TVSquad

how can that clown say "no child left behind" and continuously cut educational programs in this country?

can you spell impeach?

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Even if you're not jabbing Republicans, they should take it as a jab. PBS and NPR produce the best news programming our cable news-infested world has right now. In a time of "missing blonde girl" coverage that infests CNN, FOX News, etc., The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer is absolutely essential television. It's almost worth the entire CPB budget itself.

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^Agreed with the above.

NPR is truly outstanding.

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The Republicans have infested the mainstream media with fox and cnn, after they could not totally destroy pbs, they decided to cut funding in a major way. These people are such evil-doers it is unbelievable. I am afraid of what the future holds for my children. They have destroyed talk radio with the hate-filled airways, what's next?

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Are you kidding me? Am I in an alternate universe? CNN is thee worst of the bunch! They are the most liberal and anti republican channel. Say what you will about FOxNews but there are hundreds of liberal mainstream newspapers and of course CNN, MSNBC, CBS NEWS, ABC NEWS, NBC NEWS and PBS and NPR are extreme outlets for Liberal Left Wing crap.

All the Right has is FoxNews and talk radio.

It's not up to congress to fund Sesame Stree to educate your children. It's called SCHOOLS, look into them. It's called good parenting. It's call smart decisions that lead to happy, healthy and stable homes.

If you're relying on Big Bird and Barney to educate your children you've got big problems. This is social entitlement gone amuck. PBS and NPR are bastions of liberal ideas and views, why should congress fund a partisan and political channel??

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I'm glad the decision to reject plans to cut funds to CPB was passed by such a huge margin. It gives me a good indication that maybe our national government is still functioning sanely.

I'm a huge supporter of PBS and NPR. I feel the contents they bring are vital to the formation of the publics knowledge and opinions. It's certainly engaging and really helps remind us to think critically of what's going on in our world. It's a nice place to get away from mainstream media's obsession with things I find insignificant like Paris Hilton, reality TV, and other novel entertainment that does nothing but waste our time and distracts us from more important things.

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chaim,

I believe Stephen Colbert said it best, "Reality has a well-known liberal bias."

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For this much public money (and the amounts they receive each and every year) the CPB and NPR should be subject to federal oversight. While much of the programming is innocuous or neutral, there is a very strong liberal bent in their news and opinion programming. Yes, talk radio is mostly conservative, but radio airs conservative programming because that is what the public has shown they will listen to and ratings determine their programming. Public radio and television is subsidized by federal tax money and private donations and does not have to worry about the latest Nielsen or Arbitron ratings to ensure that they will still be around next year. This is wholly unfair and not representative of the population which does not get a say in the matter.
I have no doubt that the truly BEST programming on Public television and radio would easily survive in a competitive and ratings driven world.
As for the previous comment that CNN is has a conservative bent...please do not post here unless you have actually watched the network. Whatever good comment you made was negated the minute you wrote that.

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RE: Chaim(above) Congress does not fund a liberal channel. Federal dollars (15% of all public broadcasting funds) are distributed to locally controlled and operated stations in 354 TV communities and 700+ radio communities that support those stations with the other 85%. CPB funds are matching funds based on how much each community contributes to its stations.
As a citizen who "contributes" more than 22% of my annual revenue to my federal government, I want some of the things that I appreciate to receive some of my money. I am certain public broadcasting is a better investment in this country's future than the $12 billion per month being poured into our war machine and then siphoned off in no-bid contracts to wealthy friends of politicians.
RE: Mr. Walley's concern about ratings, 30 million citizens per week listen to public radio and 87% of the country watches public TV. This is known because the ratings services do track public broadcasting's audiences and public broadcasters do pay attention to them. That said, the receipt of tax dollars was meant to provide programs that the marketplace does not support so that Americans could have educational products for their schools as well as prime-time hours.
Lastly, labels (conservative\liberal) are used to stigmatize public and c commercial broadcasting’s complexity with simple and pejorative caricatures for lazy minds.

