public television

Great Debates
1

The thread about people not having the right to work in whatever profession they choose lead to people posting things like this, "The way I see it, government subsidies or intervention of any kind is only justified in sudden, extreme, unforeseeable circumstances and should be extremely limited in time and scope… Supporting unproductive activities just encourages unproductive activities.

What about public television?

I’ve heard the arguments which go something like this, “If the shows were popular enough, they’d be on commercial television. PBS just subsidises TV that not very many people want to watch. If these shows can’t make a profit, why should the tax payers give them money to make shows that aren’t very popular.”

Yet I can’t help but feel that my children benefit from the lack of commercials and high quality that only PBS offers.

I know if enough people donated money to the stations, the public funds wouldn’t have to be used. But I guess it must be expensive because despite all those pledge drives, they still need taxpayer money.

Should the government subsidise public television?

2

Yes. Television is a powerful tool that can be used to create and educated and informed populace. It’s potential for voter education is huge. However, the commercial model for television has failed miserably to serve the public. Luckly, there are many many other ways of using television.

As the airwaves are a public resource, we should use them for the public good.

3

**

The same arguement can be made for the National Endowment for the Arts and National Public Radio.

**

I’m not sure how much children benefit from commercial free television. I’m also unconvinced that PBS is the only outlet for high quality television programs.

I don’t think so.

Marc

4

There are a few couple of different questions here all muddled together, which deserve to be examined separately.

  1. First, there’s the question of funding. It’s important to make a distinction here between the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), which is the Congressionally-established, nonprofit organization responsible for promoting and helping to fund public broadcasting; and PBS, which is the network comprised of member stations and producers and which actually distributes and airs programming. CPB is funded by Congress via an appropriation; PBS (and NPR) are funded by CPB as well as by donations, grants, viewer contributions, etc.

Altogether, tax-based sources account for less than one-third of all public broadcasting money; 42% comes from membership and businesses.

Now, should Congress be funding the CPB? In my opinion, absolutely. Over the past few decades, commercial interests have managed to plant the impression that they own the spectrum, but they don’t – they rent it, from us. Considering the enormous amount of spectrum that is given over to commercial broadcasters, I see nothing wrong with reserving a portion for noncommercial broadcasters and helping to fund their activities. We’re also subsidizing those commercial broadcasters, by paying taxes that maintain the FCC, but nobody gripes about that.

  1. “If those shows were popular, they’d be on commercial TV.” And if my grandmother had balls, she’d be my grandfather. This isn’t really an argument for or against anything. We really don’t have an idea of how PBS programs stack up, ratings-wise, because Nielsen doesn’t collect ratings information on PBS stations as frequently as they do the commercial broadcasters. Local PBS stations have a great deal of flexibility regarding what they air and at what times, so getting reliable numbers for their programs is difficult. I guarantee, though, that programs like “NOVA,” “Frontline” and “The Macneil/Lehrer Newshour” get better ratings than offerings in the same timeslots on the WB and on many cable outlets.

What’s more, there are commercial outlets that offer programming similar to PBS: TLC, Discovery, Animal Planet, HGTV, The History Channel, etc. So there is some demand for those shows, and PBS helps make sure that that demand can be met independent of market vagaries.

5

Both of which offer high-quality services that can’t be found elsewhere.

**

Either you don’t have kids, or your kids are extraordinarily resistant to advertising pressure. Most kids’ programming is loaded with advertising, if it’s not a full commercial in itself. And to make matters worse, children are not always taught how to think critically about advertising. When I go shopping at a store like Wal-Mart or Target, I see an awful lot of whiny kids with a case of the “gimmes”, a problem caused by advertising. So, until media education is the norm instead of the exception, commercial-free television is a good thing.

It’s also true that there are other outlets for good television for kids. Nickelodeon, for example. However, these are still commercial-financed. (see above paragraph)

The basic issue here is that you have to dance with them what brung you. PBS, NPR and the like can produce programming independent of commercial interests. We’ve all seen “news” stories on commercial stations that were broadcast only because
the story is PR for a sister or parent company. We’ve also heard about stories that were pulled because of pressure from advertisers or network owners. (Project Censored at Sonoma State University in California is loaded with examples of this.) Since PBS and NPR don’t have advertisers in the commercial sense of the word, they don’t have the pressure to keep them happy and can therefore say what they wish.

Finally, PBS has other services. PBSYou, for example, offers programming as part of distance-learning courses for college credit, making a college education accessible to a larger segment of the population. Without at least some government funding, this would not exist.

So, yeah, I think government funding for public broadcasting is a good idea.

Robin

6

pldennison makes some good points, especially in noting that many of the “public” outlets aren’t exactly the government run stations people think of. If the government is only funding some of the activities of these programs and stations, I think a good case can be made that most of the funding goes to things, like education, which are heavy-laden with externalities, and good arguements can be made that society would ordinarily underinvest in (because when people make decisions, they don’t take into account all the good a potential decision might have for others).

