Monday, March 08, 2004
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

'American Experience' to trace local history

PBS has plans for documentary of Las Vegas first 100 years

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With a (Big) Bird in hand and plenty of (George W.) Bush, Public Broadcasting Service programmers have turned their sights toward another subject that's been a long-proven winner with American television viewers: Las Vegas, in all its neon glory.

The Alexandria, Va.-based service is in the early stages of developing a three-hour, multimillion-dollar documentary program chronicling the city's first 100 years. Through its award-winning "American Experience" series, PBS plans to trace Las Vegas' history from its days as a frontier town to the Hoover Dam construction period, concluding with its more-recent emergence as a world-class gaming and travel destination.

The series would air in fall 2005 to coincide with other events marking Las Vegas' year-long celebration of its May 15, 2005, centennial. PBS plans to air the series at least twice nationally; local affiliates will have the option of broadcasting the documentary more often.

Las Vegas has long been a popular subject for television and film producers, but local tourism leaders said PBS's approach would offer significantly different benefits than those gained from fictional or fun-based exposure such as NBC's "Las Vegas" series and CBS' "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation," cable television specials or the many motion pictures filmed in the valley.

"There hasn't been a single source that has documented the city, from the very beginning to its current day, in all facets," said Terry Jicinsky, senior vice president of marketing for the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority. "A lot of the TV shows, like those on The Travel Channel, focus on one element. This is all-inclusive and will track all elements of the evolution of the city."

To that end, the convention authority is scheduled to vote Tuesday on a proposal to contribute $700,000 toward the series' production costs.

Insignia Films, a New York-based film company that would produce the series for PBS, needs at least $2 million in commitments to begin filming next month, producer Amanda Pollak said. PBS has already promised approximately $800,000. Should the convention authority sign on, the remaining $500,000 would likely come from other local sources, she said.

Insignia founder Stephen Ives, who worked with noted documentarian Ken Burns on several projects including his landmark studies of baseball and the American Civil War, is slated to direct PBS' Las Vegas project. Ives was unavailable for comment Friday, but colleague Pollak said the subject appealed to Insignia because Las Vegas has enjoyed a unique position in America's past, and likely, its future.

" `American Experience' has done features on New York and Chicago, and to me this (planned documentary) is very telling in terms of what Las Vegas represents in terms of the future of American cities and what people are looking for in the 21st century -- the imagination that's being built not only into the Strip but beyond," Pollak said.

PBS and Insignia will control the documentary's content, which will largely come from local experts such as university historians, past and present Las Vegas News Bureau workers, and others with knowledge and documentation of the city's past, Jicinsky said.

Pollak added a preliminary two-episode script is finished and Insignia hopes to film its first interviews in May and June. Field production would end this fall, followed by several months of editing and postproduction before a final product is presented to PBS in summer 2005, she added.

PBS has aired "American Experience" since 1988, and in that span the series has produced multiple award-winning accounts of historical figures and events ranging from Amelia Earhart and Malcolm X to race horse Seabiscuit, Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor and San Francisco's devastating 1906 earthquake.

Closer to home, the series' 1999 look at Hoover Dam received Best Documentary recognition from the Writers Guild of America. Overall, "American Experience" has garnered 15 Emmy Awards, 10 Peabody Awards and seven Oscar nominations.

The convention authority's proposed contract calls for it to spend $175,000 next fiscal year and another $525,000 once its 2005-06 fiscal year begins July 1, 2005. That money would buy four 10-second advertising spots projected to be seen in at least 6 million U.S. households when the series first airs. The national rebroadcast is projected to draw another 4 million television households, convention authority documents show.

Coupled with Internet content, home videos and other ties, the convention authority estimates the documentary could reach nearly 24 million people.

Insignia also pledged to give 10 percent of any net proceeds of home video, soundtrack or accompanying book sales to the convention authority; that process could return nearly $106,000 in revenue, based on convention authority estimates.