Pbs

PBS flexed its usual strength when the News and Documentary Emmy nominations were announced Thursday, racking up 37 nods for its coverage of Taliban youth, the death of Iranian protester Neda Agha-Soltan and a community battle over a mosque in West Virginia, among other topics. The public television system was followed closely by CBS, which had a particularly good showing, scoring 31 nominations, including 16 for its long-running Sunday newsmagazine " 60 Minutes." HBO placed third with 20 nominations, one of its largest hauls ever, followed by National Geographic, which earned 19. NBC had 17 and ABC got 9. For the third year in a row, the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences is recognizing "new approaches" to news, documentary and arts programming, categories that require entrants to demonstrate some form of innovation.

Barbara Walters, Peter Jennings and Diane Sawyer all made their best pitch but were turned down. Johnny Carson, the man who changed forever the world of late-night talk, wasn't talking. The network news powerhouses had separately attempted to secure interviews with Carson to get him to speak about his life and his place as one of the most influential figures in TV history. But from his 1992 retirement after 30 years on"The Tonight Show"until his death in 2005 at age 79, Carson steadfastly refused to cooperate with almost all interviews, books or films that would have called on him to reflect on his past or his show, which simultaneously reflected and influenced the nation's conversation about itself.

Re "Executive at CNN Taking Helm at PBS" (by Elizabeth Jensen, Feb. 7): I've watched KCET programming move progressively to the left, and with the naming of Pat Mitchell as president of PBS, that liberal bias appears likely to accelerate. The recent interview of President Clinton on the "NewsHour" exemplifies the liberal bias on PBS programs: a softball interview designed to provide a forum for Clinton to do what he does best--spin and lie. Obvious, tough follow-up questions were never asked.

An energy businessman is donating a record $35 million to the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History to build a new dinosaur hall on the National Mall, the museum complex announced Thursday. The donation by David H. Koch, the executive vice president of Koch Industries Inc. of Wichita, Kan., is the single largest gift in the museum's 102-year history. Koch, an engineer trained at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is a billionaire who lives in New York City.

Thanks to Robert Lloyd for a fun but well-written commentary about PBS ["PBS and Its Grand Ambitions," July 17]. I agree with his comments, especially regarding the "NewsHour." The only palpable left-leaning bias that existed on PBS was with Bill Moyers. Occasionally a leftward imbalance shows up on "Washington Week," but it isn't nearly as overbearing as it was until Mr. Moyers departed. However the issue I have with PBS isn't editorial as much as funding. I still don't understand why my tax dollars, which are taken by force of law, are needed to support entertainment television of any kind, especially when there is such a plethora of choices on the dial.

Reading Robert Lloyd's story about how public television ["PBS and Its Grand Ambitions," July 16] was created in 1967 as "a rebuke to free-market television" because the latter was depriving families of "a concert hall, a museum, a university, a forum," I was reminded of some of the schlock shows we peons of a certain age had to suffer through in front of our 19-inch screens when only three or four crassly commercial networks ruled. To name a few: Leonard Bernstein's "Young People's Concerts," Alistair Cooke's "Omnibus," "Playhouse 90," Rod Serling's "The Twilight Zone," David Susskind's "Open End."

Good and great media operations have a sense of urgency about them. They fairly tremble with creative energy ? a fever for the next big story or the next big program, and the best way to deliver it. At Los Angeles' flagship public television station, in contrast, insiders tell me that for years there has been a more leisurely dynamic. Do good work, but don't press. Produce a show, but don't overload yourself. Maintain an even strain. That dynamic needs to change and fast, given KCET's announced intention to dump PBS ?

I do not find David Shaw's "nuclear option" for PBS' woes -- getting rid of the tent (PBS) and the camel (government funding) -- to be in the best interest of our national media coverage ["There's a 'Nuclear Option' for PBS' Woes as Well," May 29]. PBS plays a vital role in "serving the public trust." The primary reason our conservative-dominated government does not like some of the stories PBS has had the freedom to cover is because they may reflect adversely on their policy decisions and their service of the "public trust."

On killing public broadcasting and the arts: The new Republicans seem to know the price of everything but the value of nothing. JOSEPH SIMON Malibu

It is not surprising that liberal Tom Shales would defend the left-leaning Public Broadcast System (TV Times, May 31). PBS has become a record of bias in favor of the liberal agenda in American politics. It is not therefore surprising that liberals like Shales want to maintain a medium that influences public opinion in favor of liberal beliefs. What is surprising is that Shales cannot understand why conservatives will not accept the liberal status quo in a tax-supported medium that supports the liberal agenda.

