to the patient Aussie that made the original post:
g'day;-)
As they point out during pledge breaks, the largest amount of funding of PBS
comes from voluntary donations by viewers ("subscribers"). Corporate donations
and sponsorships fill the gap between the ever-shrinking government subsidy and
shrinking pool of citizen subscribers. You can't run "normal" commercials on
PBS (that may change soon, there's a movement to loosen up the rules about
this), but you can pay for your company to be "mentioned", to "sponsor" a
program.... this is pretty low-key compared to regular American commercial TV.
You get one soft and fuzzy 30-second plug at the top of the program, and one at
the end. No interruptions of the show. A famous example of this used to be
"Masterpiece Theater", for years, "Sponsored by a grant from Mobil
Corporation". The running gag from this used to be that PBS then stood for
"Petroleum Broadcasting System". But since M.T. was always pretty much
historical costume dramas, there wasn't much chance to add-in any pro-petroleum
bias to the programming. I say, if you don't like the commercial influence
creeping in, STFU and pay in some pledge money or something.
I think most of the neocon hooting and hollering against PBS involves the
news/documentary programming, shows like "Frontline", "POV" and maybe "The
American Experience", and smaller one-shot docs that get aired here and there
on the network. Shows that do have a point of view, one not usually in step
with the government line. Often, they uncover another side of a debate, which
I find a helpful counterbalance. Very often, you find great stories that are
never aired anywhere but PBS and NPR.
As to the daily schedule, at least in my area, a weekday may start early in the
pre-dawn hours with taped math and english classes/tutoring, for high school
thru early college level, and for folks who need remedial help. These are run
in conjunction with thru-the-mail coursebooks. Also, the sidebands of many PBS
stations are used to broadcast books and newspaper/ magazine readers for the
blind, thru special decoders. As more folks wake up, you get mostly
children's programming, educational cartoons like "Arthur", "Clifford the Big
Red Dog", "Sesame Street", etc.from about 8 till 4. Late afternoons, after the
kiddy block, you get the dry and neutral "Nightly Business Report", and Jim
Lehrer's Newshour. Into the evening, you get arts programs, science shows like
"Nova" (aka "Horizon"),or "Scientific American Frontiers", or a "National
Geographic" special. (that lost one is more rare now the nat geo has a cable
channel of it's own) One of the afore-mentioned docs, and/or some music
programming: symphony, jazz, opera, bluegrass, the multi-genre "Austin City
Limits", etc. late at night they ofen play old Monty Python shows, Fawlty
Towers, Are You Being Served, Doctor Who, HitchHiker's guide to The Galaxy, The
Prisoner... basically, brit sci-fi or brit comedies. If there is a national
news event like the political conventions, or the impeachment of the president,
or state of the union address, etc. it gets gavel-to-gavel coverage, without
interruption or commentary, until it's over. Usually, a panel of NPR and PBS
newspeople will discuss what's going on, interview some guests, fill the time
slot to the top or bottom of the hour. This was very useful just recently at
the Democratic national Convention coverage, where outstanding keynote speaker,
Illinois state senator Barack Obama, made perhaps the best speech I've heard
since Kennedy.... and the major three US network stations all missed it, going
instead to sports or comdy or 'reality' shows. C-SPAN and PBS gave it to us
live, without commercial breaks or commentators handicapping over the top of
what was being said.
So, to recap: educational programming, cultural "enrichment", unblinking
presentation of essential government activity...
Yeah, Larry, real radical, foaming at the mouth stuff pinko commie shite there,
hide your children! Light the torches!
What PBS does mostly is provide a sheltered place for programming of many types
that just isn't commercial enough to survive the American broadcasting
money-machine, but the folks in power think is useful and uplifting to have
anyway. Stuff that has some kind of intrinsic value for the extra depth and
color it brings to the airwaves, that has some kind of generally agreed upon
"social value"... it's the plate of green veggies you didn't like to eat as a
kid, though they were "good for you". Unlike the Beeb and NHK, you aren't
forced to support it directly, except by that federal subsidy that some folks
get so cranked up about. Honestly, it's like a tenth of one penny on your tax
dollar, if that, and shrinking every year; of all the obscene waste our feds do
in our name every day, surely THIS is not the first thing on the list to carp
about.
Of course, everybody loves to bitch and joke about the pledge drives, telethons
the stations do several times a year to get people to call in and pledge
subscriptions. To try to make these beg a thons less annoying, they will
usually pick out a really good movie or pay per view concert type event to hold
your attention, and interrupt it every 20 minutes or so with a five to ten
minute pledge break, also hawking items like coffee mugs, tote bags, VHS copies
of the show you were just now taping, etc. Afer a while, you pledge just to get
them to STFU and resume the good programming. It's a lot of bother , but if
you watch the shows for free without paying, I don't see why you have the
authority to complain. You could always switch over to the commercial TV show
where the five mostly naked people trapped for a month in a house full of
cameras have to eat bugs while being lit on fire to see who will marry the
hunchback, or whatever they call it.
Is there something similar in ozz?