Mitt: I'll Kill Big Bird

[DToTheJ]

During the first 2012 Presidential debate, Mitt Romney vowed to end federal funding for PBS. That did not sit well with fans of Big Bird, old and young.
http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/489739-Big_Bird_is_Most_TiVoed_Debate_Moment.php

 

[upstate29651]

Sigh......

Public funds have no place on tv. Period.

G

 

[RadioMan203]

Public funds have no place on tv. Period.

This was the similar feeling with the folks who want to defund NPR, except the public radio arm has their political agenda out in the open and is often reflected by their programming and/or commentary..

 

[FreddyE1977]

Public funds have no place on tv. Period.

This was the similar feeling with the folks who want to defund NPR, except the public radio arm has their political agenda out in the open and is often reflected by their programming and/or commentary..

You telling me Sesame Street's political agenda is not out in the open? Have you seen it recently?

 

[Bill_W]

I really don't think Sesame Workshop has anything to worry about if a President Romney pulls funding for PBS. How much money do they make in sales of the Sesame Street merchandise? And it's not like they don't have sponsors of the show anyway like Beaches resorts, Earth's Best organic food and others. With PBS it's like they have the commercials in the beginning and end of shows anyway. This Old House has Home Depot, GMC, Lumber Liquidators and others as sponsors.

http://www.sesameworkshop.org/partners/supporters/index.html
http://www.thisoldhouse.com/toh/tv/underwriters

Just run the commercials.

 

[umfan]

Seasame Street can fund itself.

CTW already makes millions from licensing. Yes, CPB doesn't get a lot, but it is one area that should be removed from the budget.

 

[recto101]

Does Mitt Even realize that PBS and NPR airs investigative journalism reports in an Objective way? Look at some of the PBS Affiliates and NPR Affiliates like KQED-FM 88.5 and KQED-TV9 San Francisco they air investigative stories in a 1-hour special or 30 minute special and this is funded by "non-profit donors". ALso the KQED Specials would sometimes air on other PBS affiliates across California. I do know WGBH Inc in Mitts Romney's area do air science investigative reports "NOVA" and other kids programming that airs around the country by other non-profit donors.


The ones that really should be defunded is MSNBC, CNN and Fox News they push political agenda's more than PBS and NPR ever did. We fund MSNBC, Fox News and CNN with our Xfinity Bills and Web Bills.

 

[dhett]

Is there no end to a deceiving, biased media? Does the OP know that his subject line is dishonest?

Romney never said, "I'll kill Big Bird." Instead, he said, "I love Big Bird", as he proposed to cut out federal government funding of PBS.

Here's the actual clip, for those of you who want to know the truth: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ck8fQ7TzQsQ

Furthermore, PBS and Sesame Workshop, which produces Sesame Street, are separate organizations and are separately funded. Sesame Workshop derives 65% of its revenues from investment income, licensing and royalties. Unfortunately, its financial statements don't break out the source of the other 35%, but lump government grants, private foundation grants and viewer donations together. And since Sesame Workshops operates in several countries worldwide, government-sourced income is not necessarily from the US federal government.

Bottom line, Romney's proposal to cut federal funding from PBS would have little, if any, effect on Big Bird. But the American media is either too lazy, or too biased, to actually inform the public of that fact.

 

[Silkie]

Besides that, it's only if we have to borrow money from the Chinee to subsidize it.

 

[justpassingthough]

The average American is aware (or has been made aware over the last two days) that PBS makes up a miniscule amount of funding from the discretionary (non-entitlement or defense) budget of the US. I don't think people are landing on this comment because of that, but because Mitt is politicizing Big Bird and Sesame Street when there are bigger, more important issues that we need to tackle.

 

[TomParks]

Romney blew it on PBS and it will come back to bite him. Sure lets defund PBS and spend the money bombing the sand again........... :

 

[Carmine5]

PBS programming, as a whole, is strong enough to stand on its own and survive without government funding, particularly Sesame Street. Same goes for NPR.

Some argue that the 400 million a year the government gives CPB is a comparatively meager sum but we're talking about economic death by a thousand cuts. It isn't just funding CPB that is at issue, but a whole host of programs and agencies that, in an earlier fiscally stronger time, made sense to provide them with government assistance. Now funding such programs is seen as an extravagance the government can ill afford as it struggles to pay down a 16 trillion dollar deficit.

And frankly, if it came to a question of 'killing Big Bird' (as Obama so smugly characterizes the issue) verses spending 400 million to hire more teachers for public schools, Big Bird goes in the oven. Television is poor substitute for a real teacher.

But I don't see why PBS or NPR can't keep their non-com status (and the privileges that come with it such as low/no FCC regulatory fees) provided that no more than 35% of their revenue comes from the sale of availabilites. As it is, PBS is already starting to resemble a commercial network with the "not commercials" commercials their underwriters provide them.

 

[FreddyE1977]

Romney blew it on PBS and it will come back to bite him. Sure lets defund PBS and spend the money bombing the sand again........... :

[size=10pt][size=10pt]Romney Loses Election Due To Big Bird Comment[/size][/size]

If that is the morning-after headline I'll actually go and eat a bag
of yellow feathers.

 

[landtuna]

Television is poor substitute for a real teacher.

At times yes and at times no. I wish I had had some of the Discovery and National Geographic programs available when I was growing up. I can learn at a much faster and more entertaining way visually than by poking through a book. Most kids can. The best we had was a short video called "Hemo the Magnificent" that attempted to teach, through a cartoon, the human circulatory system. Everyone in my sixth grade class loved it and that was a beginning.

