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A Different Kind Of Digital Divide
Logic Bomb writes: "The New York Times has a really interesting article about PBS and its struggle to convert to digital. On one hand, PBS stations need to start broadcasting their low-definition signals using digital transmission just like everyone else, and some stations are struggling with finances. On the other, better-funded big-city stations are already concerned with money for providing interactive content. Even worse, rules for determining what digital broadcast programming cable providers must carry threaten PBS with being essentially forced out of some markets. I don't watch TV much, but PBS falls into a class of things that I consider vital to our nation's citizenry. I hope things work out ok."
Well, at least $385 is a lot cheaper than the prices you have to pay to get an HDTV from Best Buy. Of course, very few people have 1920x1080 displays on their computers, but even a 1024x768 display is much better than an analog TV set..
So much fun stuff to spend money on, yet I worry about the quality of a lot of the products I want to get. Do I really want to buy the first HDTV card out there? Do I want to get the newest chipset when some companies (*cough*via*cough*) can't even get their old chips to work right?
Sure, the chicken-and-egg problem exists, but a lot of the problem here in the US is that the knowledgeable buyers are skittish about the possibility that the broadcast format might change (8VSB->DVB), or that current sets could be obsoleted because corporate interests want to introduce copy protection, etc. Not to mention the fact that lots of people don't want projection TV sets (which seems to be what 95% of the HDTVs being produced are). At least many of the sets use an add-on card for receiving HDTV, which could be replaced if the formats change (though that would still be a significant cost).
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Most of the good shows on Discovery, History, and TLC came from the public-funded BBC.
Junkyard wars, walking with dinosaurs, robotica, and the history of britain (watching that now).
PBS is really good at carrying the shows that would not have success on regular broadcast TV - Dr. Who, Red Green, Are You Being Served, etc. Which are all done outside the US as well. *sigh*
...not a public-broadcasting problem.
The conversion to digital is not working particularly well. The equipment is very expensive and the benefits are limited (certainly not enough to justify the outrageous expense). People are not flocking to the new technology (as they did when color was introduced) and there is little cachet in a station going digital (or in a home going digital).
Public TV is in a bind because they have been given a deadline for conversion which makes no sense. The commercial TV stations have a large number of options: They can use the larger bandwidth for more stations while they wait for a market to develop for digital (thus bringing in more revenue). Such an option just gives public TV more space to fill.
The WNET lament about interactive content is laughable, however. WGBH in Boston produces the best web sites on the web (check out NOVA and Frontline for good examples of what the future of the web will be like for sites associated with TV shows. WNET is way behind in this, but it has nothing to do with anything except the bureaucracy at WNET.
Eternal vigilance only works if you look in every direction.
the only reason that I can see provided by /. posters is "because I enjoyed it" What about those who didn't (and since it is publicly funded , payed for it regardless)?
Oddly enough, when I lived in the US I had to pay taxes for roads, schools, and the miltary, even though I had no car, no kids, and did not consider myself under threat from invasion.
I get a chuckle when people are amazed that a government-mandated standard is going to cost businesses money. The FCC should auction leases on spectrum. How you use the spectrum should be up to the auction winner. That way, you can provide whatever you want. So if PBS wants to stick with analog NTSC, they can do that. But if a sports channel wants digital HDTV, they can do that as well. What a concept! You know, we have analog cellular and digital cellular (CDMA, GSM, etc.) all existing at once, and I can go down to the local 7-11 with $40 and be on a cellphone in a few minutes. But no, we wouldn't want to touch our glorious government-mandated TELEVISION! Heavens, the people deserve bread and circuses, uh, I mean digital gold-plated HDTV. I don't see how it is in the public interest to force people to purchase $3000 televisions (oh yeah, it will be cheaper down the road, but then again, so will normal television as well.)
That's the problem, there's a law, or a ruling with the force of law, that's says that they can't wait, they have to do it now, just like everybody else with a license to broadcast television over the airwaves. Which means that everybody has to be an early adopter and buy when the demand is the highest it will ever be.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
There's actually an excellent book on this topic by Rob McChesney, former NPR reporter and currently a Professor at the Universiy of Illinois called Rich Media, Poor Democracy . I read it for a class here at RPI, and part of what it detailed was the evolution of radio (which lead directly to television) and the big battle over educational value of the medium. Basically, teachers wanted to use it for education, while various companies, such as RCA, didn't. Basically, all the PBS stuff is just an extension of this same fight. Interesting how history repeats itself.
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PBS is a nicety that is largely outmoded. When there where only 3 networks, and that was all there was as every station was affiliated with one network or another then PBS played a role in providing some form of alternative programming. However, the situation is vastly different today than it was 20 years ago. Today, there are a half-dozen networks broadcasting from traditional stations in almost every market. Moreover, satellite and cable providers offer literally hundreds of channels to most markets.
