Japan RIPE Paper 8.24.2014

RIPE Conference, Tokyo Japan “The Export of US Infotainment: The Death of International Public Service Television” (Working Version) *** Dr. Jane Shattuc, Emerson College Boston, MA USA August 16, 2014 The role of a responsible public service broadcaster to make the "good,” popular, NOT making the "popular," good. from: joseph martin Posted on: Feb 18, 2013 at 18:37 IST The Hindu Business Line I. Introduction: What is the unstated line that public service networks will not cross when attempting to compete with commercial networks in terms of popular culture? This debate is often framed around documentary and the term “infotainment”—a value-laden term that cuts off any positive possibility of using popular culture as an effective tool for public service. What exactly does this mean? Working with concepts drawn from cultural studies specifically the work of Pierre Bourdieu, I will provide a discourse analysis of how popular culture and the fear of infotainment has been historically understood in the construction of three diverse public television networks. The paper chronicles how American commercial information networks have cannibalized the genres of public television and made them more popular. It provides an analysis of the BBC’s successful embrace of popular culture in its programming. The paper concludes with a discussion of Doordarshan’s unsuccessful history as an education arm of the state and its failure to embrace popular culture. Ultimately, we should rethink public broadcasting’s adversion to popular culture and consider its appeal as an agency of not only entertainment but also education. All three—American Public Broadcasting Service, British Broadcasting Corporation and Indian Doordarshan—are foundationally different. However, they all have had to tackle the issue of popularity differently as a result of their national mandate as well as their financial sustainability. II. PBS and Cable Networks When the Carnegie Commission on Educational Television defined public television in 1965, the panel proclaimed that the network should be the broadcast equivalent of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society and needs to show America “in all its diversity.” With the federal government providing less than twenty per cent of the financing, public television has had to rely on these state institutions, commercial sponsors, and private donations to maintain its existence. The stations preserve their independence by producing array of local and regional programming (e.g., Outdoor Wisconsin (1993-2009) and Texas Monthly Talks (2003-2009)). American public TV was founded as a network devoted to doing what was not on commercial network—a death sentence in terms of broad popularity. It spearheaded a number of informational genres—documentaries, cooking shows, nature programs, and in-depth news. And when the US cable networks in the 1990s they were primarily founded on the informational genres of public TV. Unfortunately, the powerful commercial networks feared the competition of this fourth network and many politicians worried about the liberal nature of the network’s founding. So by 1990s the economical way to create a branded cable network was to remake what has already succeeded on the established networks. Cable has taken the established genres of television (news, movies, and sports) and created networks with a narrower scope (CNN/News, TNT/Movies and ESPN/Sports). Generally, the broadcast network and premium channels still turn out TV’s fictional programming, because of its high cost. But basic cable has limited its purview primarily to formats that do not have high costs: information genres. As a result, although PBS has founded its own cable network, (Kids Sprout, a preschooler network), its greatest nemesis is cable TV. With its record of successful public affairs, arts and documentary programming, PBS remains the central source of models for informational cable networks. Public TV was the first to succeed with do-it-yourself programming. Now we have the Home & Garden Network (HGTV), the Food Network and the Do-It-Yourself Network (DIY) whipping up projects 24/7. Further when the broadcast networks jettisoned documentaries as too unpopular and controversial in the 1980s, PBS weathered the political problems and low viewer numbers. Now, cable makes available the Discovery Channel, American Heroes Channel, History Channel, National Geographic, and Biography (Bio), pumping out seemingly endless wildlife, military, life story, and paranormal non-fiction programmes. PBS’s Austin City Limits (1976—), TV’s longest running music series, is now mimicked by Great American Country Network and Music Television Network (MTV). Arts and Entertainment Network (A&E) aspires to be an entertaining PBS. PBS or what is jokingly “Primarily British Series” network is not surprisingly now BBC America—a cable network owned by commercial BBC Worldwide Americas that shows programmes primarily from the BBC. And FOX Reality Network relies on format once alive and well when WGBH