PBS head wants to create new business model

PBS president Pat Mitchell refuses to pledge allegiance to pledge drives.

"Every time I meet someone, they say, 'Why do you guys do all that pledge stuff?' We're turning off loyal viewers. They find it irritating. There's got to be a way that's not so intrusive."

Mitchell acknowledges that shifting the long history of alms talks will require a seismic shift in the culture of public television.

"There hasn't been enough of a sense of urgency at PBS," she said. Staffers "felt we'd kind of go along with what we were doing. Now we're finally looking at the face of a 10-year decline in membership revenues."

Mitchell is determined to create a new business model for PBS, whose 349 member stations raise varying percentages of their operating budgets through maddeningly interruptive pledge breaks.

The programming that the breaks interrupt must change, too, Mitchell says.

A cheesy info-tainment show such as Nicholas Perricone's anti-wrinkle cream might be a pledge cash cow, but it hardly shares the PBS pedigree of "Masterpiece Theatre," "Frontline" and "Nova."

"I prefer that we find something that looks a lot more like PBS," said Mitchell, 59. "I'm not going to join WHYY because it's offering me the best wrinkle cream or the best financial advice."

Not that there's anything wrong with wrinkle cream, she added. "I'm not making a judgment" about Perricone, she said. "I just don't think it should be on PBS."

As an experiment, PBS packaged a two-minute pledge pitch at the end of each of five episodes of Ken Burns' "The Civil War" Sept. 22-26.

As for Mitchell, she says she plans to re-up after her three-year contract expires in March. That's a turnaround from her feelings a few months ago.

"I didn't know if I could do what needed to be done. At one point, I considered running for political office. ... I don't accept defeat easily. I lose energy when I don't get results.

"Now I feel like I'm grappling with it. It's a bit like dancing with an elephant, but I feel like we're at least starting to dance."