The Public Broadcasting Service, which airs commercials between programs, airs scripted comedies and dramas imported from Europe, produces no scripted comedies and dramas of its own, has failed whenever it has tried to do so, has aired reruns of Lawrence Welk's show, has also aired productions of Andrew Lloyd Webber's awful Cats musical (ironically on its "Great Performances" series, airs a nightly news broadcast that presents hip-hop stories as "arts and culture" stories, and has aired a political talk show hosted by William F. Buckley, Jr. and then Margaret Hoover (great-granddaughter of the thirty-first U.S. President) despite complaints of its "liberal bias," and National Public Radio, which concentrates most of its programing on topical talk fare, does not have a national network of music stations devoted to one genre or another, has affiliated local stations that broadcast non-commercial music such as college-indie rock and classical music but have weak signals due to their low wattage, has never had rock bands perform live on the air or in the studio and so has never had tapes of such shows become CDs thirty years after, and, like PBS, has pledge drives to supplement its funds and meet its budget needs, is getting its federal funding cut by Trump.
Once again - if we had a real public broadcasting network like the BBC, the cuts to PBS and NPR - public broadcasting in the United States is so chaotically organized the television and radio services go by different names - would be news. But when their programs are made possible by grants from major corporations, it's just a tempest in a very British teapot.
Nothing to see here, folks. But I'll certainly comment on a story of major importance - like when Kamala Harris runs out of dental floss.
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2 comments:
Actually we listen to public radio stations almost exclusively. I don't know how much NPR actually funds them (certainly the news is from NPR) but the ones we listen to have live DJs and play a lot of indie music I wouldn't have heard otherwise. I think you're being a bit harsh...
Most of my bile is aimed at public television, which came up with the euphemism "This program was made possible by a grant from" (which means "This program was sponsored by"), and yes, the local indie stations do play a good deal of music unavailable elsewhere, but there's no one national music network that reaches everyone in the country like BBC Radio 1 and BBC Radio 2.
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