The arts on PBS is essential viewing, essential funding, with 'front-row seating'

“With Salt Lake City’s vibrant arts community, we have an audience that loves and honors the arts,” said Mary Dickson, creative services director for the University of Utah-affiliated PBS outlet. “The interest level in the arts and arts programs is far higher than people would initially consider.

“That’s the real beauty of PBS,” she added. “No matter where you live in Utah, you have access to tremendous programs on the arts, and Utahns enthusiastically support the arts.”

Kerger noted that PBS ratings continue to climb nationwide for TV shows, along with the popularity for PBS’ online content. In a recent month, PBS recorded 186 million video streams as the national outlet continues to explore new avenues to increase viewership.

She explained NEA estimates that $1.35 is currently being contributed annually per taxpayer, with “mere pennies” of that amount reserved for arts and cultural programs, before the most recent reductions. These federal dollars are particularly important to smaller stations. For many stations, the appropriation counts for as much as 40-50 percent of their total budget.

Fund drives directed to “viewers like you” will continue, along with the dedication of PBS executives to source contributions from private individuals and large corporate charitable entities, she noted. But federal funds remain crucial to the continued excellence of the mission of PBS to support national and local arts events.

The extremely popular PBS broadcast of “Downton Abbey,” which entered the Guinness Book of World Records as the year’s “most critically acclaimed English-language television show” and boasted 5.4 million viewers for the season finale, should have a ripple effect on the PBS network, Kerger noted.

How can the one viewer’s voice be heard to encourage increased national funding of PBS programming?

“I’ve not tried to encourage any large, grass-roots efforts, but I think people should let the NEA know if they have issues with the focus of their funding,” Kerger said. While there are large organizations, like Americans for the Arts and 170 Million Americans for Public Broadcasting, dedicated to encourage support of national funds for PBS, she recommended addressing concerns to Rocco Landesman, NEA chairman, either through direct correspondence or a phone call, following information available on nea.gov.

Artists sing praises to PBS arts shows

Esperanza Spalding is the first jazz performer to win a Grammy for Best New Artist. President Barack Obama requested she sing at his Nobel Peace Prize ceremony. Her “Chamber Music Society” was the best-selling contemporary jazz album last year. What was her inspiration for pursuing a life in music?

“I saw a ‘Mister Roger’s Neighborhood’ program with Yo-Yo Ma when I was about 5,” Spalding has said. “And I said, ‘Mom, I want to do that. You know, whatever that is, I want to do that.’ The first 10 years of my musical life were as a violinist because of seeing Yo-Yo Ma perform.”

Spalding is certainly not alone. An untold number of gifted artists enjoyed their first exposure to the arts through a PBS program.

Wendy Wasserstein, a Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winner, also has a testimonial for PBS arts telecasts.

“I owe the launch of my career as a playwright to (PBS producer) Jac Venza and ‘Great Performances,’” the playwright told a gathering of broadcasters in 1994. “For public television is, to me, something quite out of the ordinary; something very special and precious. Public television has not only brought the finest in the arts to millions of people who would never otherwise have experienced them, but it has also shaped the direction of those arts. It has given voice to new talent even as it has celebrated the canon of great works.

“The most wonderful thing public television has done is bring the arts to so many people,” she continued. “I’m referring to the extraordinary variety of work I see on public television. Dance, theater, opera, jazz, film. The grand, right next to the intimate, a jazz classic beside an opera classic, the gentle beside the shocking. That’s America, if you ask me.”