The world according to Moyers - television interviewer Bill Moyers; includes related article

National Review, March 10, 1989 by Tod Lindberg, Hadley Arkes

He used to do negative ads for LBJ. Now he plays an intellectual on TV- the "Ideas-R-Us" man. When it comes to ideas, he can get them for youwholesale. Wekome to . . .

IN 1866, Frederick Law Olmstead and Calvert Vaux delivered a report about laying out Prospect Park in Brooklyn. The "great advantage which a town finds in a park," they write, "lies in the addition to the health, strength, and morality which comes from it to its people, an advantage which is not only in itself very positive but which as certainly results in an increase of material wealth as good harvests or active commerce." Olmstead's spirit and sense of mission, as Roger Starr has noted, were characteristic of the reformers and moralists of his day. There is direct continuity between his view and the view of those who now make public-television programs.

Public television has its origins in a two-sided critique of its medium. On the one hand television is an immensely powerful medium, capable of reaching and influencing tens of millions of people, an avenue of communication the likes of which the world has never seen before. On the other hand, it is a dangerous medium. In commercial television, the imperative is to reach for the largest possible audience, and the easiest way to do this is to make the appeal at the level of the lowest common denominator. Standards erode rapidly, quality does not sell: and the viewing audience is thereby debased.

By contrast, public-TV producers are not susceptible to the crass commercial motives that result from the need to provide an audience attractive to the advertisers who pay the way. The medium is thus freed of the burden of aiming low, and television is once again (or at last) free to deliver quality equal to its power.

Deliver it to whom? For the makers of public television, the answers vary with the program: Brideshead Revisited to people interested in British history and culture, perhaps. The Story of English to those curious about the mother tongue. The American Ballet Theatre's Apollo to fanciers of dance. But in a sense, the answer is larger, the ground common. The makers of these programs have in mind, first, a broad audience of educated and cultured people; second, the presumably broader audience of those who wish to become better educated and more cultured. The latter will be introduced to British history and culture, to the philology of English, to Baryshnikov and Balanchine. They may even begin to cultivate an appreciation of these things. It is because they sense this potential for uplift out there in the darkened living rooms of America that those who make public-television programs are so fervetly evangelistic. Olmstead wanted to make parks available to the people; public television wants to make ideas available.

"Ideas," in the sense employed on public television, are sometimes complicated, but not beyond the reach of anyone's understanding. Ideas, after all, are useful-functional things that people should not ignore simply because they do not have much time. Like fresh air or mixing with the upper orders, ideas are good for people. Public television can deliver these goods, open the doors, provide a passport valid for travel throughout this elevated sphere.

A recent example is A World of Ideas with Bill Moyers, a series of 49 half-hour shows first aired on PBS in the fall and now being rebroadcast on a number of stations. Its format is simple: Bill Moyers travels to a home or office in the world of ideas. He interviews its occupant one-on-one, and the edited result, with a short voice-over at the beginning to introduce the subject as he walks along a campus path, perhaps, or meets with students, makes up the half-hour show. In a handful of cases, Moyers grants an extra half-hour. The last episode of the series, called "Summing Up," is a sort of greatest-hits program, an essay Moyers has composed from snippets of preceding shows.

The program's title betrays a master's touch, at once earnestly affirming that ours is, yes, a world- of ideas, while at the same time humbly suggesting that the program touches upon a world only, one of many possible worlds (there being, of course, so very many ideas). It is also (though this reading may not have been intended) a world of ideas with Bill Moyers in it: he is the interlocutor and executive editor; he presumably had a large say in picking the subjects, as well as a large measure of control over the editing.

GRAPHIC DESIGNERS have made studies of what the eye looks at when it is presented with different elements on a page, for example, in a newspaper. It would be interesting to know how people really watch television. A dark movie theater is a very different environment; there are only two choices: stay and watch; or get up and leave. Television, by contrast, offers many channels to choose ftom, and remote control has made the physical act of "switching" simpler, even seductive. But short of the ultimate sanction-turning the program off-there is a wide range of options, from chatting with someone else in the room, making coffee, glancing at the day's newspapers, to looking out the window, all readily available.