Posted on 02/20/2008 2:15:43 PM PST by forkinsocket
FOR the eighth straight year the Bush administration has ritually proposed taking a hefty whack out of the federal subsidy for public broadcasting. The cuts would in effect slice in half the money that public television and public radio get from the government. If we follow the usual script, this means it’s time for upset listeners and viewers to rally to the cause, as they have in the past, and browbeat Congress into restoring the budget.
Every year, though, it gets a little harder to muster the necessary outrage, and now and then a heretical thought presents itself: What if the glory days of public television — the days of “Monty Python,” “Upstairs Downstairs,” “The French Chef” — are past recapturing? Lately the audience for public TV has been shrinking even faster than the audience for the commercial networks. The average PBS show on prime time now scores about a 1.4 Nielsen rating, or roughly what the wrestling show “Friday Night Smackdown” gets.
On the other side of the ledger the audience for public radio has been growing: there are more than 30 million listeners now, compared to just 2 million in 1980. “Morning Edition” and “All Things Considered,” NPR’s morning and evening news programs, are the second and fourth most listened to shows in the country. Go figure. Who would have guessed 40 years ago, when public broadcasting came into being, that the antique medium, the one supposedly on its way out, would prove to be the greater success and the one more technically nimble. You can even download NPR broadcasts onto your iPod.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
If it hurts Bill Moyers, I’m all for it.
God my mom constantly listens to NPR utter garbage. She generally gets upset when I say we should cut government funding. My argument is if its so popular I’m sure it can stand on its own.
Why don’t we take the billions of dollars Elmo, Barney and the other toys and games that characters of PBS makes and reinvest in the programming instead of begging us for money to we can be sooo blessed to have them grace our free channels (that have increasingly been interrupted with commercials by the commercial ‘donators’.
Hell no and it never was.
How else is that hack, that hate America filth, that sucking leech Bill Moyers going to make a living without ripping off American taxpayers?
Anything else? :-)
The only time public television has good shows is during fund raising.
See my post. I was writing and seething at the same time as you. Great minds think alike.
This is a government subsidy of speech. The airwaves have no shortage of speech these days. It’s ridiculous.
If listening to NPR for news, it sucks. But, they have some good programming on there, otherwise. I like Prairie Home Companion when I remember to listen to it. While the leaning liberalism sucks, the format is better, because it’s like a conversation on some shows. Not just one guy talking over everyone else.
Saturday nights would never be the same for the Dr Who fans though. Think of what you’re saying people. :p
PBS is certainly less useful for education than it used to be with the History channel and the Discovery channel etc.
But in Georgia, lower budget locally produced programming specifically for local schools and local communities does seem to at least moderately worthwhile.
No and either is the NYT
My thoughts exactly.
Yes, as it is the only place where one can get good British dramas, mysteries and comedies. Don’t sentence me to the vast wasteland of American television!
then they cut into programming with the fund raising. argh!!
It will never happen. PBS is a main player for the Democrats.
Yeah, they roll the old Roy Orbison tape again...
Frankly, I’ve stopped watching since “Firing Line” was dropped.
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