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Latest Sign the Apocalypse is Near

They can sell commercials or I can continue to write checks. The two are mutually exclusive.

Yes, the commercials would bring in much more than my modest checks. But I don't think I'm alone in this.
 
FilioScotia said:
PBS will be making money by selling time inside its programs. That will make them little different from commercial TV stations.

I have to wonder why they continue to need government funding.
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Also, will it even be legal, as many PBS stations broadcast on channels allocated for non-commercial, educational use? Some of these already skirt the law running ads between shows that are thinly-veiled as funding announcements.
 
azumanga said:
Also, will it even be legal, as many PBS stations broadcast on channels allocated for non-commercial, educational use? Some of these already skirt the law running ads between shows that are thinly-veiled as funding announcements.
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Skirt the law? PBS follows the letter and spirit of the law. The promos don't make claims or sales pitches about products or even ask the viewer to visit the sponsor or use the product. And the spots are short.

I'm heard some non-comm radio stations have funding announcements that are a full 60 seconds. Now that's a commercial.
 
FilioScotia said:
The NY Times reports PBS plans to start running commercials in the middle of its programs.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/31/business/media/31adco.html?_r=3

PBS will be making money by selling time inside its programs. That will make them little different from commercial TV stations.
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The New York Times worded their story poorly in places, and you worded your post that started this thread even more poorly.

PBS is not allowed to run what most people mean when they say commercials. They run endorsements, now known as enhanced endorsements after the FCC clarified some issues some time back. If you will read the story again, you will find that they want to take the acknowledgements of who the sponsors are.... which are now stacked up at the end of some of the programs EIGHT MINUTES DEEP! (I think that is what is called in radio automation a "stop set". )

They are already running the announcements. Have been doing it for years! And you can think of them as "neutered" commercials because there can be no "call to action" in verbiage. They want to take the endorsements they are already running and spaced them out in small "stop sets" every 15 minutes or so.

There is an up-side to this proposal. If you sit down to watch an hour long segment... like I did recently with the Ken Burns PROHIBITION series... no matter what our bladder is saying to you, you are stuck there for 50 minutes or so until the end-of-program stop-set of endorsements runs... or if the pain gets bad enough, just walk out for critical moments of the program and do your business.

But as I read the article you linked, I don't get the idea PBS plans to run anything new, anything they are not already running. They just want to space them and pace them a bit differently. Isn't that the reason we read thread after thread about wanting radio to return to the good old days of live and local. And one of the hallmarks of live and local was that we spread out the commercials evenly through out the hour rather than bunch them up in stop-sets. People say they liked radio that way. Maybe they will love PBS that way.
 
no matter what our bladder is saying to you, you are stuck there for 50 minutes or so until the end-of-program stop-set of endorsements runs... or if the pain gets bad enough, just walk out for critical moments of the program and do your business.

You're probably right. With scheduled "stop sets" in the middle of their programs, PBS TV will be doing something public radio has done for years, with local availabilities for underwriting announcements and other filler.

However, I don't share your view of what the announcements are, and are not. I speak as one who read those announcements for 17 years live on KUHF, and even without the "call to action", or certain kinds of promotional verbiage, they were still paid commercial announcements for commercial businesses. Call it what you want, but it's still a commercial.
 
fredcantu said:
... PBS follows the letter and spirit of the law. The promos don't make claims or sales pitches about products or even ask the viewer to visit the sponsor or use the product. And the spots are short.
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The letter of the law, arguably; but the spirit? I've seen many promos that do pitch specific products: "Funding provided by Ford Motor Co., makers of the Ford F-150 pickup," blah blah blah. And it's the intent of the spots that's relevant, not their length.

That said, I'm not surprised they're going to start running these spots in the middle of their programs. They jumped the shark on this issue long ago.

As for Congressional funding, I'd continue and even increase it; but with a rider to put a stop to these so-called "enhanced" underwriting credits. As long as they're getting taxpayer subsidies, PBS shouldn't sell de facto advertising to attract underwriters.
 
JHBrandt said:
As long as they're getting taxpayer subsidies, PBS shouldn't sell de facto advertising to attract underwriters.
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How is this different from public schools selling ads on buses or naming rights to athletic facilities? They're just trying to bring in revenue to pickup the slack left by spending cuts.
 
fredcantu said:
JHBrandt said:
As long as they're getting taxpayer subsidies, PBS shouldn't sell de facto advertising to attract underwriters.
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How is this different from public schools selling ads on buses or naming rights to athletic facilities? They're just trying to bring in revenue to pickup the slack left by spending cuts.
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It isn't. I have the same problem with those practices: chasing corporate money compromises the public entities' educational mission. If you're dependent on BP's money you're likely to soft-pedal info about oil spills, air pollution, climate change, etc.

But your point about spending cuts is good. PBS and public schools are in the same bind. Our state and Federal governments fund them, but not enough. To make up the difference they have to go begging where the money is, which in our society is big for-profit companies. I can't really blame them; so if it were up to me I'd raise public funding while banning these "enhanced" underwriter acknowledgements.
 
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