We can all agree that people like educational and kids programming. What Timothy Karr seems to have missed is that people like it enough to pay for it, and overwhelmingly their choice has been to pay for it through their cable subscriptions rather than their local public television station or through government funding for PBS. What Karr also doesn't mention is that government funds make up only a very, very small portion of the money that funds most local PBS affiliates. The vast majority of them could survive just fine on the private donations they receive from average viewers or corporate sponsors. He also doesn't mention the fact that the TV production companies which work with PBS make enormous amounts of money on merchandising and syndication which PBS sees little or no money from. Sesame Street is the classic example of this. It's a massive media and merchandise empire which basically uses PBS for free advertising.
On average PBS affiliated TV stations get about 15% of their revenue from the CPB which spends a total of almost $500 million dollars a year, far too much of it going into administrative overhead. If that federal funding went away, those local PBS stations would need to find ways to make up the revenue, but it's not that much money, and could easily be replaced with licensing fees from local cable systems and satellite broadcasters which want to sell local PBS broadcasting in local markets. They could also pool the best local programming onto several new cable channels and use the revenues to fund their local stations following the model of the very successful PBSKids channel.
The one final issue which is brought out vividly by this letter is the negative role which the government has always played in public broadcasting. For years people objected to the liberal slant of PBS and NPR even though much of their programming was still quite good. Now Karr and others are objecting to the possibility that programming might start slanting the other way and become too conservative. Both Karr and the right-wing grumblers are entirely correct. Public broadcasting content shouldn't be slanted based on a political agenda coming from whichever administration is in power. That's just wrong if something is being done in the public interest and it's just as wrong if the slant is right wing or left wing. It was wrong that PBS was left-biased for 30 years and it's just as wrong that Kenneth Tomlinson is trying to take it the other way. The only way to get rid of that government manipulation of public broadcasting is to get rid of the government's involvement. The CPB should be spun off as an entirely private, non-profit corporation which isn't beholden to anyone but its member stations and their subscribers. This will save taxpayers money and address every one of Freepress.net's concerns over government manipulation of broadcast content.
Article comments
1 - Tim Karr
Nice work, Dave. But you need to get your ducks all properly in a row before you level a critique at an organization and a public broadcasting system that you clearly know little about.
First, Free Press (at www.freepress.net) is not associated with www.freepress.org. Different group altogether, Dave. It says so on their website and could have easily been made clear to your unfortunate readers had you done a minute of journalistic legwork.
Second, I'd be happy to speak to your complaint that Free Press is intent on "suppressing speech," but it doesn't seem worth the effort. You base that critique on a cursory scan of a website belonging to another organization. Had you been more rigorous, you might have come to a different conclusion about Free Press (www.freepress.net) before blasting away. The record shows that we have has been a forceful advocate of diverse, democratic and independent media.
But, alas, you weren’t very thorough, were you, Dave? So, let’s move on.
Third, had you spent even a moment to check the number of public opinion polls conducted on public broadcasting you would have found that, yes, people do like public broadcasting (according to a Tarrance Group 2003 poll more than 90% agreed that PBS offers “high quality programming” and an additional 80% agreed that PBS programming was “fair and balanced”). You would have also discovered that 78% of Americans believe that it is important for the federal government “to support PBS financially.”
Perhaps after having read this information you would have thought twice before concluding: “overwhelmingly [the American public’s] choice has been to pay for it through their cable subscriptions rather than their local public television station or through government funding for PBS.”
Whose choice, Dave? Are you sure that you’re not putting your own words into the mouths of the public? It’s hard to tell from this fact-challenged indictment. One thing’s certain though: If you hope to make a case for the removal of government funding from public television, you should start from a foundation of fact and not fiction. Otherwise, people might dismiss your ramblings as meaningless twaddle.
2 - Temple Stark
What !!!!???!!!
3 - Temple Stark
While you're at the site here and continuing to shed cred ...
4 - Dave Nalle
Thanks for visiting us here on BC. You seem to have missed the main point of my article, which is that PBS is a good thing and should be kept free of government interference - which can best be done by privatizing it. But I'll address your other quibbles.
>>Nice work, Dave. But you need to get your ducks all properly in a row before you level a critique at an organization and a public broadcasting system that you clearly know little about. <<
I've been watching it since it started and making donations to local stations for 20 years or so. Plus I've read up on the history of public broadcasting. I've got a pretty good idea how it works.
>>First, Free Press (at www.freepress.net) is not associated with www.freepress.org. Different group altogether, Dave. It says so on their website and could have easily been made clear to your unfortunate readers had you done a minute of journalistic legwork. <<
Then explain to me why I came to freepress.net through a shared entry site which gave me a choice of freepress.net or freepress.org? In fact as far as I can tell freepress.net can only be reached by going through the joint entry page at freepress.org. Trying to go direct to freepress.net gives a server error, though that may be some sort of temporary problem. You can say you're independent, and that's fine, but although freepress.net has a more respectiable look, the political perspective appears to be identical to freepress.org.
