Public Broadcasting: Recipe For Disaster

• Establish a non-profit, publicly funded broadcasting system in America, like people in European countries have.
• Do not fund it, however, with a dedicated tax. Instead, encourage the American people to fund it voluntarily, with a small annual congressional appropriation.
• Have your new corporation, for Corporation for Public Broadcasting, set up a television system and a radio system. Give each a different leadership and a different name – call the TV system Public Broadcasting Service and the radio system National Public Radio – so as to make it obvious that it’s not a uniform system with any since of cohesion or structure.
• Create as many TV and radio stations as possible in a single metropolitan area to allow room for both local and national programming, but leave each of the stations to figure things out for themselves so no one has any real idea of what’s going on.
• Allow each of the different TV stations in one area to broadcast the same national programming at different times, so as to muddle the mission statement for local programming and kill any chances of looking like a coherent network.
• Encourage music on local radio stations affiliated with your network but devote practically all national radio programming to talk and public affairs. If you have two local sister stations on AM and FM, muddy things up further by having different programming in only a few time slots. Avoid all appearances of a single national network, even though the BBC has seven national radio stations.
• Add corporate sponsorship when a Republican administration has the federal stipend reduced. Call your sponsors "underwriters" and your sponsorships "grants."
• Air a talk show hosted by the founder of National Review on your television system, relaunch it after his death with the great-granddaughter of a Republican President as host, and let charges of liberal bias go unchallenged.
• Air middlebrow twaddle like John Tesh concerts and Michael Flatley dance specials on your TV stations during pledge drives, rather than the opera and ballet you’re supposed to be showing. If you air any thing associated with Andrew Lloyd Webber, keep a straight face when you talk about the importance of bringing high art to television.
• Survive on so little money, your TV network can produce only documentaries and very little dramatic programming. Import dramatic programming from England and Australia. Import foreign news reports for your news department from ITV in England while you’re at it.
• When things get really desperate, start importing dramas from non-English-speaking countries for good measure.
• Throw in reruns of "The Lawrence Welk Show" for good measure.  When the audience for that dies out, air various-artist oldies concerts.

If you follow this recipe, you will be a joke, and right-wing spoiled rich kids looking for cheap publicity will come after you.