documentaries of Frederic Wiseman in 1960s. Instead of being chained to the PBS programme schedule, a viewer now has similar programming at a moment’s request with cable. This cannibalizing of public television forms has led to questions about the relevance of the PBS network in the age of cable. One of the earliest commercial reality forms is the documentary. If reality TV is defined as the use of non-actors in relatively unscripted situations, Candid Camera (1948—1951 and 1960-1967) does not fit; it manipulated people the producers found on the street to be butts of humour. However COPS (1989—) became one of the first reality documentary programmes; it is a rather gritty observational study of crime and police work in US cities. Then came MTV’s The Real World in 1992, the first documentary soap opera created for commercial television. The formula was simple: put a group of similar young adults in a confined situation and watch how they behave. Endemol with Big Brother went onto copy the premise in 1997. As previously stated, PBS pioneered the observational cinema work on TV with its attempt at documenting everyday life with a camera watching like a fly on the wall. In An American Family (1971), the Loud family (parents Pat and Bill and their five children Lance, Grant, Kevin, Michelle, and Delilah) allowed a PBS film crew with handheld cameras to chronicle their lives for seven months. The series let the footage speak for itself—no narrator or interviews. The seemingly straightforward nature of this form belies the degree to which the editing of footage geared the structure and meaning of the series of 12 hour-long episodes. Although viewers remember the series as observational, it is much more self- conscious and directed as a critique of the American family. The son Lance constantly acknowledged the camera and crew, and the filmmakers used Hollywood editing techniques to create narrative. Nevertheless, the series is remembered for its open-endedness—a characteristic of direct cinema. It finished without a clear sense of closure as the mother Pat considers divorce. Its final shot was a free-frame of her wry but ambiguous smile. This refusal to offer a clear ending was a rare moment in American television. For many critics, direct cinema is indistinguishable from cinema verite. Both are concerned with social and ethical issues. The movements wanted to convey “real life.” They both used handheld cameras and available light. Their art was in editing—taking vast amount of footage and editing this down to an hour and 45 minutes for standard TV and film documentary length. Often the ratio of what was shot and what was seen is 40 to 1. Cinema verite was produced by French filmmakers such Jean Rouch who used their presence to provoke a reaction in their subject—refusing the concept of objectivity. Contrastingly, direct cinema emanated from the US and was more observational. There was an awareness of the presence of the camera but that awareness was not thought to affect the event. Eric Barnouw describes the makers’ presence as similar to an “uninvolved bystander” —a near impossibility given that a camera is filming.i Many historians argue that Robert Drew started the Direct Cinema movement in the United States as he applied his photojournalism training to film. He formed Drew Associates (Richard Leacock, D.A. Pennebaker, and Albert and David Maysles) and made Yanqui, No! (1960), Eddie (On the Pole 1960), and Primary (1960)—all observational but still socially critical programmes for Time- Life Broadcasting stations in 1960. Drew never found a home on network television. Rather, Frederick Wiseman is perhaps the leading maker of observational TV documentaries. He received two successive five year contracts with PBS’s WNET, making one film a year from 1971 to 1981. WNET paid for the film-to-tape transfer for these ten films and gave him a national platform by broadcasting his documentary. But the funding for the programmes came from private funding. With no voiceover, music, or interviews, Wiseman called his works “reality-fictions.” The films’ focus was on no central individual but rather concentrated on institution such as a mental hospital, a high school, or a welfare agency. Before his PBS work, his 1967 documentary Titicut Follies, a horrific study of a state mental institution in Massachusetts, was banned from public screenings by the state supreme court because of its filming of unwitting mental patients. Wiseman maintained he had permission from the individuals or their guardians and that the real reason for the court order was he had embarrassed the state. With this muckraker reputation, he began his work for PBS. The titles of his the best known works describe the content: Basic Training (1971), Primate (1974) and Meat (1976). Although observational style typically demands chronological order, he edited based on a “mosaic style” which is structured on comparisons, contrasts, and ironies to express his moral outrage at the institution in question.

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