‘Baseball’ Ran on Interminably, Illustrating Why PBS Falls Short

Ken Burns is undoubtedly a talented filmmaker but let’s face it, his “Baseball” miniseries on the Public Broadcasting Service was just not that great. Maybe that explains why it racked up all of a 5-plus rating (a blockbuster, sad to say for PBS) for the first five “innings” (“For PBS at Least, ‘Baseball’ Is a Hit--but It’s No ‘Civil War,’ ” Calendar, Sept. 26).

A certain conceit must be blamed for Burns’ determination that the program had to run more than 18 hours. (It’s been reported that he considered it a great sacrifice to consign to the cutting room floor some sequences that would have made the running time even longer.) This kind of programming may account for the unfortunate fact that PBS prime-time shows draw only an average 2 rating and 3% of the audience. A national non-commercial broadcast service kept alive by the dedication of individual “viewers like you” and perennial struggles with Congress for federal funding plus corporate and foundation dollars ought to do better.

Even at a modest 18-plus hours, “Baseball” was padded with endless, repetitive overly long sequences that were just plain boring, as in B-O-R-R-I-N-G. How many times in one “inning” can you look at interminable scenes of grainy, scratchy black-and-white old film (and that was dramatic compared to the still pictures of old baseball stadiums that all looked the same after the 12th repeat) and wonder when the plaintive music is going to stop--”Take Me Out to the Ball Game” again? --and somebody will finally say (or better yet do ) something.

The sixth “inning” comes to mind. After a fussy opening sequence--previews of coming attractions, who knows what--the show finally seemed to get down to business. But wait, it wasn’t “Play ball!” time yet. The band began to play “The Star Spangled Banner” (for the n th time), sound up full--and played and played all the way to the last bar, all this over more pictures of old baseball parks and little figures hitting or throwing the ball or running bases.

If the sixth inning didn’t start exactly like this, it seemed that way because by then my recall was jumbled by watching a dozen other sequences just like it. Enough already! By the sixth inning we’d all heard the National Anthem before. Fade the music under after a few bars and get on with the story. Or is that sacrilege? All in all, it seemed like we were five minutes into the hour before the sixth finally started--suggesting that “Baseball” could have been cut to 12 hours without losing much.

The too-cutesy “inning” format dictated choppy development of the story line, with themes starting in one inning and going nowhere, then picking up two innings later, assuming that we were all religiously marking our score cards and taking notes. The best parts of the “game” were the insights revealed in the interviews--with historians, old ball players, social commentators, Jackie Robinson’s widow and many others.

Particularly unforgettable was Red Barber, the Mississippi-born broadcaster for the old Brooklyn Dodgers, describing how his Southern-bred racist views were impacted--and changed!--by closely observing Robinson become the first black man to play major league baseball.

Even more pointed was the brief appearance by New York Gov. Mario Cuomo, who asked why it had taken until 1947--more than eight decades after the Civil War--for a black baseball player to at last break that color line in the national pastime. Indeed, why?

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It’s a question--along with many others--that Ken Burns should have answered with greater economy, skill and dramatic impact. Then it might have drawn a bigger audience.

There’s a question for PBS too. When John Fuller, director of PBS research, said, “We’re thrilled” that the 5-plus ratings for “Baseball” were more than twice the average for public TV programming, he unwittingly revealed a larger problem: PBS programs generally tend to be ponderous, if not a bit pompous, appealing to the elitist 3% of the audience. While commercial TV overdoes the fast-paced glitz (witness the seven-second sound bite in news), PBS often goes to the opposite extreme and meanders.

Fuller also said PBS did not decide that “Baseball” should run 18 1/2 hours; Burns did. And that’s just the point. It’s presumptuous to assume that the mass audience is going to devote the better part of two weeks’ leisure time to a television show. And if PBS is satisfied with reaching only the elites, that’s unfortunate.