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March 6, 2005
Moonbat TV
Lyndon Johnson, proud father of the welfare state, left us with another insidious legacy: public television. It should go without saying that government-run media is a profoundly bad idea. Not being answerable to its audience the way free market networks are, the output of public television is rarely going to be what people want to see.
The MaryHunter passed along a link to an interesting piece in which George Will makes the point that while it was a bad idea even in 1967, when there were only three channels, "in today's 500-channel environment, public television is a preposterous relic."
Will describes the slogan "If PBS doesn't do it, who will?" as "amazingly obtuse and arrogant" in light of a free market that has been providing The History Channel, The Discovery Channel, Biography, A&E, Bravo, National Geographic, Disney, Animal Planet, The Learning Channel, The Outdoor Channel, Noggin, Nickelodeon, etc. etc. etc. Since educational television is so thoroughly covered by more interesting channels, PBS has taken to airing HBO reruns, presumably in an attempt to get someone to watch it. PBS President Pat Mitchell is quoted as warning, "We are dangerously close in our overall prime-time numbers to falling below the relevance quotient."
There is one thing PBS does that free market channels don't — target children for homosexual propaganda. A still more egregious outrage is forcing taxpayers to contribute to the plump wallet of the insufferable Bill Moyers.
As for the canard that PBS is important for people who can't afford cable, the idea that the snooty liberal elite programming that dominates PBS is of interest to the poor doesn't pass the laugh test. Besides, as Will points out, most poor people have cable or satellite television.
Some recent news from Britain — where audiences are much more at the mercy of the leftist social engineers who run public television — supports Will's point of view. Last week BBC1 ran the series Britain's Streets of Vice at 9:15 in the morning, a time when a large percentage of the audience is likely to be children, even on weekdays (especially last week, as it turned out, because bad weather caused school closings across the country). Andrew Bowman at Biased BBC describes what British taxpayers treated the kids to last Monday through Thursday:
We learned first hand from a prostitute and her 'maid' how good the money is - the prostitute had earned over £500 from 'serving' upwards of twenty-five 'clients' (some of whom we saw) that day. We visited 'Smack Alley', a named street for buying drugs in Derby. We saw a man injecting heroin into his groin. We met Matty, "one of Britain's top gay porn stars". We saw gay porn stars playing Twister. We met the 'oversized' 59-year old Dominatrix Francesca, Momma Fran, who "has recently embarked on a new career as a porn idol". We met the staff and were given a guided tour of the facilities of a Hull brothel. We heard a woman moaning "give it to me". And on and on.
Alison Sharman commissioned the series. She boasted in an interview with The Independent that such a programming decision wouldn't happen on a "market-led" channel. No kidding.
Would PBS vanish without the 15% of its revenue that is appropriated by force? George Will isn't the only one who would like to find out.
Posted by Van Helsing at March 6, 2005 4:20 PM
Comments
I once read that PBS and HBO tend to be significantly better in quality because their customers and their audience is the same group of people.
Advertiser sponsored TV, on the other hand, separates those two groups.
I certainly don't think Discovery and the History Channel supplants PBS. In fact I sat through some TORTUROUS writing on the History Channel about Yuri Gargarin this afternoon.
Would you find NOW or Tucker Carlson on MSNBC? Would you find Nova on Discovery? I think not.
PBS still serves a function and I think even if you pull Federal funding entirely the semi-annual beg-fests would probably still be able to keep the thing going ... although maybe with only one stream per major city as it was probably originally intended.
Posted by: Axinar at March 6, 2005 6:26 PM
I don't doubt that there is some good programming on public television. What I object to is the idea of people who don't watch it being forced to help finance it, and the lack of audience accountability that results in documentaries about gay prostitution airing to an audience of little kids.
Posted by: Van Helsing at March 6, 2005 7:45 PM
Pull the bung out of this barrel of liberal sewage. Good producers and thier works will find an audience in the free market. I would watch NOVA if it was to be shown on a commerical broadcast or cable channel. Let the people who produce this garbage for kids and these inane commentators such as Moyers see if they can draw a crowd on the street corner. Oh, by the way, in my state, for welfare purposes, cable TV is a valid household expense.
Posted by: Eneils Bailey at March 6, 2005 8:38 PM
Indeed, let the free market reign, as has happened with Talk Radio and FNC (much to a conservative's delight). There are some very good kids shows on PBS (when they're not trying to indoctrinate my children with "diversity training") and I wouldn't mind a few commercial breaks to pay for them.
Posted by: The MaryHunter at March 7, 2005 6:40 AM
Whether or not PBS skews left is beside the point. It comes down to this:
1. Public broadcasting is an expensive luxury item.
2. The Government's running a huge deficit.
3. When you're spending too much money, the first thing you cut are the luxuries.
Posted by: V the K at March 7, 2005 1:19 PM
