Interesting. It always seemed odd that PBS is such an frequent target of Republicans while the Voice of America seems fly under the radar. VOA is fully-taxpayer funded to the tune of $260M/yr.
I'm all for getting rid of them both.
Save PBS. It makes us safer
61–70 of 121 posts
Re: Save PBS. It makes us safer
#62How come PBS cannot fund itself? And make profit and revenue? Just curious.
Ask yourself: Why do kids prefer to spend money on pizza and burgers, and not green vegetables and fruit? It's obvious which is the better investment.
Re: Save PBS. It makes us safer
#63The President's budget proposal might tell you something about what the Administration is about, but it's not a serious legislating document; the budget is one of a few subjects that is entirely delegated to Congress. Meanwhile, PBS is a rounding error in the non-military discretionary budget (which is itself dwarfed by mandatory entitlement spending).
It's been said, most recently I think by John Dickerson, that conservatives benefit more from having PBS around as an issue than they would by slashing its funding. As several people here have pointed out: PBS gets ~15% of its funding from the government and could easily make up the shortfall, but the GOP would lose a straw man to beat up. This particular straw man goes all the way back to Reagan. It was even a campaign issue in the 2012 election.
The point of Presidential budgets is to frame the conversation, not to enact changes.
Re: Save PBS. It makes us safer
#64How come PBS cannot fund itself? And make profit and revenue? Just curious.
It probably could fund itself and make a profit. But the whole point is that the country is choosing to invest in providing quality media content in the form of high quality detailed reporting and educational content because it's critical for the success of our nation. I think even the most partisan American would have a hard time looking at commercial media and declaring it a resounding success - educational channel…
Certainly as far as dramas and comedies go, commercial channels like HBO/Netflix/etc have left PBS in the dust. PBS Kids has really good stuff, but then they're probably already profitable.
Re: Save PBS. It makes us safer
#65Interesting. It always seemed odd that PBS is such an frequent target of Republicans while the Voice of America seems fly under the radar. VOA is fully-taxpayer funded to the tune of $260M/yr.
I suspect it's because VOA flies under the radar in general. I for one have never heard of it.
Re: Save PBS. It makes us safer
#66To me, anybody who argues that PBS should be cut loses all credibility as a budget hawk (if they had any to begin with). PBS is an incredibly valuable public-private partnership. For every dollar the federal government spends, two or three listeners listeners voluntarily contribute a dollar of their own money, much of which goes to their local community. Other programs should be looking to public broadcasting as a fi…
PBS is in a dying industry. Television. Perhaps another equally good public-private partnership will arrive. The Khan Academy and Wikipedia are something like that.
Are those resources as easily accessible to people who are not privileged? What about the children's shows? Are those easily accessible to underprivileged people's televisions?
Re: Save PBS. It makes us safer
#67Interesting. It always seemed odd that PBS is such an frequent target of Republicans while the Voice of America seems fly under the radar. VOA is fully-taxpayer funded to the tune of $260M/yr.
Voice of America is government (originally, anti-Soviet) propaganda. Republicans have long been very supportive of it, and as Trump was getting ready to take office moved to centralize control of it, removing the management structure that was designed to limit political abuse.
Re: Save PBS. It makes us safer
#68To me, anybody who argues that PBS should be cut loses all credibility as a budget hawk (if they had any to begin with). PBS is an incredibly valuable public-private partnership. For every dollar the federal government spends, two or three listeners listeners voluntarily contribute a dollar of their own money, much of which goes to their local community. Other programs should be looking to public broadcasting as a fi…
PBS is in a dying industry. Television. Perhaps another equally good public-private partnership will arrive. The Khan Academy and Wikipedia are something like that.
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Re: Save PBS. It makes us safer
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
What? Care to back up your claim at all instead of just traipsing in and saying "no"? I watch PBS every day and they are most certainly not commercials as your parent comment says. They generally are 10 seconds at most, have maybe two sentences about the company, and show the logo. Usually one of those sentences is "Company xxx is proud to support PBS".
Dictionary.com says a commercial is "a paid advertisement or promotional announcement." Companies pay PBS, they get an announcement promoting the company. It's a commercial. If Company xxx just wanted to do great things, it could easily give money and seek no acknowledgement (the same way that, ahem, viewers give money and get no on-air acknowledgement, not even a flash in crawling text.) But Company xxx wants to be…
This honestly feels like unnecessary pedantry
Re: Save PBS. It makes us safer
#70Interesting. It always seemed odd that PBS is such an frequent target of Republicans while the Voice of America seems fly under the radar. VOA is fully-taxpayer funded to the tune of $260M/yr.
I suspect it's because VOA flies under the radar in general. I for one have never heard of it.
VoA is great if you are ever stuck in some remote part of the world with no media access but a shortwave radio.