NOTE: I’d rather not see this thread devolve into a debate about Romney’s proposed PBS cuts, thanks.
By my reckoning, the Sesame Street franchise is nothing but a huge cash cow, and Nickelodeon (ow whatever network) would be more than happy to pick up the rights. The merchandising alone has to be worth hundreds of millions. Plus they have touring ice-skating shows, a character deal with Sandals(?), etc.
Is it not self-sustainable?
Sesame Street will be fine without government funding. And the urban PBS channels with lots of donors will stick around.
The poor and rural areas of the country will no longer be able to pay for sesame street and free options for pre-school education will shrink. Many of those stations will probably go out of business.
Note that Nickelodeon is available to satellite/cable subscribers paying for a higher-than-basic program package.
PBS stations are generally available free over-the-air or on the basic satellite/cable level.
Does Sesame Street? Of course not. But the rest of PBS’s programming isn’t as lucrative as Sesame Street. A better question is, can PBS fund their *whole *network based on the popularity of one show?
In case you’re wondering, the federal appropriation for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is about $444 million this year. So eliminating it isn’t going to do much of anything to address the federal budget deficit.
And that, to me, speaks volumes. It’s the same in Canada too. There are so many funded programs, at so many different levels that eliminating the funding for one program would be deleterious to that one program but would have no effect on the overall budget bottom line.
The problem is, we all got ourselves into this mess a few hundred million here, and a few hundred million there. It all ads up. Any elected government that decides to make sweeping changes will not be re-elected: they won’t. The public are idiots and will fight tooth-and-nail to keep any programs they like, but will be pissed off at the government for spending more than they’re taking in.
I’d really like to see a party come in and clean slate, big time. In both countries. Canada is struggling with why in the hell taxpayers are funding the CBC, and I say, cut them loose. They can sink or swim like any other network. Fuck 'em.
Sesame Street may be a cash cow now, and perhaps, now it is well established, a commercial network might find it profitable to keep it in production. Heck, there is even an outside chance that they would have the sense not to ruin it, killing the golden goose by filling it with product placements, and by dumbing it down and ‘sexing’ it up for a short-term boost in ratings.
However, it, and other programs like it, would never have got off the ground without the public funding of PBS. There is very little chance that any for-profit network would have funded such a program or nurtured it long enough for it to become successful. Furthermore, PBS would not be able to attract even the fairly meager level of private donations that it does if it did not have programs like Sesame Street that can be portrayed both as successful and popular, and as idealistically focused on education rather than mere entertainment, and the attraction of eyeballs for advertisers.
So yeah, Sesame Street, specifically, just might be able to survive without public financial support, now it is well established, but it does not follow from that either that Public Broadcasting does not need government support, or that America does not need Public Broadcasting.
Ah yes, it is the duty of governments to make life worse for the people they govern. If they all did that, then we would have a better world. :rolleyes:
There’s no evidence that Everett Dickson ever said the line, “A billion here, and a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money” but it’s too lovely a line not to quote.
I don’t know about Canada, but in the U.S. it is flatly not true that “we all got ourselves into this mess a few hundred million here, and a few hundred million there.” Taking all the few hundred million dollar level government programs as a sum total doesn’t lead to any real problems. It’s the many tens of billions of dollars programs that did. Some of them are the large scale social programs like Social Security and Medicare and some of them are military spending. Cutting all the hundred million dollar programs would, as njtt indicates, just make life worse for the average citizen without hitting any of the true problem issues. Cutting a single fighter jet or helicopter program that the military doesn’t want but provides jobs in a single Representative’s district would save as much money as a 100 or 500 or 1000 of the other programs.
People talk about saving money by cutting back on the pennies. This works the first time through because it reminds people to look everywhere for savings. But it never solves any real fiscal problems; it merely degrades everybody’s life and cuts everybody’s morale. It’s stupid and self-defeating. Cut one big thing that the powerful like before you do anything else.
Question comes down to how you want to define ‘need’ if you want this educational program to be distributed to as many American’s as possible yes their is some ‘need.’
To me this is like saying do we really need public schools because we could cut them out completely and the private educational system would step up and provide low cost education.
Or as NBC News reported, about 0.01 percent of the federal budget.
Or about six hours worth of time spent by the Defense Department.
Clearly, starting wars and killing people is the preferred option, rather than educating our own kids.
Exapno Mapcase got it right: cuts in discretionary non-military spending won’t get you very far. The federal government is basically a large pension program that happens to have an army. No attempt to grapple with the long term deficit is serious if it doesn’t address health care costs. And if that cost curve can be bent successfully, all other budgetary problems, including social security, are manageable.
Talking about eliminating PBS in the context of deficit reduction is a silly joke, a diversion, raw meat for the rubes. Those wanting to play with taxing and spending policies can visit this website: The CEPR Deficit Calculator
As for the OP: Sesame Street has a lot of footage in the vault. I suspect their brand could travel to another channel. More generally this article seems to think that federal subsidies constitute about half of total PBS expenditures.
What?
You could take a red pen to the US budget and knock yourself out cutting miscellaneous programs like PBS, NASA, arts, sciences, etc and the millions spent here and there. And you’ll hardly make a dent. Take a look at a pie chart of the US budget sometime. You have to address social security, defense, medicare, medicaid, and welfare/unemployment in some massive way. Cutting anything else won’t do squat.
Congressman Earl Blumenauer, founder of the Congressional Public Broadcasting Caucus, sent out this today. He argues that Sesame Street would survive on commercial TV, but ads would ruin the show in spirit.
That sounds like pure sentimentality to me. There are many cable channels these days that are educational and run ads to support themselves: Discovery, History, and HGTV being the most popular. Putting those stations on the public dole so they can get rid of commercials would not enhance those stations significantly enough to justify the expense.
If PBS had been self-supporting for the last 30 years we wouldn’t think of changing that. this is a clear case of simple status quo bias. We want PBS to remain commercial free because that’s how it’s always been.
Ah, yes, History. That channel where 1/3 of the programs are about Nazis or the Civil War.
The other 2/3? Aliens.
You’re thinking of the poorly named Learning Channel. I didn’t mention that one on purpose.
And the point stands: It’s just status quo bias. We think Sesame Street shouldn’t have commercials because we didn’t grow up with Sesame Street having commercials. I’m sure many 30 somethings would love to get rid of Elmo for the same reason.
I got the sarcasm of what njtt said. My whole post was an elaboration on his.
You said something really dumb and both of us took you to task in the same way.
No, you don’t have a point; you’re merely trying to divert attention from the real point.
And that is that the small scale programs that government contributes to quality of life can easily be of great importance and their elimination would do greater harm to the country than would be justified by the minor cost savings. The specific program at discussion is not an issue. The principle is.