When George Romney was Governor of Michigan, he held a news conference and said, “I’m as conservative as the Constitution, as liberal as Lincoln and as progressive as Theodore Roosevelt. Critical thinkers never accept labels as a way to define a person and should not be accepted as definitions for the concepts within public television’s programs. Public Radio and TV are about substantive solutions to real issues of policy and of conscience, and the substance is more important than the label.

People who choose to label do an injustice to any idea or person, although they achieve the benefit of stigmatizing the complex for the convenience of lazy thinkers. The use of labeling contributes to the superficiality of understanding a person, institution, issue or ideology by pandering to the simplistic.

A thinking person views issues from all perspectives and enjoys the challenge of ideas and people with thoughts that vary from their own. Mostly, they are attracted by new people with new ideas. New ways of thinking give them hope that people can break out of the patterns of past errors, deliberate or honest.

Commerce and institutions, media or otherwise, are fraught with the corporate and politically powerful attempting to control access to information and to eliminate critical thinking. Talk and written word media entertainers lull emotional non-thinkers with labels and name-calling, the equivalent to labeling. They try to hide the fact that they themselves lack the knowledge base or competence to have a discussion of issues based on facts and perspective within a broad context.

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i'm kind of on the fence here...PBS has plenty of budget via corporate sponsorship to get by, even if federal funding was cut. that might mean a bit of consolidation of PBS stations, but that wouldn't be a terrible thing. There are also equal alternatives to PBS out there today, like the Science, History, TLC, Discovery, etc, which didn't exist in the '70s.

So some budget trimming wouldn't bother me. It might mean more obnoxious pledge drives, but that just means i'll watch something else.

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In response to Dwight, labeling a a conservative or liberal, either in social ideals or political affiliation is very real in our current society and I think that they both are made up of thinkers and not the lazy thinkers. I agree that many people just choose a side and never really consider what that side stands for on a broad range of issues. I also believe that there are many intelligent, considerate people out there who have opinions on many different issues that lean one way or the other. It is my observation that Public broadcasting for the most part does lean to the left both on television and radio. The citing that 87% of the nation watches Public television is more correctly stated as 87% can get or has available to them a Public television signal, be it over-the-air, cable or satellite. It is still true that Public televisions ratings nationwide have decreased not increased during the past 20 years. To be fair, the same is true of the network over-the-air broadcasts as well. It is good for all of us to discuss and debate how our government chooses to spend our tax dollars and the funding of Public Broadcasting does often divide on the lines of Republicans and Democrats. When the government chose to subsidize Public television in the 60s there was no other outlet for this type of programming. The same is not true now with literally dozens of cable networks that offer identical programming. Add to this the staggering amount of money contributed by corporations to PBS and NPR (some of whom are the very same ones benefiting from the current war). Now this is, in my mind, no different than the cable channels who accept money from these same corporations for advertising. The difference is that these other channels do not receive public tax money.
Let us also be aware that PBS often uses their "government" money to fully fund the viewpoints of people like Bill Moyers and then hand over the actual product ownership to the same Mr. Moyers who in turn packages and resells it in other mediums retaining full profit for himself and none to PBS.
Public Broadcasting is a benefit to the general public and I hope that it survives for years to come in one form or another. But it has reached a point that it no longer needs "public" money to do so.

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Setting aside the topic of liberal vs. conservative in the discussion of PBS/NPR, I think you would be hard pressed to find such consistent, high quality content from any of the mainstream media. The History Channel is all machines, guns and WWII and TLC & Discovery only show pseudo-reality home make-over crap. CNN & FoxNews are all sound bites and talking heads. They can't touch the in-depth reporting and storytelling of Frontline and This American Life. This is certainly some over simplification. Those channels do have some good stuff, but really, blow for blow, I'll take PBS/NPR anyday.

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We report fake you, you decide - Faux News.

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To understand why the right wingers sing this liberal media song so often and so loudly, you have to be able to interpret Limbaugh-speak correctly. To a right winger, anyone who is not spouting the RNC approved line of bush loving far right rhetoric is a liberal. By definition, you are a liberal if you in any way shape or form criticize Bush and his Rove authored opinions or stand in the way of the party line as echoed by hundreds of right wing radio hosts from Fox news and out to radio stations across the country.

