I'd pay... $20 a year if necessary to keep it alive.
Do you? Do you donate to their pledge drives? If not, why?
Thanks to extensive public funding, the BBC is basically the only useful news television left on the entire planet, except maybe Al Jazeera English. It's not beholden to corporate interests and has substantial protection from government meddling, and not only that but the merch and commercial projects connected to it makes a lot of money and create a shitload of jobs.
But the ratings for News Hour with Jim Lehrer prove Americans are not interested in PBS news, and considering Emily's statement, I'm not sure we want a government-funded newscast. How is being beholden to government interest any worse than being beholden to corporate interest? At least corporate interests compete for varying demographics, which creates opposing perspectives.
They should be America's BBC, something we as a country can turn to to get trust worthy information, news, and let our children consume, knowing they will learn more than they will watching Dora the Explorer.
Dora the Explorer is a PBS show.
If you all love PBS and NPR shows so much, I'm sure they could be a completely independent, non-profit entity if they just charged you a few bucks to watch/listen to their shows.
This is what I'm saying. People are not voting for PBS with their dollars, so demand for it must be low.
Plant the seed of curiosity early on, and reap the benefits with new waves of scientists and artists, instead of the mainstream administrators, lawyers and a dime a dozen doctors.
The Costa Rican has the most well-reasoned argument here
Only a few posts in and this has to go down as one of the worst-defended debates I've ever seen on this forum. If you all love PBS and NPR shows so much, I'm sure they could be a completely independent, non-profit entity if they just charged you a few bucks to watch/listen to their shows.
Yes I realize that these things are drop in the budget bucket, but you have to have a massively inflated ego to go around telling people you are going to tax their income, then spend it for "the greater good" on something so subjective as television and radio programming, when the barrier to entry for anyone who wants to produce great content in either of these markets on their own is incredibly low.
Yeah, and the minute they commercialize it, it immediately loses the entire point of public radio/television; not being beholden to profit. Look how well Discovery and the History Channel are doing on their model, having replaced most of their programs with ghost hunters, reality TV and alien bullshit. You barely get educational TV for kids outside of public broadcasting because it's much more efficient to make shows that push merch like Ponies and Transformers. I'm not saying those things can't exist, but if we can agree that educational TV is something we want to exist, then you pretty much have to do it as public TV.
I don't think you understand how important PBS is in America. Sesame Street in the 70s and 80s probably did more for the education of poor inner-city kids than the actual public school system, and it allows a platform for more artistic exploration of the television medium. Similarly, NPR is essentially the only news/political radio left in America that isn't right-wing, because it's not allowed to be corporate-driven or hyper-reactionary. If you let these things go, they will disappear entirely.
Thanks to extensive public funding, the BBC is basically the only useful news television left on the entire planet, except maybe Al Jazeera English. It's not beholden to corporate interests and has substantial protection from government meddling, and not only that but the merch and commercial projects connected to it makes a lot of money and create a shitload of jobs.
But the ratings for News Hour with Jim Lehrer prove Americans are not interested in PBS news, and considering Emily's statement, I'm not sure we want a government-funded newscast. How is being beholden to government interest any worse than being beholden to corporate interest? At least corporate interests compete for varying demographics, which creates opposing perspectives.
Any good public media has substantial protection from being meddled with by the government, PBS and NPR included. Beyond certain standards, a mission statement, and their annual budget, the government has little real power to determine the content of the public broadcasting; while they could change the narrative over time, they couldn't, in the current set-up, edit individual programming to fit their ideology or threaten to pull funding on individual shows.
PBS is certainly worth providing public funding for. Without it, the quality stuff it shows likely would never be produced. Hell, even with the public funding it gets, it still has donation drives and whatnot in order to keep it going -- imagine what would happen without the public funding.
