Now the SDMB knows! And knowings half the battle!
Forced? There are a lot of people who don’t like regular Tv shows. They appeal to the common denominator. In order to make money they have to program to appeal to the masses. What TV could promise, will never be realized if selling a product to as many people as possible, determines your programming.
I get my British comedies fix from PBS on Saturday nights, right after a rerun Lawrence Welk!
And Eastenders! Every Tuesday night, two Eastenders! When they’re pre-empted for an auction or something, the PBS station is flooded with calls from irate Eastenders fans. (we are 5 years behind current storylines, we need every episode we can get).
Since the FCC requires over-the-air broadcasters to air a certain percentage of “quality programming” then yes, the stations are forced.
And yes there are those who don’t like much of what’s on TV. I don’t watch too much myself for this reason, but TV is a luxury and forcing it to air X percentage of quality programming would be like requiring record companies to put X number of educational and quality CD’s or MP3’s.
It would not be like that at all. Read post #14.
Guess I’m not too bright. Please point out what I’m supposed to be looking for in that post, because nothing I see contradicts my hypothetical comparison.
Everybody knows about broadcasters’ responsibility to serve the public interest. The problem is that “the public interest” is one of those vague standards that means all sorts of different stuff to different people, and a lot of times, the public interest is better served by reducing regulation and opening more stuff up to competition. A lot of things, like the public file requirement and educational broadcasting requirement are jokes, that require excessive paperwork by the station owners, and rather than actually serving the public, are used as a club by special interest groups or the station’s competitors when the time comes for station renewal.
Mister Rogers got his start on our local PBS station -WQED, just FYI.
He got his start in NBC Studios in New York, but then after three years, went to work for WQED because he was opposed to commercial broadcasting and felt that commercialism had a corrupting influence on children.
Sorry, I meant the show, Mister Rogers Neighborhood specifically – my parents remember watching it when THEY were kids. (I’m not trying to weasel, just repeating what my folks told me)
And he IS a local boy – Latrobe, PA. 
Actually, no one requires over-the-air broadcasters to air anything, and no one has since broadcast deregulation in 1987.
The FCC requires that over-the-air broadcasters offer programming that serves “the public interest” in exchange for the right to use broadcast frequencies. It leaves it to the broadcaster to decide what “the public interest” is. If you and I don’t like it, the FCC allows us to challenge the station’s license at renewal time, providing, of course, we pay our own legal fees and are willing to spend years in hearings and appeals.
That’s why, out of my hometown’s six commercial over-the-air stations, one has NO local programming at all, one has a single 30-minute local talk show once a week, and one airs local news produced by one of the three stations that still have a news department.
And that’s why we still have PBS.
Actually, they remember watching him when he was on The Children’s Corner.
What’s my point? Thank god for PBS.
My only point is that regardless of who specifies what’s in the public interest, there is still the requirement for public interest shows and I think it’s silly.
I listen to NPR here in Oregon. The only local show that I’m aware of is a town hall type discussion show called “Think out loud”. But to me, local and public interest are two different things. I think things can be local, and not in the public interest, or in the public interest but not local.
While I watched these shows as a kid, for the most part I was brought up on books. Besides, Fred Rogers is dead and his show is no longer widely carried - when it is aired it looks amazingly dated. My own kids never paid it any attention at all.
Sesame Street had its place in our house, but I have always wondered about the connection the show has to the merchandising arm. It often seems that the show is a massive hour-long commercial for a line of toys at Wal-Mart or Toys R Us.
As for there being no source for some of the content that PBS provides - I don’t think this is true anymore. The best TV documentaries I have seen lately have come from the HBO Films operation and some other cable providers. Sure it isn’t one-stop shopping and it isn’t on broadcast TV, but is is there. Inexpensively there too - these generally go to DVD before long, and you don’t have to shell out big bucks in a pledge drive to get the DVD. 
Over the air broadcasters are required to air at least three hours of children’s educational programming a week. They’re required to provide reasonable access to candidates for federal office at the lowest advertising price tier, and if they provide access to one candidate for public office, they are required to provide it to all other candidates for that office. They’re required to not broadcast material that is “obscene”, and may only broadcast material that is “profane” or “indecent” between the hours of 10 pm and 6 am. They are not permitted to intentionally distort the news or knowingly broadcast false information about a crime or catastrophe. They’re not allowed to broadcast misleading information about contests their station runs, or broadcast advertisements or advertisements for lotteries (with a bunch of exceptions).
They’re required to provide closed captioning of most of their programming, and are required to participate in the Emergency Alert System. They are required to not air advertisements for tobacco products.
Hmm, the paint in my house was safe and I did have a child safety seat.
Of course, it was made of lead…
I think of what A&E was in 1985. I watched British comedies, Shakespeare, opera, classical concerts. It had my viewership then. Look at what it is now. Any time I look, it’s only momentarily & reminds me why it no longer has my viewership.
That’s why PBS still exists.
Ummm, I tried to trim it down but pretty much the whole post is relevant. We own the airwaves. We don’t own CDs and MP3s. What don’t you get about why these things aren’t equivalent at all?
What, you rent your CDs and MP3’s?
Anyway, my point is that I find some of the requirements for stations to be ridiculous and saying that they’re there because we own the airwaves doesn’t make them any less ridiculous to me. But that’s just my opinion.
Huh? Record companies own them. Did you really not read post #14? Because by continuing to push this false analogy you really look like you didn’t.