make the pie higher

Back when we all had a sense of humor about the buffoon George Bush, we greeted that malapropism with the appropriate skepticism.It turns out, though, that PBS has found a way to do just that—increasing its viewership for Frontline, its superb documentary series,*** by streaming it on the Web:

Executives at “Frontline” do not yet know how many people watched their recent four-and-a-half hour documentary, “Bush’s War,” because of PBS’s complicated Nielsen ratings.Online, however, “Bush’s War,” which was produced for the fifth anniversary of the United States’ invasion of Iraq, has set a record, with more than 1.5 million views of all or part of the program, which was streamed in 26 segments.“Frontline” has streamed most of its documentaries free since 2002 (www.pbs.org/frontline), part of an effort to reach younger audiences than typically tune in to PBS. The online viewing to date of “Bush’s War,” which was broadcast in two parts on March 24 and 25, is an estimated “10 times the traffic of a normal show for us,” said Sam Bailey, the program’s director of new media and technology. Viewers are also sticking around much longer than they usually do on the site, typically for 7 to 10 minutes.

Who says that quality doesn’t sell?Think again.————–*** I have long been a devotee of Frontline. I’m on record as saying that I wish all hard-news on TV were done with the depth of Frontline documentaries. But of course I know it can’t and won’t happen.Still: kudos! serious television lives!