20 Comments Add your own

• 1. Joe - fourhman.com  |  February 21st, 2008 at 11:49 am

  Ha. I wrote that same article on my weblog years ago, and came to the same conclusion. PBS is a toothless dinosaur. The good content will flow to other outlets once PBS withers; there’s just no need for local publicly funded TV stations.

• 2. nbw  |  February 21st, 2008 at 1:36 pm

  right because the CNNs NBCs and Foxs do a pretty good job at brainwashing the masses as it is

• 3. discreet_chaos  |  February 21st, 2008 at 2:13 pm

  PBS is like cable for the masses. It has a variety of quality programs on a wide range of subjects, several news-oriented talking heads, Newshour and at least in my market, they also broadcast a few thematic digital channels.

• 4. Joe - fourhman.com  |  February 21st, 2008 at 2:25 pm

  “PBS is like cable for the masses”

  Except the masses aren’t watching PBS. They’re watching cable.

• 5. Joe  |  February 21st, 2008 at 2:48 pm

  The masses never watched PBS. And they never will. Philistines!!!!! And for that matter, they aren’t watching NBC, the CW and MyNetworkTV either.

  And cable docs are great. I never get tired of shark docs and rehashings of the Kennedy assassination replete with hours and hours of commercial breaks for junk and garbage I wouldn’t buy at a Big Lots, much less through a 1-800 number.

  There are some great things on cable, but I still like Nova, Frontline, American Experience and the like. PBS still has challenges, but it’s still needed.

• 6. Anonymous  |  February 21st, 2008 at 3:33 pm

  The government is such a absurdly small percentage of public broadcasting budgets that this article is ridiculous. If federal funds were cut off completely, PBS and NPR would still exist, because members and non-profit and corporate underwriters provide the overwhelming majority of its funding. Because of this, asking whether PBS is necessary is pointless. If people voluntarily pay for something they can get for free, it is of a high value that is very rare. It will survive.

• 7. Steve  |  February 21st, 2008 at 3:42 pm

  The radio side is doing rather well. It’s the TV side that is seeing audiences dwindle. There’s a discussion on this very subject over at plastic(dot)com

• 8. A Reader  |  February 21st, 2008 at 4:46 pm

  Believe it or not, not everybody has cable or even, gasp, broadband access.

  The whole “PBS is unnecessary because everybody has Discovery, Nick Jr., Animal Planet, Food Network, et. al.” is the same line the neocons been dishing up to justify cutting funding for PBS. And yet, in the same breath, neocons also pushed the Children’s Act of 1990, which pushed the E/I mandate of three hours on broadcast television and killed the institution of Saturday mornings (BTW, the whole notion that cable killed Saturday mornings is untrue because cable didn’t really start programming original shows on Saturdays until the beginning of THIS decade; history shows most cable shows tended to premiere on Friday nights, Saturday nights, and Sunday mornings).

  The idea of forcing broadcast networks to air educational programming when PBS does so on a daily basis is kind of laughable as well.

  Yes, shows like Sesame Street, Reading Rainbow, Nature, NOVA, Bill Moyers, Frontline, and others could easily find homes elsewhere on the cable dials, but for those without cable, they wouldn’t have access to them, and that’s pretty much what it boils down to.

  Plus, here’s a thought.

  If there’s no place for PBS, is there a place for the other broadcast channels? If so, couldn’t the argument that all PBS shows would be better on cable be used for anything found on broadcast networks? Many broadcast shows are already on cable outlets, and some like Law and Order: Criminal Intent made a permanent move to cable.

  Heck, it could even expand to cable programs. Couldn’t cable programming move from cable to broadband-only outlets?

  It’s a vicious circle.

• 9. Bob  |  February 21st, 2008 at 4:49 pm

  If our tax dollars are only a small percentage of public broadcasting budgets, why not completely eliminate public funding and let it stand on it’s own? Who needs government TV & radio?

• 10. Dan  |  February 21st, 2008 at 5:05 pm

  Thanks to HD, I’ve never watched more PBS in my life.

  Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers, move over, I want to see Wired, Frontline, NOVA, History Dectectives and Nature.

  The thought put into PBS shows is leagues ahead of the HD docs on channels like “HistoryChannel HD.”

• 11. Steve Boriss  |  February 21st, 2008 at 5:14 pm

  Not only is PBS not necessary, it is bad for America. The First Amendment was designed to keep government away from our speech and publications. Accordingly, we should not have any mainstream outlets in which government entities exert this much control over news. It’s bad enough we have a broadcast license renewal system that makes the networks too timid to challenge the center-left DC Beltway consensus. How about a post “Is the FCC still necessary?” My answers would be the same. (Steve Boriss, TheFutureOfNews.com)

• 12. John Proffitt  |  February 21st, 2008 at 6:10 pm

  Wow. Several of you have no idea how PBS is funded nor managed.

