PBS doesn't want my money

By Jeffrey R. DeRego
HippoPress.com

Years ago, National Lampoon Magazine found itself in hot water for printing a cover illustration instructing readers to "Buy this magazine or we shoot the dog," accompanied by a photo of a dog with a gun pointed at its head.

PBS takes the same approach, without any of the tongue-in-cheek humor.

Every few months it happens. I am watching a rerun of Dr. Who, or Scientific American Frontiers, and I have this powerful urge to write a fat check to public television. I like public television for several reasons, the absence of obvious commercials is just one benefit. I like not being interrupted by questions about the softness of my toilet paper, or the current new fad in commercial television commercials: prescription medicine.

Yes, on public television I will never see an ad for Paxcil, which combats personal anxiety while simultaneously providing such entertaining side effects as explosive flammable diarrhea and Tourette's Syndrome. Public television is my refuge from SUV comparisons, 10-10 telephone numbers, and kid's-movie-toy-tie-ins at every fast food chain on Earth.

And yes, I know that the sponsorship of PBS programming comes from multinational corporations like Mobil Oil, General Dynamics, and Texaco/Exxon, but at least they have the good taste not to interrupt the offerings with reminders to buy, buy! BUY!

PBS is my sanctuary.

I sit, with this Nova inspired serenity, and open my checkbook. My pen hovers over the green paper rectangle. My jaw is open.

Then, two words destroy my urge to give. These words are:

Manilow, Live!

If you have suffered through this trauma as I have, you are familiar with pledge millennia. This quatro-annual event is where everything we love about public television is removed from the programming schedule and replaced with such charity inducing broadcasts as Michael Flatley's Feet of Fury! John Tesh at the Goldstein Barmitzvah! and the perennial favorite, The Three Tenors!

Who in their right mind is so culturally deprived as to watch any of these programs? Even I, jaded to commercial television as I am, prefer to watch The Info-mmercial Channel over pledge millennia fare such as Living Well and the worst of them all, How Do You Get What You Really Want.

I really want this pledge drive to be over. How's that?

Running constantly this week is a recorded performance by long dead patron saint of pledge drives, Roy Orbison. I tell you what, if I have to hear another warbly version of Pretty Woman I am a going to puke.

Worse than the spate of "artists" that appeal to no one, and pop psychologists lecturing people who are so idiotic that any sane person would avoid them like they were a rampaging family of Ebola monkeys, is the ignominious Channel 2 Auction.

Who came up with this? It's like a yard sale in a rich subdevelopment, like E-Bay if it were run by the wine-tasting set. Why do people bid on these things? Who has so much disposable income that they just have to bid on a godawfully ugly reproduction of a Tiffany lamp? These are probably the same people who bid on the Yanni, Live at the Acropolis DVD.

To be honest, I don't want these people influencing the programming schedule.

This hour's offering: A scenic cruise up the Merrimack River. Starting bid: $7,000.

Gee, that's a little too rich for my blood. I think I'll wait for the $700 tote bag.

If the pledge drive managers at PBS really want to remind us why public television is important, why not hammer the point home and skip the artsty-fartsy pledge drive crap and show a week's worth of A-Team or Knight Rider reruns?

I can already see the advertisements, "If you love Frontline, then you will love our BJ and the Bear marathon! Give now or Frontline never comes back! Write that check you bastards! Write it now!"

I, being only a humble viewer, offer this in place of a check:

I can live without you PBS, but I'd rather not. Now, bring back the regular schedule or I'll shoot this dog.

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