PBS is still necessary in those rare areas of the country where the market is not large enough to support traditional broadcast stations, both for radio and television. But supporting PBS stations in major market cities is simply a waste of taxpayer money. The only justification for supporting PBS is to have broadcast capabilities for emergency information in areas where there are no (or very few) other broadcast stations. Those areas are very rare in today's world.
I don't mind people wanting to support something I disagree with, but I do mind every debate being started with hyperbole. By making a claim such as PBS being "vital" to the citizenry, the rhetoric is charged so that any debate can't ever really discuss the merits of continued support. After all, if you are against continued support, for whatever reason, you wish to take away something that is "vital." Hogwash!
If you are seriously interested in the subject, subscribe to the OpenDTV mailing list (OpenDTV at topica.com) and read the message archives. Beware, this is a high-volume mailing list.
The short symbol length in the ATSC standard makes it vulnerable to multipath. There is also a problem with too few bits allocated to the training sequence.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Blame the broken ATSC 8-VSB standard for over-the-air (OTA) transmission of HDTV. While receiver designs are improving, there are still severe deficiencies in their ability to receive signals in the presence of static and dynamic multipath. The current system was designed and tested with the assumption that the viewer would have a directional antenna, with a rotator, on a 30' mast. This would be less of a problem if cable operators would carry the HDTV broadcast signals on their systems. Pigs will exceed Mach 5 before the cable operators voluntarily carry HDTV on their systems.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
True there's some folks out there that claim Fox News or Rush Limbaugh is "un-biased", but that's only because of some defect in their understanding of bias.
Sometime back in the past, I heard an explaination of how conservatives find "liberal bias" in presumably un-biased reporting. It turns out the act of even broadcasting on a topic which might be disagreable is interpreted of bias.
For example, a report "AIDS cases rising among (some group)" which is nothing but a dry reading of public heath statistics might be interpreted by some individuals as bias. Why? They assume that the reporter is saying "We Ought To Do Something!", when they are not, and as they dislike the group in question, they ascribe the fact that they have to hear about it as a political conspiricy.
To some extent, the media has put themselves in this situation by striving for "non-bias", which is unobtainable to the extent that you could get everyone to agree. The conservative talking heads play this much smarter, wearing their bias loudly and proudly. I think the continual "liberal media" detracters would just rather have Tom Brokaw say "We ought to do something about that" after each report, because at least they could pin them down on something, disagree, and watch the news in peace instead of imagining ghosts in the closet.
Note that "unbiased reporting" is a relatively new concept in journalism, and one that hasn't necessarily made the news media more popular. The country got along just fine when every media outlet was blatently biased.
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Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
I hope things will be okay.
The RIAA and MPAA are trying to strangle individual copyright holders by controlling content delivery methods.
I hope things will be okay.
WIPO wants control of the domain name registration process.
I hope things will be okay.
Corporations are storing huge amounts of personal data on us, and selling it to government organziations.
I hope things will be okay.
We're running out of IPv4 address space.
I hope things will be okay.
Black holes are going to swallow the universe!
I hope things will be okay.
The light is blinking! The LIGHT IS BLINKING!!!
I hope things will be okay.
Now, I can sympathize with what you're saying, but only in the context of there being TRUE alternatives to corporate owned and controlled TV. "Frontline", in my opinion, puts on more hard edged news stories that any of the networks, or even the cable channels that I've seen; this is an example of PBS providing a type of programming that just isn't provided elsewhere. However, you are right that even they are swayed by the ways of the political winds in their programming, but are still more risky (in my view) than the networks.
"Frontline" was the show that dared to broadcast (soon after the Gulf War) a story that contradicted many of the sacred poodles that the press and politicians had been saying during the war (such as the Isreali Defense Minister saying that Patriot missles were of no use in destroying the warheads of the SCUD missles; or that the CIA essentially coerced Hosni Mubarak to spy on Saddam before the war started, in a supposed "negotiation"; or that Kuwait spent billions on advertising and lobbying in the U.S. before the war, including a highly deceitful propaganda campaign detailing Iraqi "attrocities")
They also recently played a series with interviews of DEA agents who admitted that all their efforts to control supply into the US during the 80's had utterly failed (much their own surprise), and that many now advocated an end to the "drug war", and some form of legalization with treatment regimes, etc.
I never saw anything like this on the networks, CNN, HBO, etc. To me that is riskier TV than anything outside of cable access (and I'm ignoring the issue of whether it is accurate reporting or not; I think it is, others may not. It is still risky)
So, you may want PBS to go belly up; but it would be sad if they did, and there was no loosening of control of the airwaves in other ways. If you think PBS is afraid of corporate sponsors, imagine how all the other channels feel who are paid exclusively by corporate sponsors.
"It's overkill, of course. But you can never have too much overkill." - Anonymous Slashdot Coward
It's a channel that not enough people watch to justify it's existence on television. If it could run without federal funding, it would do so (nobody likes to beg in order to do their work). There simply is not a large enough audience to make public television in this country work, in its current state, because it's not interesting. I watch public television sometimes. I think NOVA is a good show... but it's not good enough to pay for. I would rather watch a channel which is free to me than pay for a channel with third rate documentaries.
