Centerfield

it is more difficult to endure the consistent movement toward partisanship on its airwaves

Data, please. Or is this simply a subjective impression? We know that many conservatives don't like the tilt of some PBS programming, but that's absolutely nothing new! And how much of the programming is really tilted? 2% ? 5%? 10%?

Is there any reason whatsover to think there's a "consistent movement towards partisanship" instead of, much more simply, a faint liberal bias that shows up on selected occasions?

I watch PBS frequently and I don't see a slant. Most of my viewing is either Sesame Street, with my son, or I frequently turn on their (excellent) concerts in the evening. I fail to see how either one of those is biased in any way.

I've even watched numerous documentaries, which I've found to be mostly well-researched and fair.

hey, my show is on public tv!

How about these questions:

Is public TV/Radio an essential enough service that we are justified forcing people to pay for it with the force of law (i.e. taxes) regardless of thier will in the matter?

Given, the budget/economic situation is it an essential enough service that it should take priority over many other services that are being cut?

In other words, it be nice to have good artwork hanging from every telephone pole in the U.S..... but is it something we really want to pay for?

Perhaps it would be useful to look at the amount of Government support goes to public TV/radio and the amount of fundraising that supplants the costs of public TV/radio.

The amount of Government financing to public TV has become smaller since the start of the legislation. Some of this is the actual amount is smaller (per inflation), another part is the growth of PBS/NPR/etc., and some of this is due to the bureaucracy of public TV/radio.

If the Government zeroed out their support to public TV, would public TV/radio cease? No. It would probably shrink in some areas in the country (those areas where there is less general public support) but the urban areas would continue to have public TV.

The commercialization of public TV/radio has grown to the point that nearly rivals commerical TV/radio.

Cengel, to a large extent I agree with you that there are many perils in public funding of the arts. IMO, it's a bad idea more often than not. (Excluding arts education.)

However, I'm not convinced that public TV is purely art. It has educational and informational roles to fill, to say nothing of the value from the parental perspective of commercial free child-appropriate programming like Sesame Street etc. I don't have kids, But I know parents see value in this.

I guess my answer to you query is this. You are suggesting that we evaluate a particular budget-financed government program as to whether it is crucial, essential, necessary, optional, purely wasteful, etc. If we are going to do such a budget-related program review to evaluate necessity, the only fair way to do it is by evaluating each and every program. This as opposed to trotting out the "nice but not essential" argument in chosen cases where the attempt to kill the program is really politically-driven.

Again, I have much sympathy for the necessity vs. luxury argument. But it should be applied across the board. I wonder if someone has the numbers, but I know that a substantial portion of PBS funding is via donations, and that many taxpayers see a lot of value in PBS. I wonder how much taxpayer dough goes to PBS as compared to some dollar figure a think tank can come up with for non-essential state projects (IOW, pork. The corn museum. The Moakley footbridge.)

If we are going to honorably pursue the goal of cutting down on tax dough spent on unnecessary items, IMO we should go after pork and perverse federal incentives given to states and localities. You know what I mean, mechanisms where, say, a town puts in a traffic light it doesn't really need because the feds reimburse at such a high rate, and so on.

I think we could save a lot of federal money by getting rid of such incentives and doing more block grants closer to the local level were local officials will spend more wisely based on consideration by merit.

I have mixed feelings. Part of this is the age-old argument of "In tight times should pay for art instead of needed human services". Certainly many of the type of shows you could only get on PBS are now very available on cable. But then still there are still many folks who don't have cable. Is that a compelling public need. You can see how I'm mixed.

As for the leftward slant, the only show that I see that's left of center is Bill Moyer's. Maybe that's why they have Tucker Carlson on now. Some folks may question Frontline but I find it generally in the middle. Its also well done tv journalism that focuses on one story for A WHOLE HOUR. In depth analysis, what a concept!

I think PBS and NPR are good stuff, well worth the tax money. There's no doubt that they are a good venue for things that otherwise wouldn't appear (yes, even in the cabled world).

Tax-wise, it's a much better ROI than the Beeb's license fee. Although, I believe that the Beeb does deliver more goodies, so maybe their deal is worthwhile at that (any Britons here to comment?).

I'm not convinced that the partisanship is getting worse. First, McNeil/Lehrer is as centrist as news shows get. Second, the Beeb had exactly the same reaction to the idea of deterring Hitler from engaging in WWII as they have today to action in Iraq. Seems pretty steady to me!

Churchill had to work hard to get his pro-rearmament point of view through the BBC when Hitler was rearming in open despite of the Versailles Treaty and beginning to annex neighboring turf.