And what about pre-school children? My 38-year old son had complete mastery of numbers (and their concepts), the alphabet and was even doing some stand-alone reading before entering Kindergarten at age 5. And it was all due to Sesame Street and other like programs.

It's all about the content and not the medium.

PBS has shown it can be a very efficient and entertaining teacher and given the relative low scores our current batch of children achieve as compared to other countries I would vote that whatever is spent on PBS children's programming should not be disturbed and should even be expanded.

 

[The Voice of Reason]

Every time some politician mentions cutting government funding to PBS or especially NPR the liberalists come out of their sand boxes enforce.

What is ironic is that if one listens to either a Pub TV or radio fundraiser, they will hear the catch-phrase " only one out of every ten households donates to XXXX TV or radio. Now if more of you who watch/listen donated, we wouldn't need to depend on government funding".

When good ole boy LBJ created CPB I'm pretty certain the intent, like the creation of welfare, wasn't designed to be a generational program funded by the federal government until the second coming of Christ. Instead federal dollars were to be used as 'seed money' to get public broadcasting off the ground so that it eventually could economically stand on its own two feet.

I agree with other posters that the Children's Television Workshop is fiscally stable so that it wouldn't be seriously impacted by the loss of government funding. As for NPR and PBS, perhaps it is time that those liberalists who watch and listen to the programs offered started shelling a few bucks out of their own wallets instead of depending on taxpayer dollars as a subsidy.

And please don't cry me a river by saying that only a dime out of every tax dollar goes to public broadcasting. With our nation's deficit in the trillions of dollars and China virtually owning our country lock, stock and barrel, one dime per tax dollar is too damn much to spend on a luxury like public broadcasting.

 

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

And please don't cry me a river by saying that only a dime out of every tax dollar goes to public broadcasting. With our nation's deficit in the trillions of dollars and China virtually owning our country lock, stock and barrel, one dime per tax dollar is too damn much to spend on a luxury like public broadcasting.

I've not calculated the percentage for Public Television but a few months back when Public Radio of the focus of "Let's burn them at the stake" we did some calculations and they receive something down in the 4 or 5 decimal points of one percent of the Federal Budget: as in maybe 00.00044 of one percent.

When you throw out the SWAG number of 10% of the Federal Budget going to public broadcasting, you have demonstrated you are not mentally ready to run with the Big Boys.... much less "the liberalists who come out enforce". What is it that they enforce? speed limits? tavern hours? voter registration rules? I thought only the Mafia had enforcers.

 

[Tim-In-Houston]

According to the most recent figures more than half of CPB's budget allocation goes to direct support of community radio and TV stations. Those grants allow the stations to, in essence, "keep the lights on" as well as buy the rights to air programming from both PBS and NPR. There are also non-PBS/NPR public broadcasters that receive a portion of this funding as well.

A very small amount (by my calculations, about 21% of $440M allocated) goes to direct program grants.

So, in a lot of places that lack of a large individual donation/corporate underwriting pool, it's very likely that cutting funding to CPB would "kill Big Bird" by preventing those stations from either continuing to broadcast or being unable to afford the programming.

And please don't cry me a river by saying that only a dime out of every tax dollar goes to public broadcasting. With our nation's deficit in the trillions of dollars and China virtually owning our country lock, stock and barrel, one dime per tax dollar is too damn much to spend on a luxury like public broadcasting.

The immediate past president and Republican-controlled congress, sir, was first to sell us out to China. That borrowing only continued as the cost of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were added in. As I have said for years: The R's use "Tax and spend liberals" as a cudgel against the D's all the while engaging in a "Tax cut and spend" mentality. The deficit was never a problem for the R's until they weren't fully in charge of the purse strings.

 

[The Voice of Reason]

When you throw out the SWAG number of 10% of the Federal Budget going to public broadcasting, you have demonstrated you are not mentally ready to run with the Big Boys.... much less "the liberalists who come out enforce". What is it that they enforce? speed limits? tavern hours? voter registration rules? I thought only the Mafia had enforcers.

Your lasso is on a bit too tight there cowboy. I never mentioned a figure of 10 percent of the Federal Budget going to public broadcasting...you did. As for enforcers, oh yeah PBS and NPR have their enforcers. They are called lobbyists.

On the subject of money, you tell me how fair it is that someone like Sharon Percy Rockefeller, who is worth millions of dollars, is paid a six figure salary to run WETA. I can name dozens of other CEO's running public broadcasting operations earning more money than the governors of their respective states to run a not-for-profit organization.

 

[Silkie]

Aw, heck, let's just pluck her and have chicken florentine for dinner tonight.

 

[Nate Wesley]

The average American is aware (or has been made aware over the last two days) that PBS makes up a miniscule amount of funding from the discretionary (non-entitlement or defense) budget of the US. I don't think people are landing on this comment because of that, but because Mitt is politicizing Big Bird and Sesame Street when there are bigger, more important issues that we need to tackle.

Not only that, but he's politicizing one of public television's most everlasting successes. Even there were this great sentiment to end PBS as we know it, Sesame Street would not its weak spot to attack.

Extending Romney's logic, why the heck are we spending money on the National Parks Service? The evil fed'rul gub'mint doesn't need to be in the tourism business! I'm sure we could outsource that stuff to Disney, Universal, and Six Flags. Just think of the cool ride ideas they'll come up with for the Grand Canyon, the USS Arizona memorial, and the childhood homes of Teddy Roosevelt and Martin Luther King!