Guest Commentary: George L. Miles, Jr.
Mr. Miles is president and chief executive officer of WQED Multimedia in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
A Response to George Will
George Will’s column (March 3, 2005) indicates that the Washington pundit questions the value of PBS. Luckily for us, the American people do not share Mr. Will’s opinion about one of the most successful public private enterprises in this country.
A new Roper survey showed that Americans rank PBS as the most trusted national institution in the country. 82% of them also said they consider the federal investment of less than one dollar per person per year to be money “well spent,” and ranked PBS second only to military activities in value for their tax dollars.
Nearly 90 million people watch public television each week, up 10% from the same time last year. That means that more than twice as many people choose to watch PBS over Discovery or the History Channel, and over six times more than Bravo.
What accounts for this success? The simple fact that no other network runs the kind of in-depth, high quality programs that PBS does. From history programs, like “Slavery and the Making of America” to cultural programs like “Islam: Empire of Faith” to in-depth science like NOVA and programs dealing with the challenges of our aging population like “The Forgetting: A Portrait of Alzheimer’s,” PBS programs are consistently cited as the best on television.
Locally, WQED produces local programming that cannot possibly be replicated by a national cable network. WQED is owned locally by the people, employs local residents, and produces local shows about this community. You will not see programs like “On Q,” “Black Horizons,” “LifeQuest,” “QED Cooks,” Rick Sebak’s Pittsburgh History Series, or any number of local specials that WQED produces on any other station if public broadcasting were eliminated.
Beyond our programming, PBS.org is one of the three most visited dot-org Web sites in the world - averaging more than 28 million unique visits per month in 2004. Locally, WQED Multimedia’s web sites received over 380,000 visitors last month.
Perhaps most importantly, public television is dedicated to using our assets to improve literacy and school readiness in children, and knowledge and skills in adults. Locally, the WQED Education and Community Resource Department administers the programs and initiatives that help children, families and caregivers with literacy and development, and offers on-line courses for educators through Teacherline.
PBS is the number one source of video curriculum in America’s classrooms and is a major resource for free lesson plans, teachers’ guides, home schooling guidance and other resourceful activities - all correlated to national and state curriculum standards. Taken together, PBS and PBS stations are the largest educational institution in the country.
To suggest that there is no need for public service media in today’s media landscape is tantamount to suggesting we bulldoze libraries, now that kids and adults seem to have so much to choose from at shopping malls.
Commercial broadcasters are neither structured for nor volunteering to assume the role of PBS, that makes us so valuable to the American people and so different from every other media enterprise: being devoted to creating an informed democracy to serving our citizens rather than selling to them as consumers.
