PBS Livelyhood 1998
Partners:
The Working Group
KQED-TV
Public Radio’s “Marketplace”
The critically acclaimed “Livelyhood” project, a four-part, public television series on the changing nature of work in the United States, used a national poll, town hall-style discussions, the Internet and a specially devised “tool kit” to encourage working Americans to confront and discuss emerging challenges and issues in the workplace. The Pew Center helped to support some of that outreach.
The four, one-hour television shows, which debuted on PBS, Nov. 21, 1997, covered the issues of downsizing, working families, employee ownership and community solutions to workplace problems. By design, the shows were intended not as passive entertainment but as a stimulus to discussion. To that end, the producers worked with other media to create forums for discussion. One tool used was a “Livelyhood Index,” developed from the national poll results, which capsulized the findings in such statements as: “Percentage of working Americans who say they have more than one wage-earner in the household: 62.” Discussion leaders, who included talk-radio hosts, could use the index as a jumping off point to get listener opinion on the issues.
After the “Working Family Values” installment, aired May 29, 1998, the producers worked with KCET-TV in Los Angeles on a town hall discussion of work issues. For the September 1998 broadcast of “Honey, We Bought the Company,” which featured a Maine company, the producers partnered with the University of Southern Maine for a town hall meeting in Portland on employee-ownership issues. The producers also held a roundtable discussion in Oakland. The final installment, “Our Towns,” aired Jan. 12, 1999.
Contact:
Patrice O’Neill
Executive Producer, Livelyhood; Co-Founder
The Working Group
1611 Telegraph Ave., Suite 1550
Oakland, CA 94612
Phone: (510) 268-9675
Email: poneill@theworkinggroup.org