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PBS vs. the History ChannelA study in counterprogramming.

By Virginia Heffernan
Posted Monday, April 22, 2002, at 11:14 AM ET
Illustration by Mark Alan Stamaty

The History Channel periodically broadcasts an eccentric program called Secret Passages. It's a tour of hidden chambers of every description: The show's intrepid guides simply crawl through parlor fireplaces, descend into cellar hide-outs, and expose elaborately concealed cabinets. I like it. It's weird. It's a tribute to all those who doubt walls—the Tintin and Nancy Drew-types who tap library panels and/or shove open mahogany "bookshelves" to discover the secret world that lies beyond. Of course, the show is on the History Channel, so its chief aesthetic principle is thrift; it's made of helter-skelter clips from the historic houses' promotional videos and ruminations of wacko talking heads (many of whom wear bonnets). But for the under-10 detective set—and its many, many alumni—Secret Passages doesn't disappoint.

Down the dial at PBS, things aren't nearly so much fun. Our nation's broadcaster has always liked to lecture, but after surviving years of calls for its destruction, PBS is understandably indignant. Watching PBS against the History Channel, as I did the other night, it becomes clear that PBS is at least as absolutist as its famously right-wing rival. The network's relatively harmless "liberal" themes—that the world is a marvelous place, that the facts of history can be painful nonetheless, that science and art can save souls—these days come across as grim idées-fixes, conveyed on high-end film stock in the grand documentary format that is now as formulaic as a sitcom. It is no surprise that PBS viewers are being lured by cable networks that have co-opted its beats. The Discovery Channel has nature, Bravo has the performing arts, Nickelodeon has children's shows, and HBO has upscale drama.

But it's the History Channel that must really bother PBS, and not just because the upstart flaunts its illiberal jingoism and paranoia. As its obsession with shocking secrets suggests, the History Channel has much in common with the New York Post—and Oliver Stone. PBS treats making TV shows as if it were noble but tedious missionary work; the History Channel manages to create some comical, intriguing visual rants about "history"—and at the same time attract viewers. If the channel broadcasts downright bunk from time to time, it also curates vast quantities of old—and fascinating—newsreel footage. Sometimes all it takes to make an evocative show is jumpy period film of Antarctic explorers or the angelic-looking Alexei Romanov. With this material available, broadcasting vastly overhyped School of Burns documentaries—wide-angle beauty shots and buttery close-ups of Ivy League professors—begins to seem like a sucker's game.

So, although earnest PBS patrons and executives no doubt look at the devil-may-care History Channel and seethe, they might stand to learn an important lesson from their low-budget rival. In short, the chief ingredient of a good documentary is mystery. PBS doesn't like mystery; it prefers to chronicle What We Know. It's not just the news shows, either. Certainty reigns even on the shows on PBS that are ostensibly devoted to mysteries. A show about sea creatures last week initially seemed cool: genderless blue flat worms fighting with "multiple penises" in order to mate. But the mild show was unexpectedly strident. The writers, it seemed, were so eager to hammer home the absolute truth of evolution—they presumably had unnamed creationists in their sights—that they couldn't just let the worms do their thing. Flat worms are the first animals to search actively for food and sex—just like MAN! As each worm became an object-lesson, the show lost its appeal.

And while the History Channel plays up The Unknown, PBS is hooked on solemn, dull demystification. The omnipresent Antiques Roadshow must be the template for this buzz-kill approach to anything that might inspire even a trace of wonder in adult or child. Hopeful people show up with totemic heirlooms; experts give them a rote provenance and a price. Whether they've got a winner or a loser, the Roadshow participants always look a little stunned. They bring faith and hope to the show; what they get is expertise and cold cash.

A recent show on no less magical a figure than Vincent van Gogh (Becoming Van Gogh) did not discuss art or genius. Instead, it concentrated on cataracts, addiction, epilepsy, optics, and art-world prices. By the end, the artist had been reduced to nothing but a heap of pathology and money.

Nonfiction TV does not have to work this way. It doesn't have to diminish actual experience; it doesn't have to be depressing. What we get on PBS is state-sponsored positivism. That may be good for science, history, even government. But this is television. It's the ether—an excellent place for the imagination to expand and run wild. We don't need more false bookshelves, in service as backdrops for doctrinaire pundits. We need more secret passages.

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Virginia Heffernan is a television critic for The New York Times. Her book, The Underminer, which she wrote with Mike Albo, comes out in February.
Illustration by Mark Alan Stamaty.
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Reader comments From the Fray:


PBS facts are data that support a worldview that PBS accepts without question; data that don't, don't air, at least they don't on PBS. As for the viewers who don't share the PBS worldview, they are the unwashed, the ignorant, the stupid. They are never the customers. This is why PBS must have government funding, because without it the unwashed, ignorant, stupid 98+% of the American people might gain some influence over PBS programming. That would be an outrage; that would be intolerable. That would be... change. When the government subsidizes so many other things, why shouldn't it subsidize self-satisfaction and complacency?

--Zaphras

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[Heffernan] says that The History Channel provides mystery, where PBS traffics in the dull, conventional idea that life and art are marvelous. And yet, there's a complaint when a recent PBS special on Van Gogh opted to focus on the seedier, less cheerful aspects of his life. But if PBS had indeed focused on the sheer art and science, wouldn't it be guilty of the high-resolution, glossy take with which she has such issues?

PBS is still the home of high-quality, event documentaries. The History Channel often gets by just throwing old film reels on screen. To be sure, there's a place for both, but let's not force a competition where there isn't one.

--Matthew Reynolds

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What's really needed is a full-throated expose of PBS and NPR as outlets for news and culture. I couldn't bear to watch enough PBS or listen to enough NPR to adequately research the topic, but here's three themes for such a critique.

1. CLICES IN DEPTH. Neither NPR nor PBS use the same new cliches as the mainstream news media. My favorite cliche is the unending battle between the moderates and the hardliners (or extremists) for influence. The U. S. is divided into moderates and hardliners, but so are the Israelis, the Russians, the Iranians, the Palestinians, and every other government. Both PBS and NPR dichotomize the world in these terms just as enthusiastically and just as stupidly as the television networks, but at much greater length. The networks may say little in their 2 minute stories, but the public media says just as little in their 15-20 minute stories.

2. The TALKING HEAD NEWS. Almost any political science text will say that one of the primary functions of the news media is to focus attention on government leaders. This is even more the case with PBS and NPR than it is with the television networks. Some complain about the superficiality of pictures on the networks. But how could anything be more superficial and deceptive than the parade of government, special interest, business, and campaign talking heads who spin their way through a typical Newshour broadcast. The networks have beat reporters and do some investigation, but the Newshour has almost no resources to dig out its own stories, and, as a result, relies almost completely on the talking head.

3. POPULAR CULTURE FOR PEOPLE WHO ARE TOO GOOD FOR POPULAR CULTURE. Anybody who knows anybody who follows the public media knows that the public media audience is full of snobs who think they are several steps higher in life than the rest of us poor losers. But the public media operates on the same celebrity principles as the rest of mass culture. The audience for NPR follows their favorite NPR reporters and waits for Ken Burns documentaries with the same pseudo-personal devotion that characterizes fans of sports teams, boy bands, Britney Spears, and Brad Pitt. The only difference is that the NPR audience thinks that it has transcended the cult-like aspects of popular culture. Which makes them the biggest fools of all.

--Riccaric

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