The odds of any of its shows being carried by even basic cable, let alone broadcast television, are almost non-existent. Have you looked at most of the dreck that's on the networks today? Hell, even networks that were originally more high-brow (I'm looking at you, A&E and Bravo) have been relegated to reality TV crap as they're cheap to produce and get good ratings.
Plus, why should Sesame Street only be provided to those who can pay for it? Odds are if you can afford to pay for Sesame Street, Mister Rogers, etc., you can also afford to pay for various other educational materials to make sure your kids have the kind of home environment to get a jump on learning. Poor kids have it rough enough as it is without also being without the added educational reinforcement of Sesame Street.
I'm partially speaking from personal experience here. While I wasn't poor growing up and had a pretty good environment for learning (my mom was a teacher), I was also able to read before I even started kindergarten. My mom directly attributes my ability to read at such a young age to my love of watching shows like Sesame Street and the late 70's/early 80's version of The Electric Company.
PBS is certainly worth providing public funding for. Without it, the quality stuff it shows likely would never be produced. Hell, even with the public funding it gets, it still has donation drives and whatnot in order to keep it going -- imagine what would happen without the public funding.
People would have to pay for the shows. Television, one of their basic human rights (according to this thread), would be stripped away from them and put behind a paywall.
Holy shit dude. Television may not be a basic human right, but neither is freedom from having your tax dollars going to enrich people's lives instead of ending them. I don't see how you can argue about PBS being a problem without being 1326 times more angry at your taxpayer's dollars being used to bomb people, because that's the difference between the relative budgets of the military and PBS. (That's base budget only for the military, BTW. It ends up being about twice that)
My local PBS affiliate runs it. They must have done a syndication deal.
Possibly, but it is originally produced by and for Nickelodeon. Where I live, it's only available on the Nickelodeon family of networks.
PBS is certainly worth providing public funding for. Without it, the quality stuff it shows likely would never be produced. Hell, even with the public funding it gets, it still has donation drives and whatnot in order to keep it going -- imagine what would happen without the public funding.
People would have to pay for the shows. Television, one of their basic human rights (according to this thread), would be stripped away from them and put behind a paywall.
It may not be a basic human right, but the fact is nearly everyone has a television in the US. At least some of the content available on that television should be quality stuff and not just reality crap. Plus you ignored my point that public television may be the most affordable method of providing educational enrichment outside of school to those who cannot afford any other kind of educational enrichment.
Yes. Absolutely, especially considering how many families can't afford cable.
PBS is pretty much the only source for educational media for people who don't have some sort of cable subscription. That was me growing up. NOVA was one of my favorite shows when everybody else was watching teen dramas and WWF (probably because I didn't have the option to watch any of that crap). Fuck anyone who wants to take that away from poor kids.
I loved NOVA growing up, and Cosmos has a special place in my heart. However, I'm not sure if PBS is still serving as strong a purpose anymore. With the Internet and constantly escalating competition from other TV channels, I'm not sure how many people still watch PBS shows.
So I'm not sure if PBS needs continued funding. More research needs to be done (or publicized) before I can form an opinion on that. However, even if PBS is defunded that money should go straight towards something that gets educational and artistic programming in front of people who can't afford it otherwise, because that is quite valuable.
Because private benefactors might keep the art private. With the government, at least there's an increased chance of the art being public and enjoyed by some inner city kid who can't otherwise enjoy it. And since the government should be in the job of making its citizens' lives better, and I think art is a viable part of that, they should try to support it financially.
That said, I think an awesome way to make art available to the public is by making science/art/history museums free to the public. I think the Smithsonian museums are an awesome example of this.
Why do the arts need public funds at all? Where have all the artistic benefactors gone? </blockquote They run networks that do what they wish for it to do. Fox News, the Oprah network, that sort of thing. The idea is no longer "Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair" it's "How much money can I make from this?" and that is why I believe that we need the PBS/NPR type network.
I think that digital distribution is important. I also think that it would be nice if there was at least one free media stream available to all citizens for the purposes of learning and enrichment. Internet is expensive, but if you only had to buy the hardware like with TV or radio, maybe it would be less of a hurdle.