For those in preemptive mourning for Fox's Sherlock Holmes-inspired "House,"which comes to an end later this month, a bit of comfort: Season 2 of "Sherlock,"the BBC's flirty but still faithful contemporary rendition of the unforgettable detective, begins on PBS' "Masterpiece Mystery" Sunday night. As reimagined by British TV maestro Steven Moffat ("Doctor Who," "Jekyll") and Mark Gatiss ("Doctor Who"), this Sherlock, played with aquamarine and alabaster radiance by Benedict Cumberbatch, is a London consulting detective as brilliant, icy and occasionally preening as the original.

Mel Gibson's new movie, "Get the Gringo," rolled into a handful of theaters Wednesday night for what is certain to be the shortest theatrical run in the actor's history: one night. That's because Gibson's latest self-financed film, a $20-million, south-of-the-border crime drama set in a Mexican prison, won't appear in theaters beyond Wednesday's premiere in Austin, Texas, which was simulcast into a few auditoriums around the country. Instead, "Get the Gringo" will skip a theatrical run and become available on the satellite service DirecTV on May 1 in one of the boldest bets on video-on-demand programming.

KCET-TV pushes into its second year of independence from PBS with a new headquarters, a new slogan and new pledges about the thoughtful and provocative shows it will produce about Southern California. "Where the story really gets good," the fresh tag line declares. Management hopes it also applies to KCET's attempts to go it alone as one of the nation's handful of independent public television stations. Chief Executive Al Jerome said in a recent interview that KCET was making "really good progress" in its three-year plan to create a winning destination without public TV name brands such as "Sesame Street," "NewsHour" and the hit"Downton Abbey.

They were Southern women who wrote novels about race, family and the destructive mores of their native land — so it makes sense that the "American Masters" documentaries about Margaret Mitchell and Harper Lee would run back to back Monday night. It also makes sense that neither of these films would break the two-hour mark — "Margaret Mitchell: An American Rebel" is 55 minutes, "Harper Lee: Hey, Boo" is 90 minutes — because these women shared another characteristic: Each wrote just one book.

Julian Fellowes recalls his first Titanic moment, decades before a young Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet climbed onto James Cameron's set. "It haunted me," he says of a childhood viewing of "A Night to Remember," the 1958 British film about the ocean liner's crash into an iceberg and the ensuing race for the lifeboats. "Somehow the disaster of the Titanic embraces so much of that world -- high and low, working men and aristocrats, entrepreneurs and movie stars, immigrants hoping to start a new life in America.

Oscar Hammerstein II's lyrics reflected his personality and belief system, making him one of the first to transform the genre of the Broadway musical from lighthearted boy-meets-girl frivolities to more substantial intellectual shows. The lyricist-librettist-producer explored the subject of miscegenation in the seminal 1927 musical "Show Boat," which he wrote with composer Jerome Kern. In 1945's "Carousel," his second collaboration with composer Richard Rodgers, Hammerstein presented a romantic drama fantasy that dealt with death, heaven and forgiveness.

Re: "Gay Themes on PBS Draw Fire From All Sides" (June 24): So, Donald Wildmon is campaigning against another gay-themed program on PBS, saying, "I wonder if this is the kind of programming taxpayers want to give $1.1 billion to support." What Wildmon always seems to forget is that gay, lesbian and bisexual people pay taxes too and that we have just as much right to see our values represented, our concerns addressed and our lives portrayed on PBS as he or any other American. That's why it's called "public broadcasting."

House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) has suggested eliminating federal funding for some Public Broadcasting Service programming. If the PBS stations want to continue unaltered in their present formats, why not let them sell advertising and eliminate the need for public funding? There would, of course, be a hue and cry from the entrenched commercial broadcasters, of which I was once one, but the fact is that public broadcasters have always competed (for audiences, if not for dollars)

It took one simple mistake for Hector Xavier Monsegur, a hacker who goes by the name Sabu, to get caught by the FBI. That mistake led not only to his arrest but also to that of five other alleged hackers who, according to a grand jury indictment, have ties to high-profile underground groups online: LulzSec, AntiSec and Anonymous. The indictment filed in a U.S. District Court in New York ties the arrested men to online attacks against Sony, Fox, PBS, the Central Intelligence Agency, Visa, MasterCard and PayPal.