What should PBS be
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: What should PBS be now that it has all this competition from cable (and pressure from Washington)?
23 responses to “What should PBS be:”
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What does the Flight Attendant say…
Buuuhh – Buuuyyyy -
[I can’t get the link – it’s probably my system.]
Withdraw funding and let them be whatever they want to be. Who cares, so long as they don’t carry any official “public” weight?
The allegedly most popular local public tv “production” in the U.S. involves a small group of people who do the show for free: “Donnybrook”, in St. Louis. It’s been running for around 20-30 years. Otherwise the affiliate produces only a cooking show. Big deal. -
Jeff, are you aware of the attempt at PBS censorship coming out of the Department of Education?
http://newpatriot.org/2005/02/censorship-and-bigotry-from-dept-of.html -
PBS should join Frontline in challenging overreaching content restrictions by the FCC and Congress.
PBS and NPR should get far more funding like public broadcasters in Europe do and it should be insulated from political pressure.
This could come from a tax on every ad sold (advertising is now a tax write-off) and every media merger. The money shouldn’t just go to PBS and NPR, it should go for a broad range of public media and funding should be increased for ITVS.
There still should be memberships for local stations, but pledge infomercials hawking wrinkle cures which drive away their audience should be dropped. More of the fundrasing should be done online including targeted drives for specific programs stations want to do.
Everything PBS and NPR produce should be made available for free download under Creative Commons (DVDs with additional material could still be sold).
Innovative programs should be made available online and on the new digital channels. The best of these programs should be showcased on the main PBS channel.
Local stations should use the money to do intelligent daily news programs which fill a need not addressed by commercial local news. For most stations, this would be new (or bring back news cut due to budget constraints) and online components could be integrated from the ground up.
One of the digital channels should be a local c-span/book tv carrying local political and cultural events which should be available through VOD on cable as well as online.
There should be more programming for teens and every station should have a program of youth produced media. One of the digital channels should be used to draw in youth without the PBS brand (or it should be downplayed at the very least).
So much more could be done, but that is a start. -
An innovative approach to commercials (a la BBC) and more politically balanced programing could make a private PBS viable, without tin-cup-in-hand “pledge drives.”
To use federal dollars to dole out propaganda of the Left is unconscionable. Should FOX News get federal funds? Of course not. Then why should PBS? Maybe PBS could go private and be funded entirely by Michael Moore and George Soros.
A (local?) PBS ad campaign a few years back asked the question: “If we don’t do it, who will?” The answer the market gave them?: A&E, The Discovery Channel, The Learning Channel, the History Channel, Animal Planet, BBC in America Channel, etc., etc. -
I’m curious what you think of Margaret Spellings writing to PBS pressuring them to disavow a PostCards from Buster episode – that included some background characters – a lesbian couple. The show didn’t mention the word lesbian.
This was the Education Secretary pulling a James Dobson (Sponge Bob anyone?) -
Ho-hum. What exactly would be missed if PBS sailed off the edge of its decidedly flat earth? It mostly runs recycled BBC stuff and the increasingly tedious Ken Burns multi-reel explanation of “whatever” for dummies who are happy with one viewpoint.
For the life of me, I can not think of one meaningful (non-political) function for them. Oh, wait, maybe they could take on presenting the collections of the Smithsonian museums piece by piece. On second thought, I would rather not be lectured on all the destruction the Kentucky long rifle wrought. -
PBS is hardly propaganda for the left.
For years their pale male talking heads programs were dominated by conservatives. They’re not quite as pale or male, but paticularly with recent additions like the WSJ Editorial Board (which has to be one of the worst programs on television and most boring with debate ranging from right to far right), they are just as conservative.
As Jerold Starr wrote the original purpose of PBS in the Carnegie Commission report was to “serve as ‘a forum for debate and controversy,’ providing a ‘voice for groups in the community that may otherwise go unheard’ so that we could ‘see America whole, in all its diversity.’” And they still need to play that role.
A lot of people don’t have access to cable. And all of those channels are subject to commercial pressures (that is why there is a need for public non-commercial television). A&E has almost dropped arts in favor of entertainment. The Learning Channel is less about learning and more about home makeover shows.
And PBS alone among broadcast networks continues to provide quality children’s programs.
Even George Soros doens’t have enough money to provide the billions in support European public broadcasters get. And even if he did I wouldn’t want someone with a particular political view (even one I often agree with) funding PBS.
I certainly would be open to a tax on televisions like there is in Britain, but I’d prefer the money come from the media corporations making so much money off the public airwaves. -
What should PBS be now that it has all this competition from cable (and pressure from Washington)?
Self-supporting? -
PBS should be denied any more taxpayers’ dollars.
And that will be just fine. -
I comment on the resignation of PBS’s Pat Mitchell on my blog here.
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To the folks talking about the Dept of Education and Postcards From Buster, he blogged about it on 27 January (And what about Bugs Bunny’s carrots: Freudian?).