>>Second, I'd be happy to speak to your complaint that Free Press is intent on "suppressing speech," but it doesn't seem worth the effort. You base that critique on a cursory scan of a website belonging to another organization. <<
I thought you were with freepress.net? I hardly looked at the freepress.org site.
>>Had you been more rigorous, you might have come to a different conclusion about Free Press (www.freepress.net) before blasting away. The record shows that we have has been a forceful advocate of diverse, democratic and independent media.<<
I based my opinion on reading a number of pages on freepress.net, which does seem to be for free speech, so long as it's speech you agree with. Dissenting speech need not apply, apparently.
I could have just drawn this conclusion from your original letter. It makes very clear that you think that the introduction of more conservative opinion on PBS is a bad idea. I actually agree with you on this, but it's quite evident that you don't have the same concern about the liberal bias which was characteristic of PBS for years and years. We differ in that I think ANY political bias is undesirable in educational and public interest TV.
>>But, alas, you weren’t very thorough, were you, Dave? So, let’s move on. <<
So far I'm not convinced that I'm wrong about any of this, but you're entitled to your opinion.
>>Third, had you spent even a moment to check the number of public opinion polls conducted on public broadcasting <<
My article wasn't about opinion polls. It was about solving the problem of political interference with PBS.
>>you would have found that, yes, people do like public broadcasting (according to a Tarrance Group 2003 poll more than 90% agreed that PBS offers “high quality programming” and an additional 80% agreed that PBS programming was “fair and balanced”). <<
And any poll of the public is going to result in two opinions on PBS, a partisan opinion from those who love PBS who return a positive response on fairness and balance and a non-response from those who don't watch PBS. Such a pollis virtually meaningless.
>>You would have also discovered that 78% of Americans believe that it is important for the federal government “to support PBS financially.”<<
So a majority of Americans have been convinced they'll lose the programming PBS offers if it loses government funding, which is absolutely not true. And again, this poll suffers from the fact that those familiar with PBS assume that government support has to be integral to the operation of the network, without considering the alternatives.
>>Perhaps after having read this information you would have thought twice before concluding: “overwhelmingly [the American public’s] choice has been to pay for it through their cable subscriptions rather than their local public television station or through government funding for PBS.”<<
So you're saying that 80% of the American public does NOT choose to have cable or satellite rather than sticking with broadcast television? Let's see your citation for that fact. The cable companies will be depressed to hear they've lost almost half their subscribers overnight.
>>Whose choice, Dave? Are you sure that you’re not putting your own words into the mouths of the public? It’s hard to tell from this fact-challenged indictment.<<
Fact challenged? The facts are very simple here. Most people get this sort of programming through cable or satellite, not broadcast.
>> One thing’s certain though: If you hope to make a case for the removal of government funding from public television, you should start from a foundation of fact and not fiction. Otherwise, people might dismiss your ramblings as meaningless twaddle.<<
Cool, someone else who uses the word 'twaddle'. That said, the facts in my article are not in dispute here. They remain true and you haven't successfully disputed any of them. The polls you cite don't negate my argument, you're completely wrong about how many people watch cable and satellite, and while freepress.net and freepress.org may indeed be independent of each other, it's neither particularly relevant nor is it entirely convincing.
It's nice that you stopped by to respond, but it would be much more interesting if you actually considered the main thrust of the article in some way.
We both like public broadcasting and we both agree that it's very popular and serves a useful function. It also has the potential to be enormously profitable. That being the case - and ignoring what polls say - what reason is there for PBS not to become an independent, self-funded, non-profit network? Wouldn't that solve the problem your original question complains about by removing government interference? I just don't understand why people are so resistent to this obvious solution to the problem.
Dave
5 - Dave Nalle
Quick followup - there does seem to be a technical problem at freepress.net. The server is now returning this error: Fatal error: out of dynamic memory in yy_create_buffer() in /Library/WebServer/Documents/index.php on line 3
Dave
6 - Dave Nalle
Oh, and let me add as a final comment here, that I believe that Timothy Karr and Freepress.net have raised a real concern here, they're just looking for the wrong answer. I'm as pro-PBS as they are, I just think we need to think outside the government box in this case and find a permanent and real solution.
Dave
7 - Dave Nalle
The freepress.net site is now up again. I encourage anyone who believes Tim Karr to go and check out how balanced their viewpoint is. Perhaps peruse their listing of the media Hall of Shame - which strangely only includes people on the political right. No Dan Rather, no Michael Isikoff. Pretty odd that the two most suspect media figures of our time are missing from the list.
Dave