So naturally with that definition understood, it’s easy to say that yes, every newspaper, television station and magazine in the world is part of this vast liberal bias conspiracy. Right wing talk radio thrives on a victim mentality of “those nasty liberals are out to kill us good people and we have to be very afraid so we must cling to our radio talk show hosts or we all will surely die.” It’s a ploy to keep everyone listening.

You don’t have to listen to any of the major right wing talking heads very long before they start singing the “mainstream media has liberal bias” song for hours on end. Small wonder ditto heads and hannity lovers can’t stop talking about it. It’s all they hear for hours and hours and hours. So let’s not be too harsh on the right wing Limbaugh lover. They are just echoing what they have been taught.

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I work at a PBS affiliate (not on the money side, but in production) and I found the following interesting.

Beanspants wrote:

>...PBS has plenty of budget via corporate sponsorship to get by, even if federal funding was cut.<

Boy, you'd like to think so. So would I. I interviewed Ken Burns once, and after we were done (and as he was autographing my Red Sox cap) I said that it must be nice to be the only PBS producer that doesn't have to worry about money. He laughed out loud! Sure, GM gives him production funding for his programs, but nothing near the actual cash-out cost; remember that when you see a raft of thank-yous at the end of "The War" this fall. Even Ken Burns still has to raise money, and that is an enormously time-consuming task. Such well-known and loved shows as Mystery! and Great Performances have had underwriting trouble in recent years. The well-regarded kids reading series "Reading Rainbow" has been in money trouble for years. These are not unique stories.

>There are also equal alternatives to PBS out there today, like the Science, History, TLC, Discovery, etc, which didn't exist in the '70s.<

Let's see what's running on the Discovery Networks these days (all of those channels plus a few are owned by Discovery.) When PBS is running Frontline and Nova, TLC has Miami Ink (the fun and hijiinks in a tattoo parlor) and several versions of American Chopper (for a while we were calling Discovery "The Welding Channel.") And it isn't just Discovery - remember when Bravo was going to be all highbrow stuff? Now it's more celeb-utainment than E! is. And A&E - it originally stood for Arts & Entertainment. Now it's the "Law And Order Rerun" channel. History Channel? All World War II, all the time, except when they do celeb biographies, that then re-air on their co-owned Biography Channel.

I could go on, but I won't. Any sane examination of the schedules will show that PBS truly *is* an alternative to what you get on cable. And as to corporate underwriting filling the bill...

At my station we do a 30-minute magazine show, 20 new episodes a year. We have two underwriters that get 30 seconds at the top & bottom of the show. Guess what they pay for a season of sponsorship?

$5000. For the WHOLE SEASON. And this show gets pretty great ratings. But local underwriters just won't pay any more.

Gotta go..the Republican State Legislature just tried to cut all state funding for both public TV and radio in my state. Never a minute's rest, I tell ya.

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videographer++

Anybody who says that the many available cable stations somehow make what PBS/NPR produces not as valuable anymore is insane. And the amount of money PBS/NPR gets (in corporate sponsorship) is miniscule compared to the amount of money it takes to produce their programming.

