Or another reason not to vote for Bush in November.
According to a person I was listening to the other day, if Bush gets re-elected, he will remove funding from NPR and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
My question is what affect would this have on the variety of viewpoints being aired on the radio/television? What affect would this have on the existance of public radio/television?
I think you need to check your source of information.
A few years ago, I would have said, “While I enjoy NPR, it has outlived it usefulness. NPR was created to help bring news and arts to remote areas where commercial radio was unable to meet the needs.”
Now, with the amazing consolidation in the broadcast media, I see a need for NPR to continue. Although there are many problems with NPR, it is far superior to Clear Channel and Fox Radio.
flickster ,
If it makes you happier, treat this as a hypothetical. I am less interested in the LIKELIHOOD that Bush will eliminate funding for public radio and television and more interested in what the CONSEQUENCES would be if he did so.
In case it’s not clear, NPR is a seperate, privately-funded organization. The member stations receive funding from the CPB, which is in turn supported by Congress. Not sure where Bush fits into this, since Congress controls the purse strings.
Then maybe you should have worded your opening statement accordingly instead of:
I give up. I still think that there is the basis for an interesting discussion buried somewhere in this thread. However, I don’t seem to have persuaded anyone that they want to discuss it.
Telemark, thank you for providing facts and figures about NPR’s actual funding. They do show what I had suspected.
Flickster, the temptation to take a cheap shot at Bush was irrisistable. Besides, that’s more or less what my source said. He’s very involved with a local public radio station and sufficiently aware of what is going on in politics to be very credible. The trade-off is that he is also very aware of how to make his audience assume the worst without actually saying it.
The figures provided by Telemark do not show a decrease in funding. NPR stations have been primarily funded by listener contributions for years (haven’t you noticed the non-ending pledge drives), so I don’t know what you were suspecting.
You might have gotten more of a serious debate going by just talking about the CPB funding without the attempted Bush cheap shot.
Here’s some additional facts about CPB funding:
Here is the current situation: Due to tremendous grassroots support, Congress did not eliminate funding for public broadcasting. Rather, the appropriation was significantly reduced. Since those cuts, however, the appropriation has steadily increased. For instance, in the first session of the 107th Congress (FY 2002 budget cycle), the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) received a $380 million appropriation. Because CPB is advance funded by two years, the appropriation is for public broadcasting in fiscal year 2004. Recently, Congress approved a $390 million funding level for fiscal year 2005.
As you can see, funding is actually increasing!
A few things:
One, Bush can’t just eliminate funding for any program. Congress passes the appropriations bills and the decisions about what to fund at what level are ultimatley made in the appropriations committees. The person from whom you got this information is either ignorant of the political process if he thinks that Bush can simply cut all funding for the program or simply preying on the fears of those who know less than him in order to drum up anti-Bush sentiment. Either way, he sounds like a charlatan whom you should not trust for your information.
Two, as shown above, it’s unlikely that if the federal government did cut its share of the funding that these stations would go out of business.
Three, even if they did go out of business, who cares? If PBS went away, there would still be a variety of views expressed on TV and many stations duplicate the services that used to be provided only by PBS. Sure, PBS has great documentaries, but there are plenty of channels that have good documentaries. And while their news is good, there are a variety of news stations out there. And sure, they have foreign programming, but most can get some sort of foreign programming if they want it through extra cable channels. If NPR were gone, it would be more difficult to find alternative viewpoints on the radio, but I don’t see that as a problem. Conservatives seem to get their message out just fine without government support; I don’t see why liberals should get a subsidy.
It is misleading in the extreme if you mean to imply that the White House is increasing the CPB’s budget. The Bush Administration requested exactly zero for advance appropriations in FY2004, which would be spent in FY2006.
In January, Congress added $400 million for the CPB before passing the FY2004 appropriations bill.
Several weeks ago, the Bush Administration again asked for zero dollars in advance appropriations in its FY2005 budget request (which would be spent in FY2007). Congress will probably add money again, but given the budget problems, ya never know.
Renob: If PBS went away, there would still be a variety of views expressed on TV and many stations duplicate the services that used to be provided only by PBS.
Don’t count on it, given the growing trends of media monopolization and consolidation. This has gotten large chunks of the American public pissed off enough to complain at FCC hearings about it, and the Senate actually blocked proposed FCC changes permitting additional media monopolization.
If NPR were gone, it would be more difficult to find alternative viewpoints on the radio, but I don’t see that as a problem.
You don’t? But one of the stated purposes of the licensing of the publicly-owned airwaves to media companies is to provide a spectrum of diverse information and viewpoints to the public. Why shouldn’t we insist on getting the diversity that we’re ostensibly subsidizing?
You seem to assume that market competition will just automatically take care of our media-diversity requirements. But that doesn’t seem to be the way things are actually headed, with ever-increasing domination of local media outlets by just a few media conglomerates.
You are comparing apples and oranges. For one, the media rules promulgated by the FCC affected broadcast stations. I’m talking about cable stations, which are unaffected by the rules. Two, the trend recently is much more about creating niche markets in television stations (again, cable stations) than in some sort of homogenization. There are a variety of TV stations for just about everyone, and that includes liberals and conservatives. You like liberal news, watch CNN. You like conservative news, watch Fox. You like in-depth policy discussions, watch C-SPAN. Add onto that the Internet, and you will see that there is a much wider variety of viewpoints available now than ever before. If PBS were once needed in order to provide news, documentaries, and cultural programming to the masses (a debatable point, but I’ll concede it for the sake of my argument), it surely is not needed now for that reason.