As part of those 15 percent of Americans without cable or satellite service, I want what I’ve come to expect from PBS — quality children’s programming, cooking shows without the constant commercial tie-ins of Food Network, and intelligent programs like Bill Moyers’ NOW, Frontline and Wide Angle.
I donate annually to my local NPR and PBS affiliates, but I keep a healthy stash of their shows on DVD and tape to watch during PBS pledge drives, when their children’s programming is either cut back dramatically or skipped altogether for the pledge infomercials.
I wonder why more PBS children’s shows aren’t as merchandised. While I’ve heard people complain about how other networks’ children’s characters are all about the tie-ins, it saddens me that Reading Rainbow produced only five new episodes last year because of it lacked the funding to do more. -
It is precisely because of shows like Reading Rainbow (along with other programs for children), NOW, Frontine, Wide Angle, POV, Independent Lens and other programs from ITVS that PBS needs more funding.
Very few of those programs would be supported in the marketplace. Though the funding provided through CPB and PBS does have both artistic and economic benefits. American Playhouse produced several important films which helped build the foundation for the indie film boom of the 90s.
And Hoop Dreams was one of the first to show the commercial promise of documentaries (though it was rejected a number of times for CPB funding until Twin Cites Public TV sponsored it).
It also shows how media corporations can neglect a film which could take money. Fine Line should have come out with a special edition DVD last year (10 years after it was released). Even the original DVD is now out of print.
This article from Current is about the Future of Public Television conference from December. Transcripts of the sessions are online. -
The question should be “Why should PBS be?”, or at least “Why should PBS be taxpayer-funded?”
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We’ve given plenty of reasons.
Levar Burton was just interviewed on the Tavis Smiley show (audio and a transcript will be online soon). He talked about the problems they are having getting funding for a program that works.
As Melissa said, there were only five new episodes last year and he said there would be none this year. It seems the Bush administration should be able to find a few million for Reading Rainbow. After all, teaching kids to read is something everyone should support. -
Right, PBS should teach our children to read? Give me a big fucking break.
PBS missed its chance way back when. Why? Because it was operated by imbeciles/activists/social-ist-communists/fake intellectuals/true con-artists, who apparently still comprise its current supporters.
Sure it’s had a few exceptions which prove the rule, then these get cancelled by the imbeciles who demand or complain about needing more funding.
The most obnoxious things on tv are the pledge drives. I was once sitting with one of the guys who started “Donnybrook”, as mentioned above, and he wanted to see how the program was doing since he was not on for that episode.
A pledge drive came on and it literally drove him to distraction. He finally gave up after about 20 minutes of incessant whining, pandering, and appeals to one’s need to be a good and noble person through the magic of tithing to PBs.
It’s worse than watching Sally Struthers whine abouth “the children”. PBS should be rolling in dough. Aren’t Liberals generous enough? Exactly!
Again they want your money to do their good deeds, the mechanisms of which always fail, leading them to want more of your money. Then they claim they are not imbeciles. Right.
Ruin yourselves on your own time and dime. -
Off the government (taxpayer) teat.
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It agree with you that pledge drives suck and said that above.
Want to get rid of obnoxious pledge drives? Provide more funding for PBS. The BBC doesn’t do pledge drives.
The people running CPB are hardly communists. The chair was head of Voice of America under Reagan.
Two other board members were involved with Radio Free Europe.
There is an activist, a Republican activist. -
On the PBS NewsHour Friday, “Terence Smith speaks with Karen Everhart of Current newspaper about the persistent controversies plaguing PBS and Mitchell’s decision to leave.
Visit pbs.org/newshour/media after 9p.m. Eastern time for more information on this segment.” -
Rhoades, you prove my case.QED. KQED proved my case in 1972, the future from then now being the further irrefutable history of PBS. Want to prove my case again?
Just keep talking. -
I proved your case by pointing out all the people from VOA and a Republican activist are on the CPB board?
Too many on the right have an irrational hatred of PBS no matter how good their programs are. Instead of trying to help improve it, they want to kill it.
Even Newt Gingrich learned that he couldn’t slash funding for public broadcasting because so many people called congress to voice their support.
KQED now is very different from KQED in 1972. PBS isn’t nearly as innovate as KQED was then. -
I’ll tell you what PBS “should” be, after decades of being a little more than a small but increasingly annoying thorn in the side of every administration: marginalized, forgotten and shut down.
Remember what happened to NPR? Remember in the 1980’s when NPR broadcast an incredible lecture by ex-CIA officer John Stockwell? Fat chance they would ever do that today. Now you will hear something mildly controversial about pet ownership or troops’ families having some doubts…
I predict the same process will systematically kill PBS unless there is a massive campaign of support. -
It seems since the Pulitzer Prize nominated Sam Time published his book Osama American in Bondage he has been black listed by the outlets he criticized like CNN and the New York Times. I say let us forget media conglomerates and insist the truth be reported nad not undereported.
Check this war aginst old media blog out and tell me what you think.
http://thewaragainstoldmedia.blogspot.com/2005/02/for-anybody-that-has-tried-to-speak.html
