Save FETCH! With Ruff Ruffman
Joel Kaplan
October 11, 2011
Save FETCH! With Ruff Ruffman
I recently received a letter from a nine-year-old living in Durham, N.C. who implored me to “Save FETCH! With Ruff Ruffman from its doom.”
Despite my myriad of powers as the CPB ombudsman, saving children’s shows from cancellation is not among them. But I thought the young lady’s letter would give me an opportunity to explain how both funding decisions are made as well as how the decisions to keep a show running or not are also made.
FETCH! With Ruff Ruffman began in 2006 and lasted for 100 episodes. It was designed for children from the ages of six to 12 and was part of the PBS Kids Go! block of educational programming. It was produced by WGBH, the public television station in Boston. In 2010, WGBH announced that the show was being cancelled because of lack of funding.
It is important to note that none of that funding came from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. While CPB does fund children’s shows in the neighborhood of $5 million to $8 million per year, FETCH! With Ruff Ruffman was not among them.
FETCH! actually received its funding from PBS, the National Science Foundation and a variety of corporate underwriters.
“We don’t put money into every kids’ show, only certain ones,” says Michael Fragale, vice president for educational programming and services at CPB. “The way we decide is to look at the need and whether there are gaps in the current schedule.
“Right now there is not a lot of math or math content so that is where our focus is. We are constantly looking at the landscape and talking to educators and early childhood experts.”
Mr. Fragale says CPB rarely funds a show in its entirety and usually splits its annual allotment between funding long-running legacy shows and new content, but CPB is currently leaning towards funding new content. CPB is now funding pilots for two new math series and will end up selecting one for full series funding.
Nevertheless, fans of FETCH! With Ruff Ruffman do not agree with the decision not to fund further episodes.
“There has been a huge uproar about FETCH! Going away,” says Kate Taylor, the executive producer at WGBH in charge of the show. “PBS decided that 100 shows were enough and they needed to save their money for new shows. So they ended up not funding us.”
Still, Ms. Taylor says all is not lost for FETCH! Fans. The show continues to air on weekday and weekend broadcast as well as being available for free streaming at pbskidsgo.org. WGBH is also in the process of producing an online pilot called Spyhounds Adventures where Ruff Ruffman will be involved in games and adventures. Spyhounds will be going on the website for a month after Thanksgiving.
As to why PBS decided to no longer support the show, Linda Simensky, Vice President for Children’s Content at PBS explains:
“I'd like to clarify that FETCH is still a part of our schedule. It is true that we are not commissioning additional episodes, but we have produced 100 episodes of the series, which is a substantial number. We are continuing to feed the program to our stations and they are continuing to air it. Also, the series will still be available on a 24/7 basis, for free, on our PBS KIDS GO! Video Player at http://pbskids.org/go/video/.
“Regarding the broader question of our children's service, and deciding how to most effectively invest our limited funds, we look at a wide variety of factors - the primary and overriding issue is how can we have as much positive impact on children's lives as possible.
“Ratings are one thing we look at, as it gives us an indication of the reach of a program. A show with low ratings means not many children are watching the series, and that would signal to us that we are not having much impact with that series.
“We also talk to the programmers at the stations and other system leaders to see how they feel about the performance and effect of each series.
“Another key source of information is the pbskids.org web sites. We look at how long each user stays on a site, we look at traffic to the games, and we look at the number of streams for each program.
“An overall evaluation of our series is conducted twice a year, during which we review a variety of metrics. The evaluation is conducted by a cross-departmental team, with staff members from all departments at PBS weighing in on each series. As you can see, we consider a number of aspects as we make our decisions.”
Not all viewers are looking to save a show on public broadcasting. Nick Borgart of North Carolina wants to know why his tax dollars continues to support The McLaughlin Group.
“It will be 30 years next year that this lame excuse for informed discussion has been on the air,” he writes. “I’m a conservative; the show is pure snooze material. Why no new blood?”
The McLaughlin Group is produced in connection with WTTW the public television station in Chicago. CPB is not involved in its funding and a spokesman at WTTW said the program is funded entirely by its corporate underwriter, MetLife. The spokesman added that the program remains popular among a loyal group of viewers.