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In response to Walley (11 above), the fact that people do label others is real but is also a lazy way to categorize people and I think that issues are more complex than a label can do justice.
I am fascinated by your observation of PUBLIC BROADCASTING’s leanings. It doesn’t hold up in annual surveys of the American public and it certainly doesn’t hold up to its governance structure or support in the Congress. If you look at the people on the Boards of PUBLIC BROADCASTING stations and their national organizations, you will see that they are not what you would label as liberals. If you look at who funds PUBLIC BROADCASTING you will see that it is corporate America and a broad cross-section of foundations including the Olin, Coors and Bradley foundations. If you read the writings of the “liberal” press and organizations, e.g., FAIR, labor unions, you will see that they see PUBLIC BROADCASTING as a right wing organization controlled by corporate America. If you examine who have supported and funded PUBLIC BROADCASTING in the Congress, you will see that it was the Barry Goldwaters and now the Ted Stevens and (GOP) others from the rural states. When the GOP controlled the Congress, you still saw strong support from conservatives.
Why is this? It is because PUBLIC BROADCASTING is the only media place where they can get their say for as long as it takes to say it. It is the only media place where they can underwrite programs with a point of view that represents theirs. Sure, “SHOUT Radio” will sloganeer some of their pet ideas but even there they are not given a full intellectual airing and involve more name-calling than point-counterpoint.
The citing that 87% of the nation watches public television is accurate. 99+% of the country can receive a signal. Every week, 87% actually watches a program on PTV.
It is not whether the funding of Public Broadcasting divides on the lines of Republicans and Democrats. It is on how much and to what purpose. Historically, Republicans have supported funding but they want to be sure that the funding is sent to the local stations and not concentrated at the national level and so the overwhelming majority of the funds do go to local stations on a matching basis. The importance of these funds is especially critical for rural communities where the population base and the business base are inadequate to support a broadcast operation controlled and operated by local citizens.
In fact, if you were to do a schedule comparison as you see above by others, you will find that for as large a number of outlets, the programming is a travesty compared to the quality of public broadcasting. Looking only at the actual program also belies the depth of information and uses to which the investment in the product is made. For example, when a NOVA is produced, it includes a very rich web site, which is why the PUBLIC BROADCASTINGS web site has one of the largest numbers of users and for longer periods of time. The ability to research a subject of a program is boundless and all of the ancillary materials, added video, audio, books, background material and related sources adds to the richness of the program and heavily used by students. The program is also re-used by teachers in school to enhance and enrich the educational experience. I could go on for a long time on the added uses of program material but it would serve you well to ask your local station to explain how they serve schools and teacher development and use outreach with the materials produced in conjunction with the actual program.
The only thing that would make one stagger when it comes to the overall funding of PUBLIC BROADCASTING is the how few dollars are spent, compared to any commercial producer for an equivalent product and ancillary materials, yet PUBLIC BROADCASTING is expected to compete for talent and pays the same electric and other utility and equipment costs as any commercial entity.
The FCC regulates “advertising” and “underwriting” that differentiates commercial and noncommercial broadcasting. There is a difference and it has to do with when the funder can be mentioned and what can be included in the wording of the funder credit.
The government subsidizes commercial media and has done so from the beginning. They are regulated because they are a finite resource, unlike newspapers. Broadcasting depends on spectrum and that is a limited resource. Broadcasters are granted licenses for use of the spectrum for a limited time period (currently 8 years) and then must show that they have used the spectrum responsibly and, if so, can be granted continued use. Since the spectrum belongs to the public, that use, for which broadcasters are not charged, is a gift from the government for the few that are lucky enough to get the channels. So commercial broadcasters also get government funding and are able to make profits of 20-40% and become very wealthy as a result. The public gets the benefit of learning about the latest commercial products interrupted by program material that is meant to retain them in place for the next commercial.
If you were to watch a Bill Moyers program at the end of it you would notice that there is no single funder of the program. Under the aegis of Public Affairs Television (the production company he founded two decades ago with his wife, Judith Davidson Moyers), he raised the money he needed, and with no financial support sought from PUBLIC BROADCASTINGS. Funders include: the Partridge Foundation, a John and Polly Guth Charitable Fund; the Park Foundation; The Herb Alpert Foundation; Marilyn and Bob Clements and The Clements Foundation; Bernard and Audrey Rapoport and the Bernard and Audrey Rapoport Foundation; Fetzer Institute; the Orfalea Family Foundation; the Public Welfare Foundation, and the sole corporate sponsor Mutual of America Life Insurance Company.

Funds are needed from all sources if for no other reason than it is that diversity of funding that allows public broadcasting to be independent of any one point of view. You have to watch\listen to more than your favorite program to understand this point.

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