Why do the arts need public funds at all? Where have all the artistic benefactors gone?
Because sometimes art should be made for the public and not the individual. Patron system is not totally worthless, but it has enormous problems inherent in the way it works. You would have a lot more art about how great some old rich guy is.
Not nearly. At least once a month, I talk to a person at the Best Buy I work at who doesn't have a computer, and they're not the really old, usually, either. It's often a middle aged person who just can't afford it.
You do, and a lot of people here do, but for most people the internet is not much more than facebook and foreign people acting odd on youtube. At least, that's the impression I get watching my coworkers.
Until Internet's penetration is as much as TV's penetration, I don't see it being an effective alternative to pushing art into the same homes that PBS does (those homes that can't afford cable, mostly).
I don't have broadcast TV as an option where I live. I can get broadband for about the same price as basic cable so why would I choose that?
Where the heck do you live that you don't have broadcast TV as an option? In the bottom of a salt mine? I mean, you should at least have access to local channels.
I would be ok if they cut funding to PBS, as long as they put an exponentially greater amount of money towards making basic broadband access and OLPC-style laptops close enough to free that every poor kid in America could have one.
Barring that, I'm against any reduction in PBS funding.
EDIT: Also, as someone who could not afford cable growing up, I would like to second all the shout-outs to NOVA.
Comments
I don't think you understand how important PBS is in America. Sesame Street in the 70s and 80s probably did more for the education of poor inner-city kids than the actual public school system, and it allows a platform for more artistic exploration of the television medium. Similarly, NPR is essentially the only news/political radio left in America that isn't right-wing, because it's not allowed to be corporate-driven or hyper-reactionary. If you let these things go, they will disappear entirely. Any good public media has substantial protection from being meddled with by the government, PBS and NPR included. Beyond certain standards, a mission statement, and their annual budget, the government has little real power to determine the content of the public broadcasting; while they could change the narrative over time, they couldn't, in the current set-up, edit individual programming to fit their ideology or threaten to pull funding on individual shows.
The odds of any of its shows being carried by even basic cable, let alone broadcast television, are almost non-existent. Have you looked at most of the dreck that's on the networks today? Hell, even networks that were originally more high-brow (I'm looking at you, A&E and Bravo) have been relegated to reality TV crap as they're cheap to produce and get good ratings.
Plus, why should Sesame Street only be provided to those who can pay for it? Odds are if you can afford to pay for Sesame Street, Mister Rogers, etc., you can also afford to pay for various other educational materials to make sure your kids have the kind of home environment to get a jump on learning. Poor kids have it rough enough as it is without also being without the added educational reinforcement of Sesame Street.
I'm partially speaking from personal experience here. While I wasn't poor growing up and had a pretty good environment for learning (my mom was a teacher), I was also able to read before I even started kindergarten. My mom directly attributes my ability to read at such a young age to my love of watching shows like Sesame Street and the late 70's/early 80's version of The Electric Company.
PBS is pretty much the only source for educational media for people who don't have some sort of cable subscription. That was me growing up. NOVA was one of my favorite shows when everybody else was watching teen dramas and WWF (probably because I didn't have the option to watch any of that crap). Fuck anyone who wants to take that away from poor kids.
So I'm not sure if PBS needs continued funding. More research needs to be done (or publicized) before I can form an opinion on that. However, even if PBS is defunded that money should go straight towards something that gets educational and artistic programming in front of people who can't afford it otherwise, because that is quite valuable.
That said, I think an awesome way to make art available to the public is by making science/art/history museums free to the public. I think the Smithsonian museums are an awesome example of this.
Right now, Tick sounds like an old, privileged white guy who thinks everyone has the same opportunities as him.
Barring that, I'm against any reduction in PBS funding.
EDIT: Also, as someone who could not afford cable growing up, I would like to second all the shout-outs to NOVA.