TV Worth Blogging
by David Thiel, Program Director for WILL-TV
An insider's view of public television programming and the issues that help determine what and how you watch
Letters, We Get Letters
The Monday morning after a pledge drive weekend often means that there'll be an e-mail waiting for me reading something like this:
Every Saturday I wait patiently until 7 p.m. so I can watch Antiques Road Show and then As Time Goes By which happens to be my favorite Brit Com. I also really like Waiting for God. You can imagine my disappointment when I tuned in to find all my shows had been preempted once again by one of your constant bids for money. It seems to me you could find other ways to achieve your goals without hounding people to death on TV. I am an avid watcher of WILL and would be more than happy to donate, but your mindless jabbering (is) a huge turn off. Tonight, your programming not only stunk, but it was an insult to an intelligent person's intelligence.
Read more on "Letters, We Get Letters"
The Winner
The winner of this year's Great Britcom Vote was Are You Being Served? with 60 ballots cast in support by WILL-TV viewers. Next up was To the Manor Born with 38 votes and My Hero with thirty-one. Ronnie Barker's Open All Hours made a solid showing for a newcomer, garnering 29 ballots. Last year's runner-up, Mulberry, turned in a surprising last-place finish with only 20 votes.
Eighty-five viewers called in with pledges of financial support this evening, for a total of $6,986. Thanks to everyone who participated in this year's event, and especially to those who became Friends of WILL!
WILL-TV Viewers to Witness Historic Performance
The New York Philharmonic’s unprecedented trip to North Korea has been making headlines this week, but Central Illinois doesn’t just have to read about it: they will have the opportunity to watch the performance itself, a mere two days after the live concert. The producers of Great Performances have been working feverishly to prepare the program for broadcast Thursday. (WILL-TV will air it from 8:00 to 10:00 pm on February 28.)
In fact, the whole thing came together very quickly. Public TV stations were first informed about the program only three weeks ago, long after we'd published our February schedules. However, even though WILL-TV is in the middle of a very important fundraising drive, we put our previous plans on hold in order to bring you this historic event. I hope you'll tune in!
WILL-TV Program Wins Oscar™
No, Illinois Gardener didn’t take home a trophy at Sunday night’s 80th annual Academy Awards ceremony. However, the winner for Best Animated Short, Sergei Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf, will have its US broadcast premiere Wednesday, March 26 at 7:00 pm on WILL-TV. Great Performances is presenting the adaptation of the famous musical composition produced in stop-frame model animation and accompanied by the Philharmonia Orchestra under the direction of Mark Stephenson.
Election Day Approaches!
The onset of March brings with it WILL-TV's own experiment with democracy, our annual Great Britcom Vote. (Saturday, March 1 at 7:00 pm.) This will be the ninth year for this spring tradition, during which we set aside one night of our fundraising drive to ask the audience's help in selecting a British comedy for our schedule. We will air sample episodes of five "candidates" and invite viewers to call in for the one they prefer. At the end of the evening, the show with the most votes will be purchased to air sometime during our next fiscal year.
The concept of the Great Britcom Vote sprung from a desire to make our British comedy pledge breaks more of an event. While other public TV stations had previously aired comedy marathons that asked viewers to choose a favorite, we took it a step further by empowering our loyal Britcom audience to have a direct impact on the lineup.
Read more on "Election Day Approaches!"
Sense and Censorship
Over the past several weeks, WILL received several impassioned e-mail messages urging us not to air a certain television series. That's not unprecedented, but what was unusual was that the show in question was Dexter, a Showtime production that had its broadcast premiere last Sunday on CBS. It was obvious that these e-mails were robo-spam. How could I tell?
1) The writing style was too formal; they read more like press releases than correspondence. They cited very specific information about audience demographics and FCC rulings that suggested an "insider" perspective rather than that of a typical, interested viewer.
2) They were writing to a PBS station about a CBS show.
3) They were all identical.
