Programs/Content

Review finds factual flaws in ‘The Liberators’

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After a seven-month investigation of the factual accuracy of ”Liberators: Fighting on Two Fronts in World War II,” WNET announced Sept. 7, 1993, that some portions of the documentary were ”seriously flawed” and that the New York station would continue to withhold the film from PTV distribution until it is corrected. Judging by the producers’ reactions, the film is unlikely to return to the public airwaves. In a statement issued by Bill Miles and Nina Rosenblum, the filmmakers stood by the oral testimony presented in ”Liberators,” criticized WNET’s review for not being conducted independently, and accused WNET and PBS of censorship. Miles Educational Film Productions holds the copyright to the film.

Why public media?

‘The only place where you have a measure of creative control’

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Documentary-maker Ken Burns told why he’s continuing to work with public broadcasting at the Television Critics Association press tour in Los Angeles in January [1992]. During a question-and-answer session, a writer asked him: “Ken, for this project, as well as your others, you’ve found a very appreciative home at PBS. But now, with all your success, have the commercial networks tried to lure you away? Have they made offers to you?”

There have been a lot of very, very generous offers and ideas. But the fundamental reason why I don’t intend to move is that this is not only my home — and being a historian, one kind of honors the past and where you’ve been — but this is the only place on the dial where you can be free of commercials, where you can have a measure of creative control over your project, a lack of interference; where you can have a strong relationship with an underwriter that develops over time, in the case of [General Motors], where you can really forge these kinds of relationships; where we can go and we can say we’re thinking about doing this, and you can actually accomplish it.

Programs/Content

The return of the Louds: WNET to air 1973 film

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After 17 years in blissful obscurity, the Loud family is about to be put back into the public television fish bowl. WNET-TV in New York will rebroadcast on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day An American Family, the 1973 cinema verite production that followed the lives of Bill and Pat Loud of Santa Barbara, Calif., and their five children: Michele, Delilah, Grant, Kevin and Lance. “I’m amused,” said Lance Loud, who now lives in Los Angeles. “It’s no big deal. We have nothing to sell or promote because of it,” he said, adding that he has not seen the 12-hour documentary since its original broadcast on public television.