Signal to Noise: Life with Television

 ((Thurs. (11, 18, 25), 10-11 p.m., PBS))

By JEREMY GERARD

Signal to Noise: Life With Television (Thurs. (11, 18, 25), 10-11 p.m., PBS) Viewers expecting a nostalgia fix should look elsewhere. Programming plays a back-seat role to advertising and its significance in the development of the medium. The 17 commissioned pieces track such subjects as Pepsi's spots for the Super Bowl, the emergence of local news as profit centers for station owners, and the wholesale takeover of children's programming by toy manufacturers.
 

Produced by Mixed Media Projects for the Independent Television Service, with funding from the Corp. for Public Broadcasting. Producer-director-writer, Cara Mertes; senior producer, Barbara Abrash; co-producer, Kelly Anderson; co-director, Norman Cowie; editorial adviser, Patricia Aufderheide; advising producers, Allen Rucker, Ernest Larson; segment producers, Louis Alvarez/Andrew Kolker, Skip Blumberg, Mary Brown, Michael Cho, Norman Cowie, Kathy High/Lisa Platt, Isaac Julien, Sherry Milner, Dan Minahan, Frances Negron-Muntaner, Not Channel Zero (Tom Poole, George Souza, Cyrille Phipps), Cathy Scott, Jason Simon , Robert Stone, YO-TV/Educational Video Center (Duane Cunningham, David Fuentes, John Palakas), Ilan Ziv. Signal to Noise" is an ambitious, occasionally bracing look at Americans' love-hate relationship with the tube. While the hourlong installments shed little new light on a well-worn subject, a certain verve makes for some lively viewing, particularly in the first two segments. Chalk it up to the intriguing notion of having independent producers with varying visual styles and philosophies create individual segments for the series.

If all that suggests endless talking heads, well, they're here in full force. Do we need to be reminded that advertising is the fuel that drives the broadcasting engine? Still, in the first program --"Watching TV Watching Us"-- Linda Ellerbee reminds us that the very notion of advertising invading the home was mighty controversial in the early days of radio. The thought is sobering, as we watch Uncle Miltie, Howdy Doodie and Captain Kangaroo pitch Milky Ways, Minute Maid Lemonade and Buster Brown Shoes, respectively.

"There's a chemical reaction that takes place when a kid sees a concept in a show on television and he just has to have it or his life will be over," says Allen Bohbot, a major syndicator of children's TV programming.

A stunningly effective segment delivered against the backdrop of a McDonald's spot featuring girls has an unseen narrator reading notes from ad agency to production company for the $ 185,769 spot (the dollar figure is displayed throughout the segment) intended as "a tribute to the female gender."

With the FCC still working out the details of a 1990 rule requiring stations to carry a few hours of educational programming for children as a condition of license renewal, the timing couldn't be better.

There are light moments, too, such as when producer/fanatic Sherry Milner visits the set of her goddess, Roseanne. But most of "Signal to Noise" has a cautionary tone. Introducing "TV Reality?," the second program, Old Iron Pants himself, Walter Cronkite, notes, "You've got to tell people what you're going to tell them, you've got to tell them, and then you've got to tell them what you've told them. That's the way it is, you know, and that's the way it is."

Ellerbee is the heroine of part two, the calm voice of reason. "Nothing in the world lies quite so easily as a camera," she remarks. "The minute you point it at something, you're pointing it away from something else."

There's an inspired tour of Magid Associates, the powerful local-news consulting firm, and media critic Ben Bagdikian's admonition that "when you combine serious news with entertainment, you're in trouble."

Part three, "Remote Control," looks at the future, and includes a paean by Bagdikian to public TV.

"Signal to Noise" includes a somnolent look at the development of a Pepsi spot for the Super Bowl, featuring a focus group whose members are seen drinking Coke, as well as segments on the lure of soap operas and the "if it bleeds, it leads" ethos of local news. Much of this is more noise than news. TV viewers are already America's most jaded audience, as testimony in "Signal to Noise" amply demonstrates. There's some smart verbiage here, but for all the quick-cutting and subject-flitting, the three hours are evanescent. TV as huckster, exploiter, babysitter, home-invader -- they're subjects as old as, well, TV itself.