PBS Programming Continues to Aim Low

Paula Kerger, the president and CEO of PBS, gave a speech a year and a half ago in which she more or less admitted what everybody already knew, which is that public-television arts programming—what there is of it—is barely worth watching. "To be candid, over the last year, we haven't done as good a job as we could," she said. "I think we can do more…. We plan to significantly expand the presence of the arts in our prime-time lineup." Now comes the payoff. This week the network launches its new arts initiative with a "festival" of nine arts-related programs that are scheduled to run on Friday nights through mid-December on those PBS affiliates that care to carry them. And what does Kerger have in store for her art-starved viewers? These shows don't add up to an arts festival, or anything remotely like it. What PBS is giving us instead is a stiff dose of the usual safety-first pledge-week fare, only spread out over two months. Except for Miami City Ballet's Balanchine-Tharp bill, all nine programs are carefully designed to please those members of the gray-ponytail set who prefer politically correct popular culture to high art. Straight plays? Who needs 'em? Jazz? Bor-ing. As for the visual arts, they don't even exist in the unserious, unchallenging world of the PBS Arts Fall Festival. Instead we get recycled Puccini, goosed-up Gilbert and Sullivan and yesterday's grunge rock.