CPB Versus BBC

As I noted in my previous post, the far right wants to dismantle public broadcasting as we know it.  Granted, public broadcasting as we know it is mediocre at best. Public television (PBS) may be ad hoc and random, but its programming is still in many cases superior to programs offered on network television or basic cable, while it is on par with programming on premium cable or streaming services many of us cannot afford. And anyone can watch public television.  Public radio? National Public Radio (NPR) clearly lacks nationwide music programming, focusing mostly on talk shows on topics ranging from politics to movies, but local public music stations affiliated with NPR do a decent job playing artists that tend to sell one record for every ten thousand records Taylor Swift sells. 

None of that means anything to conservatives like Mike Gonzalez, who in Project 2025's manifesto devotes a whole subchapter to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) and complains about the 65 percent of viewers and listeners who identify as liberal and complains about the programming as being biased toward liberal values (forget Margaret Hoover resurrecting "Firing Line," the old PBS talk show begun by the late WIlliam F. Buckley, Jr.). Gonzalez sneers at the CPB receiving government subsidies to provide non-commercial educational funding when he finds even "Sesame Street" as a form of liberal indoctrination (because Sesame Street is in a racially mixed urban neighborhood where half of everyone speaks Spanish). 

The big complaint from liberals, of course, is that PBS and NPR receives corporate funding, which, conservatives want the CPB to rely on exclusively, and is thus discouraged from broadcasting anything that might offend their corporate "underwriters."  Ironically, Gonzalez points this out in his concluding paragraph. "NPR and PBS stations are in reality no longer noncommercial, as they run ads in everything but name for their sponsors," he writes. "They are also non-educational. The next President should instruct the FCC to exclude the stations affiliated with PBS and NPR from the [non-commercial educational] denomination and the privileges that come with it." 

Public broadcasting non-educational? Let me rebut that in the only way I know how. First, watch a history documentary on PBS. It doesn't matter which one, just watch it. Then try to find a comparable documentary on the History Channel, which for the most part stopped being about history years ago. Conservatives have long insisted that any public funding of broadcasting is a mistake, with Antonin Scalia, as a Nixon administration lawyer in 1971, warning of "a long-range problem of significant social consequences - that is, the development of a government-funded broadcast system similar to the BBC." 

The British Broadcasting Corporation is not, as far as I am aware of, in the business of spreading socialist propaganda, but it does provide original scripted comedies and dramas and a world-class news-gathering service, as well as five national music radio stations - including BBC Radio 1, which, like its predecessor, the BBC Light Programme, has a storied legacy of live performances from bands now considered "classic rock." The Corporation for Public Broadcasting has none of those things, thanks to a funding system that barely qualifies as a system - a mix of corporate funding, individual donations, and annual federal subsidies, meaning that PBS has to import original scripted programming from television networks from other countries (like the BBC) and settle for a second-rate TV newscast that gets half of its foreign news reports from Britain's Independent Television News.  That only goes to show you how a dedicated funding mechanism can make a difference for public broadcasting; the BBC is funded by an annual £159 ($216.60) license fee paid by all British households that make use of its services . . . which is practically everyone in the United Kingdom.  You get what you pay for.

If this all sounds familiar, it's because I've been saying it time and time again on this blog.

If Project 2025 goes forward as planned under a Republican President as far as public broadcasting is concerned, we can expect to see funding for public broadcasting zeroed out and completely dependent on wealthy donors, which will no doubt limit even further the CPB's ability to provide the sort of programming it does now. PBS will be like the basic-cable channels that used to air educational programs but stopped doing so when it turned out to be unprofitable. (TLC, which used to stand for The Learning Channel, now shows reality programming and its name is just a bunch of meaningless initials.)  PBS and NPR stations in small media markets will go off the air for lack of funding with no alternative public-affairs programming, just as sure as, as noted in my previous post, the Republicans will restrict commercial media providing alternatives to news and opinion with a conservative bent.  Several NPR-affiliated music stations may go off the air, denying people in small media markets an alternative to a commercial music station playing Justin Bieber. 

But it's not like we won't have government-sanctioned media in place of public broadcasting.  We will.  In fact, a leading Republican already has one set up.

His name is Rupert Murdoch.