Again, you are focusing on only a small segment of the media. Local TV and radio stations aren’t the only media around. There are, as mentioned above, many cable channels, the Internet, a variety of newspapers (both dailys, weeklies, and local independents), and satellite radio. The media is becoming increasingly diverse and the barriers to enty are much lower than before. Any jackass can put up a website at basically no cost and have his or her message spread to the world. If you think of the media outside the traditional “local TV, local radio” paradigm, you will see the diversity of which I speak.
Furthermore, who cares if local radio and TV stations are being bought up by a few conglomerates. These congolmerates are in it to make money, and they respond to their audience in order to make that money. If their audience wants a diversity of viewpoints, they’d be bad businessmen if they didn’t respond.
You make a good point Renob.
NPR / CPB would be able to save considerable money by canning their news department & programs. There is so much news media duplication, they wouldn’t be missed. They could use the money to help produce additional shows like “What do you know”, “Praire Home Companion”, “Car Talk”, “Piano Jazz”, etc.
I’m glad you made the distinction between broadcast and cable, but hey – I don’t have cable. So, am I supposed to pay for alternative viewpoints? Isn’t it worth a very small investment of public funds to provide the means for an interested citizenry to hear more points of view than can be found on NBC, CBS, Fox, the WB, and so on? Or should each individual fend for himself, and let his pocketbook decide what kind of news and programming is available to him?
If it were up to me, I’d be very happy to have a conservative version of NPR available to the public. I’d probably tune in once in a while when I’m stuck in traffic or something.
It might interest you guys to know that Bush has proposed the largest single year increase in funding for the National Endowment of the Arts (NEA) in over 20 years.
Without cable I’m afraid you’re stuck with NBC, CBS, or ABC (doesn’t matter which you pick - all the same left leaning opinion) or PBS if you really want liberal bias. For the free conservative viewpoint you’ll have to tune in to the AM radio dial. As for public funds being invested, no. It’s time to walk on your own feet.
Renob: Furthermore, who cares if local radio and TV stations are being bought up by a few conglomerates. These congolmerates are in it to make money, and they respond to their audience in order to make that money. If their audience wants a diversity of viewpoints, they’d be bad businessmen if they didn’t respond.
Nope. It’s a common “market-fundamentalist” fallacy to believe that market forces inevitably require producers to offer consumers what they want most, instead of just what they’re willing to buy. But it doesn’t work that way.
Businesses are not directly motivated to provide the maximum possible choice to consumers, even if that’s what consumers would ideally like best; they are motivated to make the maximum possible profit. If reducing and homogenizing the available media offerings will save media owners more money than the amount they lose by turning off customers with “dumbed down” products, then they’d be bad businessmen if they didn’t “dumb down”.
And in fact, that’s exactly what’s been happening with increasingly consolidated ownership of local media outlets. Since the 1996 Telecommunications Act largely deregulated media ownership, more and more stations have been taken over by fewer and fewer companies. They save money by cutting out local and alternative content in favor of homogenized “voice-tracked” programs and widely syndicated shows. The resulting negative impact on media diversity has been documented.
Is this really what the audience wants? Judging from the overwhelming negative reaction in public comment (and from a majority of Senators, Democrat and Republican alike) to recent FCC proposals for further deregulation, the answer is no. Radio listeners don’t like not getting local news or hearing local artists; musicians don’t like media companies threatening them with reduced airtime if they don’t use company facilities for their live performances; and nobody likes FCC commissioners taking expense-paid junkets on Clear Channel’s dime. But just because the customers don’t like it doesn’t mean that market forces alone are capable of getting rid of it.
*There are a variety of [cable] TV stations for just about everyone, and that includes liberals and conservatives. *
Please name some that aren’t owned by major media conglomerates and don’t get most of their product from one or more of them.
There are, as mentioned above, many cable channels, the Internet, a variety of newspapers (both dailys, weeklies, and local independents), and satellite radio.
Actually, local newspapers have been folding and merging with big media chains even faster than local radio stations, and their owners increasingly control other forms of media too. They are not forming a bulwark against monopoly domination of media viewpoints.
*The media is becoming increasingly diverse and the barriers to enty are much lower than before. Any jackass can put up a website at basically no cost and have his or her message spread to the world. *
You may consider the increasing availability of jackass websites an acceptable counterweight to the decreasing availability of independent, local, professional media sources, but I’m afraid I don’t.
It’s great that we have the Internet and all its information, useful and useless alike; but that doesn’t mean it’s capable of filling the traditional role of broadcast and print media. For one thing, as with cable vs. broadcast channels, internet access is still much less widely available than other forms of media.
Hold on - do you see no difference between the style and quality of news coverage between World News Tonight, CNN, FoxNews, and the other commericial providers as compared to the PBS News Hour?
I have never ever seen a commercial news program that is able to go in depth on events like the News Hour, with both a reporting of the news and independent analysts on both sides of the issues commenting in a rational, informed way. I think a large part of that is because commercial news services are inevitably drawn to sensationalism in order to draw more viewers.
Why? Isn’t an informed citizenry a public benefit? Why not argue that public libraries should be overtaken by Barnes and Noble?
Whops, forgot to mention this – and the core of my point is that foks SHOULD have the option of tuning in to PBS on the public airwaves.
If all public funding of broadcasting were to be eliminated, the choices would most likely be NBC, CBS, ABC, and… that’s it.
So, you’ve just stated the current state of affairs very well.