  Individual PBS-affiliated stations are not a homogenous bunch. Some depend upwards of 80% on funds from the CPB — the independent corporation funded by Congress that funds the individual stations. Some get a small percentage of their funds from the CPB (such as the largest stations — WGBH, WNET, KQED, etc.). But most stations (by count) get a large percentage from the CPB (my station gets about 30% from government sources).

  Further, though I sometimes like your posts, Steve (Boriss), you apparently don’t understand the firewall that’s setup between stations and the government. PBS is funded mostly by stations. Stations are funded (in varying parts) by the CPB. The CPB is funded by Congress on a 2-year forward-funding basis. That’s a three-layer + 2 years barrier between Congress and the programming.

  Yes, CPB had some trouble a couple years ago because of a Bush-appointed Chairman of the CPB board. But he was ousted and the problem was resolved with little material damage to the brand or service.

  Whether PBS is necessary is another question. But saying the government should end funding because it’ll be okay is a red herring. De-funding the CPB would end public broadcasting (radio and TV) in lots of markets around the country. The biggest cities would be fine, though, and the central networks (PBS and NPR) would survive in some form, though a seriously damaged one.

• 13. Steve Boriss  |  February 21st, 2008 at 6:50 pm

  John, I hear you, but that’s still an awful lot of people stacked-up for whom it is against their financial interests to be critical of politicians. Moreover while there are a lot of stations, they are feeding from the same trough of politician-friendly programming. Compare the hot political talk of cable to PBS and the difference seems clear. To even risk government influence over our news, it ought to be a very high hurdle for their involvement. And I think it is difficult to make the argument that public broadcasting now provides something vital that the marketplace could not if the public really wanted it.

• 14. Trip  |  February 21st, 2008 at 10:39 pm

  Yes, because Fox News and CNN are shining examples of journalism next to PBS and NPR.

  I watch hours of PBS every week. PBS is fantastic. I could do without the programming changes on pledge weeks (seriously, just show the normal programs with pledge breaks), but otherwise PBS is the one place on TV that’s not appealing to the lowest common denominator. Similar statement goes for NPR and radio.

  I don’t have cable/satellite and my internet connection at home isn’t sufficient for more than one person to watch video at once. PBS keeps me sane. (No, I don’t feel I should have to spend $50/month just to watch TV)

• 15. Brink  |  February 22nd, 2008 at 6:34 am

  Wait, so now it’s okay to stop telling the pollsters that we mostly just watch PBS, when we deign to watch TV at all?

• 16. Rocker  |  February 22nd, 2008 at 6:52 am

  Radio without NPR would definitely be a big downer. And there’s a lot of great PBS TV programming too. In both cases though, I think what’s not needed is all the baggage of the attempt to run local stations all over the country. The local stations really don’t add much other than pledge drives. Why can’t the network just be the few major outlets that are able to stand on their own, and in other markets simply set up network repeaters. I suspect there’s a whole cottage industry of people out there at the local stations that may very well outnumber the viewers of the local shows the produce.

• 17. El Dangeroso  |  February 22nd, 2008 at 11:45 am

  For “Frontline” alone, yes, PBS is necessary.

• 18. oakling  |  February 22nd, 2008 at 1:20 pm

  If it weren’t for PBS, I would never have discovered Doctor Who, which provided an escape and a community of fans which saved my life or at least much of my mind as a teenager. The Sci-Fi network certainly wasn’t carrying it back then, back when it was all “reruns” because the show was on what-was-supposed-to-be-permanent hiatus.

  The same is true for many British, children’s, and innovative educational shows today. I wouldn’t be doing yoga on a nearly-daily basis if I couldn’t record it off of one of the several PBS stations I can get with my satellite provider. Channels like FitTV are not only small enough to be limited to the more expensive cable packages, and focused largely on sports/fitness celebrity shows rather than how-to, but also interrupt my workout with commercials which cut down the amount of time I can actually work out.

  I also wouldn’t have access to the gay cable channel which is only available through a few providers and the more expensive packages, so I would miss out on a lot of great historical and cutting-edge programming from that community that only PBS channels seem to offer.

  You can’t ask if PBS is still necessary unless you figure out who you’re asking. To me, it’s certainly necessary. More importantly, it’s a joy.

• 19. Michelle  |  February 22nd, 2008 at 1:43 pm

  WE NEED NON-COMMERCIAL MEDIA. Killing PBS would effectively cease a lot of programming that serves groups ignored by the commercial networks. PBS offers programs for seniors (WHO ELSE DOES?), minorities, kids. They give us arts, education, and excellent news programs like Frontline without promoting rabid consumerism.

• 20. Fred  |  March 14th, 2008 at 6:42 pm

  After what the management did to Louis Rukeyser how anyone can feel that PBS has any credibility is beyond me. They walk in lock step to keep their paychecks rolling in rather large ones I would suspect.

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