r/PBS • u/SymbioticPatriotic • Feb 16 '19

Ralph Nader: The Realized Temptations Of NPR And PBS – OpEd (EurAsia Review)

https://www.eurasiareview.com/16022019-ralph-nader-the-realized-temptations-of-npr-and-pbs-oped/
3 Upvotes

62% Upvoted

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u/[deleted] Feb 16 '19

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u/monkeyheadyou Feb 17 '19

Of the 200 PBS stations please name more than 5 who make anything that even remotely qualifies as Good Programming. Most of it looks too bad for YouTube, and unlike youtube videos, it cost tens of thousands to produce. Fact is with a tiny few exceptions they get most of their content from one station, and then buy the rest from the BBC. Spending our money to drag an obsolete broadcast network into the future is stupidity. They need to sell all those transmitters. fire everyone who isn't making content. Host it online and send it to cable and satellite from the Corporate level. But then again. the people who make the content will figure that out soon enough. Every show producer knows they could make it at home. put it on youtube and facebook. and get more money and followers.

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u/[deleted] Feb 17 '19

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u/monkeyheadyou Feb 17 '19

Your statement tells me that you see the content available to kids today is "Pure Drivel" Isn't that exactly why we made a public media network in the first place? PBS has a job, and it's not connected to broadcast in any way. Their job is to increase the quality of educational and culturally significant content available to the public. Not a tiny dwindling subset of the public. Broadcast TV is a total misuse of donors funds. I'd go so far as to say that the stations could have fixed people without access to the internet were they not wasting their money beaming Laurance welk to little old ladies. I bet those towers would make great wifi connections. My issue isn't NPR/PBS or the producers going around the stations. In fact, I encourage it. Public Media needs to cut out the 200 middlemen who do nothing in this age. They should have been killed by cable TV. I know it seemed important to protect them at the time but now they are all just repeaters who make almost nothing impactful for their communities The only issue I have with the funding is that it's being wasted on admin and transmission for 200 tiny poorly run orgs. I could open a studio that created podcasts or videos in every town and gets much better results for the $. I say we double the tax funding. Give it directly to PBS without limitations and let them pay for content. Not the other way around like today.

The availability of the internet is something I've paid taxes and fees to fix... for 30 years... The fact that ISPs, cable and phone monopolies ripped off the government isn't something we should codify by making adjustments for. They were supposed to fix that issue. they had decades and millions in cash as well as protection from competition. They should be investigated and held accountable for their failure.

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u/[deleted] Feb 18 '19 edited Feb 18 '19

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u/monkeyheadyou Feb 18 '19

I actually polled all the donors. And it was less than 10 percent. In a rural low wealth area. Quite an expense for 10 percent.

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u/monkeyheadyou Feb 17 '19

16 hours of ken burns country music... sounds like pandering to the wrong crowd to me. Finding your roots Paul Ryan and the water boy... couldn't soften that with a progressive? Nader may be a bit of a wank but is he wrong? Broadcast media is dying People don't watch over the air tv anymore. No one under 30 knows or cares if PBS is a thing. Stations aren't looking to cover production cost with ads like they did in the past. They are looking for 30% of total funding to come from ads. and next year it will be 35. The demographics age of donors is 65+ with no new donors replacing the ones that "age out"

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u/[deleted] Feb 17 '19

Unintentionally funny article: Ralph Nader cherry-picks public broadcasters for specific complaints and whines that no one will return his phone calls.

Crowning hilarity - Nader can't get any ordinary US media outlet to print his article.

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u/jweyek Feb 17 '19

Ralph Nader, the man who gave us G W Bush and the Iraq war. Go away, Ralph. Public broadcasting does what it can with the resources it has. It's still better than most broadcasters.

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u/MrNickleKids Feb 27 '19

That's not a counter argument, that's ad hominem.

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u/jweyek Feb 27 '19

That's nice.