more focused platform than YouTube does, as opposed to becoming a highly controlled vehicle for Ms. Ifill to express her opinions and bathe herself in praise.

The Public has a voice and an opinion and wants to be heard. Freed of the constraints of the need to sell commercial time and appeal to the largest possible audience, perhaps Public Broadcasting could place itself on the cutting edge of the obvious revolution that is happening before our eyes in public discourse and become the pinnacle of that vibrant discussion.

This, I think, we would all be more than happy to pay for.

Instead, what is our money buying us?

Gwen Ifill… that ‘one voice whispering in the wilderness’.

Come on.

Lone Voice?

Wilderness?

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