Still, I am a little wary of public funding for things that people could reasonably get elsewhere. And, as hard as it might be for some people to appreciate, there are limits to how much should be spent on litteracy and education, limits imposed by decreasing returns to the efforts and rising opportunity costs for other worthwhile things that need funding too.

I also think it’s criminal how we simply give our public broadcasting rights away, without really seriously bidding them off for money that could be used to pay back taxpayers.

7

I agree about education, but do you really think kids wouldn’t get the “gimmes” if not for advertising? Perhaps if the toys were all in grey boxes on the top shelf, so kids couldn’t associate the box marked “GI JOE” with the cool fighter jet they saw at their friend’s house last week. Kids are going to find something they “need” to have, whether it’s from the TV or from their pals at school.

8

That is one way of looking at it. Another way of looking at it would be charging a lot of money for spectrum means that only big businesses can run radio and TV stations. In the states there is somewhat of a push to have low power FM stations that could be run cheaply this would provide an alternative to having all the stations owned by Clear Channel.

In Europe many cellphone service providers are going to go bankrupt or be forced to merge because they overbid for licenses to provide the next generation of phone service. Sure the government got a big windfall but ultimately there will be less competition for providing phone service in Europe costing people more money to make phone calls.

The man on the street is in general not well served by making things more expensive than they need to be.

Ultimately all of the money that a government takes in comes from the taxpayers.

9

I believe in publicly funded cultural programming. Since America is a major cultural force, it makes sense for us to use public money (PBS, NEH, NEA) to showcase our culture to the world and our own public.

However, I have big problems with these institutions as currently constructed.

First, we should be supporting high culture rather than low culture. It should not be the business of the American taxpayer to ensure that a crucifix in urine gets shown to the world.

Children’s programming should not be glorified advertisements. The advertisements on commercial TV may be a necessary evil, but Sesame Street, Barney and the Teletubbies are nothing but ads for the multitude of merchandise associated with these characters. There is no evidence that these shows teach anything meaningful to children.

Public TV and radio should be used to advance debate and discussion. This is hard to do when programming and personnel slant greatly to the left, consistently, always.

10

Why isn’t this crucifix high culture? It seems to be the sort of social commentary that is supposed to be present in high culture that is lacking in low culture things like pro wrasslin.

11

I beg to differ:

“Very young children who spent a few hours a week watching educational programs such as Sesame Street, Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, Reading Rainbow, Captain Kangaroo, Mr. Wizard’s World and 3-2-1 Contact had higher academic test scores 3 years later than those who didn’t watch educational programs, the researchers found”

http://www.hbns.org/newsrelease/television9-21-01.cfm

“longitudinal follow-ups reveal that children who grow up watching educational television programs such as Sesame Street later have better grades in high school”

“Our findings generally support broadcast industry claims of educational value for their “Educational and Informational” offerings with children primarily learning social and emotional lessons”

http://data.georgetown.edu/kidtv/camp/papers.html
"I am absolutely firmly convinced of the power of television for serving positive developmental ends,” says psychology professor Daniel Anderson. “Well-made television that’s designed to benefit children really does benefit them.” "

http://www.umass.edu/synergy/childtv.html

12

I think you have illustrated the problem with government funding for the high arts. Who determines what is art? What one person sees as art, another sees as low culture.

13

I’ve been donating money to public TV and radio for many years. It seems only fair. My family watches and listens; we should pay our share. Shows like All Things Considered, Morning Edition, Dick Estelle’s book-reading, Frontline, Lehrer’s newshour are great.

Nevertheless, I have a number of qualms:

I’m unimpressed with the technical quality of the studies cited by autz. It’s just too hard to adjust for other significant factors, which would affect children’s academic success. E.g., public television is probably more popular with intellectual parents. Little wonder that their children have higher test scores. Chances are they would have had higher scores regardless.

My children were young when Sesame Street started. It’s strikingly obvious that this show clearly failed in its effort to make a major improvement in children’s reading. One could try to find evidence for a tiny improvement, but the revolution just didn’t take place. Maybe the best way for kids to learn to read is to spend their time reading, rather than watching anything on TV. :smack:

My other objection to public radio and TV and the NEA is their political bias. They seem to be under the permanent control of liberal activists. I wish they were balanced.

Nevertheless, I would agree that the NEA and public radio and TV do support a lot of good stuff. In practice, they work pretty well.

14

It’s always hard to adjust for all variables, yet the researchers in these studies tried by studying children who were “all from low- to moderate-income families”

These aren’t too likely to have the “intellectual parents” you discuss.

15

This may be true, but I don’t think SS is failure.

If we go based on the assumption that unsupervised children will gobble up whatever is on the television, I’d rather have them sitting in front of SS than Powerpuff Girls or Ricki Lake.

