tested said:
My view: the government should not fund a TV network. It is not a vital government function. The CPB should no longer get government money. The fact that it does makes PBS stations the subject of political fodder from both sides of the aisle. Eliminating that would eilminate the political headache many stations face over some of the programming PBS runs.
This is a topic where it is hard to distinguish between political fantasy and broadcasting realities.
Your political biases cause you to tell us that government should not facilitate the implementation of what we call public broadcasting. Here is an interesting thing about sorting our political biases on this topic. Sit down on any given night and make a list of the people, the corporations, the trust funds that are underwriting really quality stuff on PBS. I have to believe that these wealthy families who leave money behind in all these mechanisms that are reliable "non-government" sources of revenue must be a whos-who of Conservative and Republican thinking and support. These folks are some of the "One Percent" brought to our attention by the Occupy movement. My guess is that if the "far right" is able to get some congressmen to really go after this funding, these congressmen are going to be surprised how many people who write big checks to Conservative causes are going to be on the phone explaining that they also write big checks to public broadcasting (and museums and symphony orchestras, etc) and they will be explaining that they do not have a flexible sense of humor about politicians who grandstand on the issue of doing away with PBS.
Maybe it is an area where I, too, find it hard to distinguish my own political fantasy.
Your proposals on how easy it will be for the people we currently call "public broadcasters" to wean them selves away from public funding and turn to the commercial market may be more colorful thanis your political fantasy. If it were that easy, that practical, why are the current commercial broadcast outlets up to their armpits in commercial advertising funded programming of the kind we get from the people who can currently turn to CPB. Just because your political fantasy would be fulfilled if what you want to see happen does not mean that it can happen.
When did all this legislation come about? The 1960s? I have to believe it would have been easier in the 1960s and 1970s to get commercial funding for PBS type programming that it would be today. Today's market place for everything from supporting classical music all the way to selling motorcycles and fresh produce has become "hardball".... a market place driven not by passions but by computer spreadsheets.
One of the big differences between today and the 1960s and earlier: people with political views today have the ability to speak out in ways that were not available in those earlier years.
Freedom of Speech has become
Cheapness of Speech. We are all (me included) able to feel warm and fuzzy about our own prejudices because it is so much easier to find someone out there who
"preaches our same gospel" which gives us reassurance we are on the right track.
Please don't tell us simply that your view is that government should not fund broadcasting, and your view is that the commercial market will support the kind of things CPB supports. Give us some facts. Give us some examples. Give us some logic that we can program into our spreadsheets. Maybe you are right.... you just haven't discovered how to convey your logic so that some of the rest of us can understand it.
