Considering PBS would be fine without the government money? Nah.
Really? You think educational programming of that quality would be created without government subsidy? PBS wouldn't even exist today without its long history of government support.
Case and point: TLC, formerly known as The Learning Channel, was originally funded by NASA, the Department of Education, and a few other government agencies to be an educational network, and it actually did pretty well at that for quite some time. Then it became privatized.
It now shows Honey Boo Boo.
I remember when TLC was cool. Then they took an arrow to the funding.
Remember the "private charity is better than government programs" school of thought is is held by the vast majority of republicans. Just because they don't want the government funding something doesn't mean they think it's not worth while.
Part of me can understand this, at least from a naive perspective. However, there are two areas where this doesn't match with reality:
People, by and large, are greedy bastards. There will never be enough money willingly donated to private charities to make sure that the public good is truly maintained for all. The reason why many of these government programs were established, after all, was that private charity wasn't able to provide all these services.
The government has one big advantage over numerous private charities: economy of scale.
Interestingly, the military isn't big on the list of things to privatize... Then again, you'd think that given their feelings on private vs. government, they'd also be advocating to replace the military with private military contractors more (usage of companies like Blackwater not withstanding).
Considering PBS would be fine without the government money? Nah.
Really? You think educational programming of that quality would be created without government subsidy? PBS wouldn't even exist today without its long history of government support.
Case and point: TLC, formerly known as The Learning Channel, was originally funded by NASA, the Department of Education, and a few other government agencies to be an educational network, and it actually did pretty well at that for quite some time. Then it became privatized.
It now shows Honey Boo Boo.
I remember when TLC was cool. Then they took an arrow to the funding.
To be fair, TLC was privately owned by Discovery Communications during the "cool" age everyone is always talking about... unless you were picking up its broadcasting between 1972-1980. After that, it was spun off as Appalachian Community Service Network and then as a private company became The Learning Channel.
Still, it attempted to provide intelligent programming and failed. I blame the merger with Discovery. It turned informative, documentary-like broadcasts into a near-monopoly that was forced to communicate with other entertainment conglomerates instead of other high-brow television.
TLDR: That fact is not totally true, but we can totally blame capitalism anyway.
Considering PBS would be fine without the government money? Nah.
Really? You think educational programming of that quality would be created without government subsidy? PBS wouldn't even exist today without its long history of government support.
First, that only addresses Sesame Street, which manages to get boatloads of cash via all its merchandise. That doesn't do anything for the other, less marketable programs on PBS. Good luck getting something like NOVA on a private network (remember TLC), or even something like Masterpiece Theater (Bravo tried, and now it's basically the trashy rich housewives reality TV channel). Hell, even Mr. Rogers wouldn't succeed on commercial TV because it can't be marketed.
Second, you mentioned that partisan rag The Washington Times in one of your citations. No thanks.
Considering PBS would be fine without the government money? Nah.
Really? You think educational programming of that quality would be created without government subsidy? PBS wouldn't even exist today without its long history of government support.
Case and point: TLC, formerly known as The Learning Channel, was originally funded by NASA, the Department of Education, and a few other government agencies to be an educational network, and it actually did pretty well at that for quite some time. Then it became privatized.
It now shows Honey Boo Boo.
This is real?! I thought it was a south park parody! What the SHIT.
I don't know why there is so much anti-PBS sentiment around here. Ask any given Japanese person and they will tell you that NHK is teh awesome. Most Brits stick up for Auntie Beeb. The idea for having a public broadcasting network for education and the arts is a great thing. Our country hardly funds cultural stuff at all compared to some other nations.
I don't know why there is so much anti-PBS sentiment around here. Ask any given Japanese person and they will tell you that NHK is teh awesome. Most Brits stick up for Auntie Beeb. The idea for having a public broadcasting network for education and the arts is a great thing. Our country hardly funds cultural stuff at all compared to some other nations.
NHK, the BBC, and Aunty(our own ABC) are all pretty awesome. Joe Boomer has been watching a great show from the ABC lately, it's called Pizza, just ask a brother about that, the whole thing was a shoestring budget affair that never would have happened without Aunty, because it was too commercially risky for the main channels.
Isn't Jack the only one in this thread expressing anti-PBS sentiment...?
I'll clear this up, I'm not fucking anti-PBS.
Yes, you're against their government funding. We know. No need to make the tedious distinction.
Of course, the main reason that PBS can do what it does, with interesting, intellectual pieces that might not be commercially successful (Masterpiece Theater, NOVA, etc) is primarily because that government funding means that it doesn't have to cater to the lowest common denominator, and it can be assured of having some year-over-year funding if donations start to dry up.
Being against government funding of PBS is saying that it isn't worth the ~$1 a year it costs you in tax dollars, and that you would rather have that $1 than PBS. Come on, it's one fucking dollar.
I will mail PBS a dollar. It is supported more by "Viewers like you!" than government subsidies anyway.
Depends on the station. While federal funding accounts for "only" ~15% of their total funding (that's still a damned lot), stations in some areas (the ones that can't afford to donate, i.e. the ones that probably need PBS the most) get up to 50% of their budget from appropriations.
I say again: expecting PBS to maintain funding just based on donations is stupid, and is basically asking for them to start showing more populist, less intelligent programming in the hope of attracting more viewers.
These dollars are particularly important to smaller stations. While the appropriation equals about 15% of our system's revenue, this is an aggregate number. For many stations, the appropriation counts for as much as 40-50% of their budget.
Cutting PBS's federal funding would mean cutting their nationwide budget by 15%. Fifteen percent is pretty damn important when you're talking about tens of millions of dollars.
The fact that so many people are expending so much energy "debating" the PBS cuts while there is naught but one-sided "dialogue" about defense spending is a fucking travesty.
Good news is, defense is less than half the budget again, and isn't greater than the deficit any more. Now even if we cut all defense spending (not saying we should, but that we could) we would still have a deficit of ~$700bil.
Comments
- People, by and large, are greedy bastards. There will never be enough money willingly donated to private charities to make sure that the public good is truly maintained for all. The reason why many of these government programs were established, after all, was that private charity wasn't able to provide all these services.
- The government has one big advantage over numerous private charities: economy of scale.
Interestingly, the military isn't big on the list of things to privatize... Then again, you'd think that given their feelings on private vs. government, they'd also be advocating to replace the military with private military contractors more (usage of companies like Blackwater not withstanding).Still, it attempted to provide intelligent programming and failed. I blame the merger with Discovery. It turned informative, documentary-like broadcasts into a near-monopoly that was forced to communicate with other entertainment conglomerates instead of other high-brow television.
TLDR: That fact is not totally true, but we can totally blame capitalism anyway.
Second, you mentioned that partisan rag The Washington Times in one of your citations. No thanks.
And yes Honey Boo Boo is very real. I doubt the creator of South Park could come up with that if we tried.
Being against government funding of PBS is saying that it isn't worth the ~$1 a year it costs you in tax dollars, and that you would rather have that $1 than PBS.
Come on, it's one fucking dollar.
I say again: expecting PBS to maintain funding just based on donations is stupid, and is basically asking for them to start showing more populist, less intelligent programming in the hope of attracting more viewers.
edit: Linkigi ninja'd me.
Trust me.
(Wa Wario)