I grew up on SS. I don’t think it taught me to read, but it did brought “school” and “home” together in a comfortable way. I also got to learn a bit of Spanish, learn about disabilities and adoption and emotions and stranger-danger and make-believe.

I was the original latch-key kid, so I did heavy TV watching growing up. If not for public television, I don’t think I would have been as creative and scientifically oriented as I am now. And I’m not exaggerating one bit.

We have public school, housing, transportion, hospitals, and everything else. Why not public television?

16

The flip answer, of course, is if the government is democratic, they should only subsidize public television if the constituency supports the idea. I can only offer my opinion on the current situation in the US, and the answer is yes, I am comfortable with the government subsidy for public television, at its relative level.

pldennison’s breakdown is certainly on track.

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I really hope this comment was directed toward commercial broadcasting, and not public broadcasting. Even then, be careful. gazpacho makes some valid points on this, to which I would add that the US government began getting into charging for spectrum by auction during the dotcom boom, running up billions of dollars of government revenue (tax), particularly from mobile phone service providers. Many of those companies were highly valued, yet speculative, while others were solid players (and widely held, like Verizon, Sprint, and AT&T). When the economy tanked, the speculative companies went belly up, and left the solid players with commitments to debt that the market would no longer support. I would suggest the policy actually contributed to current weakness in the telecom sector (which contributed to the overall market decline). The government should be serving the public, not selling public resources to the highest bidder.
[/hijack]

I’m much more likely to accept the studies cited by autz, then the anecdotes provide in response. My anecdotes differ. Just ask.

I found it quite interesting to note that both Mr Moto and December both mention the political bias, and yet both support public broadcasting, at least in concept.

If it only helps us learn to spell “subsidize”, I would count it a plus.

17

Don’t be. Child Development, which is where the research in autz’s first link was published, is a very well-respected refereed journal. The study would not have made it past peer review had its technical quality been unimpressive. The quality of research described in the other two links was harder to judge.

I have not read the original studies, but the summary of the Child Development article makes it pretty clear that the researchers were aware of the potentially confounding variables you’ve brought up. They targeted their study at low- to mid-income families because these were underrepresented in the literature.

It’s worse than you think. :smiley:

Obviously, I agree. And I applaud your willingness to put your money where your mouth is.

18

And some of PBS’s newer children’s shows are quite good, too. In my opinion, there is no better instructional program for early literacy than Between the Lions. This program was designed to address the major instructional areas of reading identified in current research. It teaches phonological awareness, the alphabet principle, letter-sound correspondence, and sight word vocabulary through repeated readings of contemporary children’s literature using engaging, visually interesting puppet characters.

And in this case, the research is pretty conclusive: controlled study, good sample, multiple measures of reading skill and subskills… If I had kids, I’d own all the episodes.

19

I am all for a few media outlets run and governed by the intellectual elite (government… even, if you want to say it, “liberals”) to exist alongside the slew of media supported by the consumer (ignorant masses). Yes, PBS and the like may not be free of influence (whatever that may be), but I think it’s extremely healthy that they are influenced by different factors than CBS, NBC, ABC, WB, etc, etc, etc.

Warning: There was no sarcasm in this post.

20

I’m going to have to express the predictably libertairian argument against public television. I think the principles behind it are nice. True, some very good shows that are on it may not exist if public TV were to vanish (though this would have to be proven on a per-show basis - generally speaking, if a show is really that great, it’s going to be at least moderately popular, and if it’s moderately popular, it should be at least minimally profitable). But…

I still have general opposition to the government taking my tax dollars to perform a non-essential function that can be achieved by other means, and that I should be able to choose whether or not to fund on my own. Personally, I like many shows that appear on PBS. But what if I didn’t? What if I thought they all sucked? What if I was so bothered by the liberal bias that others have mentioned that the very existence of PBS offended me? Why should I be forced to pay for it? You could argue that it’s for the greater good, and that I’m benefiting indirectly from the existence of PBS, but I’m guessing that my welfare could be increased more be either spending that money on essential functions, or by just giving it to me, and letting me do with that money what I please.

And don’t even get me started on the NEA. I think fine art would survive just fine without government funding. Actually, it would probably fare better, since the public in general likely wouldn’t have such a negative of view of the arts, courtesy of Piss Christ, et al.

No, it’s a problem caused by lousy parenting. When children learn that whining and begging for the latest toy isn’t going to net them anything more than a swat on the behind and an order to knock it off, they quickly learn to behave. I see those children too, and they belong to the same parents whose children you see running about and knocking stuff off the shelves while kicking you in the shins, while mommy or daddy quietly ignores them.

In general, commercials are annoying, but tolerable, and hardly the evil, corrupting influence that some people make them out to be. It’s certainly a small price to pay for more-or-less free television. And if you really don’t want commercials that badly, there’s always premium channels, or you could just buy videos for the kiddies, and shun TV stations entirely.
Jeff