Maybe it means, to people who have made it through an episode of, say, Lie To Me, that I am a “geek,” but I don’t care: I’m a diehard PBS fan.
I get six channels of television via antenna, and four of them are WGBY and variations. I couldn’t be happier with that arrangement, even though it sometimes means choosing between watching someone make rabbits with hot glue and egg cartons or checking out rerun 4,027 of Italian Cooking on Famous Verandas. Not only does that sometimes make it easier to not watch TV—pretty much always a positive—it leaves me gloriously free of the inane, chipper chatter of advertising. For now, that is—the sponsorship segments grow suspiciously longer and more dynamic every year.
Mainly, though, I love PBS for its combination of rare elements: journalism without corporate ownership; genuinely educational programming that doesn’t end with melodramatic musical montages; and large doses of British programming. I’ve never fully understood why British television makes such inroads on PBS, but the simultaneously humble and witty stylings of our limier cousins seem to have found a comfortable home there. I’m happy to wave the flag of Springfield’s WGBY Channel 57 for all those reasons, not to mention the station’s increasing number of local programs.
But a curious thing happens once you’ve been sucked for a few weeks into the wonders of Frontline, The American Experience and New Scandinavian Cooking. You tune in for Foyle’s War, and instead, you get the drum-tight visages of retooled doo-wop stars thrilling arenas full of septuagenarians.
It’s pledge drive time again. Put your feet on the ottoman to drift into the episode of History Detectives where the guy finds Houdini posters beneath his roof shingles, and instead you get an over-tanned motivational speaker saying that cutting persimmons from your diet will cure scurvy and hemmorhoids. And that’s not the worst of it.
I thought I’d seen the low point of public television some years ago, when I witnessed the beginning of the nation’s Memorial Day concert in D.C. Tony Danza hit the stage in Uncle Sam fashion, singing and tap-dancing like his life depended on it, and I went catatonic. I needed help to hit the off button. You just can’t prepare for that kind of apocalypse.
But there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. In recent days, my attempt at tuning in public television has been thwarted by an anomaly that made tap-dancing Danza seem but a pleasant dream. I’m talking about Celtic Thunder. If you thought Celtic Thunder was the condition resulting from too much cabbage and Guinness, think again. Something must have gotten into the water supply in Ireland, because the abominations that nation has foisted upon the rest of us in the last decade set new standards in schmaltz.
As someone whose name used to be spelled Ua hIfearnain, I hate to see that venerable culture gone so campy. Seeing Lord of the Dance‘s Michael Flatley (who is, to be fair, American) furiously shuffling between smoke machines dressed like Rob Halford crossed with a matador is bad enough. When he stops to stare meaningfully, breathing like he’s run four consecutive marathons, it’s hard not to bust something laughing.
But seeing the all-male song-and-dance group Celtic Thunder perform ups the ante even more than Celtic Woman. As I watched the guys pirouette through what appeared to be a lip-synced “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown” set in someone’s pleasantly cultivated garden, I went all numb again. Who, I thought, would purposely seek out this godforsaken cross of Broadway and over-boiled Irishness? As the camera panned the audience, that night’s answer, at least, was clear: for every 20 women, the camera caught a stoic man or two.
What’s going on here? Perhaps demographic studies have revealed that WGBY supporters are made up primarily of health-conscious women and doo-wop fans. It may well be true. But even if it is, those same fans are, necessarily, quite happy outside of pledge season watching all those reliable strains of PBS show that also please viewers like me, viewers without a single Moonglows album or a case of the gout. The horrors of pledge-drive programming like Celtic Thunder produce in me the wrong desire: I get afraid that a poorly timed pledge could be interpreted as support for such dreck, endangering gems like Masterpiece or Austin City Limits. WGBY’s sudden programming changes seem like a temporary lapse of reason, like when Pat Boone made an album of big band heavy metal covers.
My love of WGBY and its dedication, outside of pledge drives, to unusually good programming sans advertising is so far unshaken. I just wish they’d ask for my support between segments of all those shows their fans love them for—too much Celtic Thunder can leave a fellow shell-shocked.