Don't Ask WHYY

Forget about having a professional sports team win a national championship. What this town needs is a proper flagship public television station.

The provencial corniness of WHYY-TV has overflowed beyond the winter pledge week, prompting me to consider sending any pledge dollars to the much better NJN (which I can watch when the planets are properly aligned) or the delightfully wacky WYBE.

WHYY is just the kind of things midwesterns can point to whenever east coast people want to call us closed-minded. Compared to KTCA, Twin Cities Public Television, which once ran a special on Wiccans during a pledge week, WHYY is as sharp as a plastic butter knife.

Here are the signs that WHYY is not worthy of being the big public television station for a city with cosmopolitan aspirations:

1. It airs The Lawrence Welk Show at 7 p.m. on Saturdays.
2. It aired the Andy Williams Christmas special last night at 9 p.m.
3. It blurred out the raunchy etchings montage from the Marie Antoinette documentary which ran at 9 p.m., a time when impressionable children, even the ones who are drawn to historical documentary, are likely to be asleep. (Maybe I should let this one slide since the FCC was acting all stank this fall.)
4. Jay Jay the Jetplane
5. Whenever Patrick Stoner says, "it's tax deductable to the full extent of the law."

WHYY's locally focused programming appears to be limited to the Cunningham nostalgia pieces, Flicks with Patrick Stoner, and a decent special on Thomas Eakins (its innovative use of achival images and narrative voice overs looked as if it had been done by a slightly advanced college kid using Adobe Premiere). Besides Delaware Tonight, where are the regular local news and public opinion programs like the ones I see on NJN and WBYE?

Did the radio part of WHYY suck all the wind out of the television part?

It's as if WHYY-TV is cowering under the threat that the Lawrence Welk fans will abandon the station. Well, soon they will, whether they want to or not, because no one lives forever. There's a lot of stuff aimed at baby boomers. Meanwhile, the station seems to be doing very little to cultivate younger adult supporters. Sure, they show programs for little kids which parents appreciate, but that's a public television given.

Just be better, WHYY. Please!