In my youth, when TV channels stopped at 13, PBS provided a “fourth network” for things that couldn’t get sponsors, like two hour stage plays. They had the odd pledge format back then too, and my sister would sit there in the banks of volunteers waiting to answer the phone.
Now we have 500 channels. And several are public access.
What’s the point of PBS? To give us BBC shows?
With hundreds of channels bidding for content, I think BBC could find buyers among them.
A lot of specialty channels are dropping PBS type programming and going for reality shows. “Ice Road Truckers” on the History Channel? “Deadliest Catch” on the Discovery Channel (read what Discovery was originally supposed to be).
Anyway, the point is, commercial television always goes for the lowest common denominator, and right now that’s reality TV. Hell, even MTV, MTV2, and VH1 show mostly reality TV and very few videos.
If you want to argue if Public television and radio deserve tax dollars, that’s one thing, but it’s pretty obvious why they still exist.
PBS coexists with FOX and Food Network for the same reason public libraries coexist with Borders and Barnes & Noble. We can debate the wisdom of various forms of funding for them but the parallels are obvious.
PBS rules. Have you ever watched Nova?
Nova. Great Performances. The American Experience. Just a few of the shows that have no equivalent on any other channel.
Austin City Limits, Soundstage
P.O.V., Frontline, the NewsHour
Now (to some degree)*, Foreign Exchange
*
Yeah, PBS has as much worthwhile as most nets.
My local station also runs two additional signals since going digital. So there are second showings of some shows, & a whole “Create” channel that’s a bit like what TLC used to be.
I don’t miss cable.
How many of us were brought up on “Sesame Street” and “Mister Rogers”? Plus, what about local PBS channels? Ours feature a lot of interesting events in the community. (They’re the local classic music station on the radio, for example)
(BTW, shouldn’t something “Ice Road Truckers” be on Discovery? It’s not that it’s a bad show, but WHAT the fuck does it have to do with HISTORY?)
I’m too busy watching “Monster Quest” on The Science Channel. Now, that’s a science show!
BTW, PBS tried it’s hand at Reality TV, too. And I think you could call “Antique Roadshow” a reality show, sort of.
Lord help me, I just clicked over from the Eminem thread in CS to read this!
I think I found a refutation to solipsism as in this thread: Because my mind wouldn’t have such lousy taste as to conjure up a world where the culture is dominated by reality shows and rap. :eek:
It may be of little consequence to a 500 channel cable or satellite selection.
It is of great consequence to a 5 to 7 network over the air (terrestrial broadcast) selection.
http://www.pbs.org/search/search_programsaz.html Frontline. Antiques Roadshow, Nova, History detectives, …the list of unique programs is huge. Regular TV waits until a PBS program catches on before they start cranking them out. This Old House spawned a bunch of copies.
I’ve never understood the point of this argument. I also had lead based paint in my house and didn’t sit in a child safety seat.
I’m gathering that you feel that these programs are good and you fear that they would be lost if PBS was no longer on the air. Surely Sesame Street would be sold to Nickelodeon, for instance?
I think that the OP is right. This might have made sense in 1967, but today it is laughable. This was something that Newt Gingrich tried to do away with in 1995 and he was rebuffed…
But, as I pointed out, a lot of local events are broadcast on PBS.
(I also think that Sesame Street would start to suck if subjected to advertisers)
Thank Og!
Still, he, his henchmen, at least one President (a Democrat), and even his foes across the aisle, managed to greatly lower the educational and public-service value American broadcast consumers had previously enjoyed, while simultaneously greatly enriching corporate broadcasting entities and their stockholders.
Congress as a whole, Democrats and Republicans, raped and pillaged the raison d’etre–the very idea–of civil broadcasting and the obligations broadcast license holders owe the American public. There has always been a mandate than anyone fortunate enough to make a shitload of money by using the property of the citizens of the United States must in turn, deliver a certain quantity and quality of public-service and educational programing. If they do not uphold their end of the bargain, they can have their license revoked.
Over time, corporate lobbyists have managed to decrease both the quantity and quality of both “worthwhile” programming (open to opinion), but also necessary and mandated programming (crisis notification, government information, local community affairs, etc.)
the Telecommunications Act of 1996 was only the biggest and official “fuck you” to the owners of the American airwaves. Incremental deregulation, castration of the FCC (or infiltration of corporate butt-boys to its Board) and basic corporate piggery had been ramping up for years prior to that.
So the answer to the question posed by the OP is simple: PBS, NPR, and other government funded media outlets are the only meaningful vestiges remaining of American broadcasters’ mandate to serve and act on behalf of the public interests of its Master, the American public.
***On a side note: *** the SDMB is chock-full of really intelligent, informed, and involved people of all political stripes. So it always amazes me how little people here know about broadcaster’s responsibilities and their recent (since the '80’s or so) lack of accountability. Similarly many people here never seem to grasp that the airwaves in the USA are publicly–not privately–owned. All of them–not just PBS. Many Dopers don’t ever quite seem to understand (or maybe accept) that broadcasters can not just air whatever the hell they want; that broadcasting is only partially governed by the whims of the All-Knowing Invisible Hand. Mostly it’s governed by the whims of you and me.
One sees evidence of this SDMB disconnect anytime a thread like this one or all the threads about the DTV switchover come up. EM frequencies are a scarce, finite resource. Because of this, broadcast TV and radio stations have very different rules about what they can and can not present to the public than newspapers, books, cable/satellite TV or the internet.
Eh, it’s popular, carries good programing, provides childrens programming for families without cable, more then half the cost of it is raised from private funds and consumes less then a millionth of the federal budget.
I realize some folks have some philosophical reasons to oppose it, but honestly, it’s a popular institution that many people enjoy and costs very little money. There are probably bigger fish to fry if you want to oppose federal spending.
Plus everytime some politician talks about cutting it, PBS supporters instantly conjure up the image of the unemployed, teary-eyed homeless muppets this would create, and not even the most rightwing congressman can afford that kind of bad press.
Mister Rogers kicked ass 
when he defended PBS back in 1969.
sqweels
I like some reality TV, so if the world was my imagination, I wouldn’t get rid of it, but it wouldn’t be as dominant. Also, with a few exceptions, I generally don’t like rap or hip hop, but just because I don’t like something doesn’t mean it’s crap, so again, if this were my world, it would still exist, it just wouldn’t be as dominant.
I Love Me, Vol. I
Yes, I’ve heard that over-the-air television stations are supposed to provide X number of hours of public service and educational programming. But I’ve always thought that it’s a silly rule anyway. Yes it’s nice if there’s good educational programming, and I’m not happy with TV stations sacrificing quality shows for cheap ones, but in my opinion quality shows shouldn’t be forced on TV networks by the government.
Is there a good book about all this? I’ve heard most of this stuff before, but not in any great detail. And hell, I was born in the '80s, so it’s not like I got to grow up seeing all these changes. We got cable when I was 4.
With a format based on the BBC original that began in 1979, a wee bit before the modern concept of the “reality show”.
there is a lot of reality shows on PBS if you mean nonfiction but not documentary or lecture. there are lots of DIY, cooking and craft that are real situations which are shown with all the unexpected things that can happen in projects.
for reality tv in terms of commercial tv challenge shows it was all downhill after Fear Factor.