Unless PBS is willing to get sponsorship in the form of commercials and become financially independant of the government (or gain additional funding from some outside source) it has no business taking up space on the dial. It doesn't provide a service, it doesn't provide value... all it does is give a few people jobs and placate the left who can then say they're at least attempting to culture us unwashed masses.
In the end, our tax dollars should not be going to such an endevour... it doesn't add anything to our society that couldn't be done just as well and at a lower cost by private citizens running private business. We need to stop supporting these failing ideas just because we think that they may be "good" for us. If they don't work, let's try something else. Public television has accomplished very little... it's time to try something else.
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RumorsDaily
After all, if you're not biased you'll be more inclined not to form opinions on matters that have some moral implication. Let people choose for themselves! This in itself is regarded by the orthodox (of whichever creed) as unwholesomely permissive, liberal, unamerican, commie stuff..
What? Let people choose for themselves which gender they're attracted to?? Sodom and Gomorra! You are SO biased!! People working on sundays? You heathen! People working on saturdays? That's the sabbath! People working on tuesdays? You capitalist!! And so on...
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SCO employee? Check out the bounty
Being a liberal, I would have a hard time noticing any bias in PBS programming. Do any conservatives read slashdot? If so, is PBS biased in your opinion?
I think most people would agree that unbiased public television is a good thing(TM) for our country, but if a large portion of people in the audience think that PBS and seasame street are really some sort of homosexual mind control (that is not meant to be flaimbait, people really think that) then how can spending lots of tax payer dollars on it be justified?
Slashdot 's editors are dickheads
Does PBS an as organization support the new p2p file-sharing utilities that have popped up recently? Are there any moves to convert some of the content to types that could be distributed in such a way? You guys have great content, IMHO, but holding on to the "wait until we show it to you" paradigm is getting old. Just curious if there are movement towards this medium that you are aware of.
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+&x
There's only five channels I watch.
PBS
Sci-Fi
Comedy Central
BBC America
UPN.
That's it. And I watch BBC America and PBS more than the others. And I have digital cable. So explain that.
Simon
Coming soon - pyrogyra
Hey, I'm not thrilled about moving to digital either, but it will give us more channels... right?
Yeah, and all of them except the pay per view movies will be MPEG-2 encoded at 2Mb/s.
Which, if you didn't know already, is kinda crap resolution. You get all kinds of artefacts if the picture changes - eg. on a fade in/out.
Simon
Coming soon - pyrogyra
vital to our nation's citizenry
/me tries hard to imagine our nation's citizenry falling over dead or burning down the nation's infrastructure because people could no longer see "Mystery" and "American Playhouse".
You've gotta be kidding.
Oh, go on, check out my job.
(or Congresswoman)
It is amazing how well a letter or an email works for getting a message to your representatives. If congress is going to make TV go digital they need to support public television (a government program) in keeping up with the new regulations.
They are all doing budgeting right now so this is the best time to ask for money from them.
And still I wait for the plethora of PCI-based HDTV tuners... who should I blame for the plain vacancy in the market?
With video cards already able to decode MPEG-2 streams, and others that operate as SDTV tuners, I'm convinced there's an opposing force compelling manufacturers to avoid this obvious early-adopter market. So, is it the movie industry? Local broadcasters? Syndicators? Which copyright robber barons are exerting their influence on manufacturers this time?
If anyone needed an example of how copyright *failed* to promote the science and arts, its this endless paranoia about what level of control will be built into the next generation of media distribution. So the debate drags on for ten years about which fair-use prevention technique will be embedded in the new technology, and in the mean time, we twiddle our thumbs using technology from the 50s.
Where are the independent manufacturers not cowed by the content industry?
My monitor is capable of displaying every resolution HDTV has to offer, and my computer plenty versatile to handle the metadata, so why is my PC not yet equipped with a tuner?
I don't need large brains to have a good time.
As for PBS affiliates showing commericals, my dad works for a PBS affiliate- and I confronted him on the issue. He explained that while they will sell spots that say "This show brought to you in part by Pheonix Insurance" they won't tell you to "buy Insurance." Apparently none of the sponsors on PBS stations will try to _sell_ you anything, but rather just get their name out. Guess that's good for those who are easily brainwashed..
-bugg
And this one by the letter 'r'
Sorry, I Just had to.
Insert wit here.
Having been born and lived in Europe.. I was initially shocked at the lack of educational and/or non-moronic contect on non-cable news channels in U.S. when I moved here (lived 9yrs so far).
.gov (think about it) that wants to keep the unwashed masses where they are.. or both.. the end result is dumbing down of people living in U.S. (remember, talking about non-cable tv).
Now, whether it's big business that controls the stations or the
When you turn on your n o'clock news.. which run general for 30min or 1hr(not nearly enough time).. you basically have 50% of content dealing with people being found dead.. overdosing.. etc etc etc. Other news involve less "demended" [sic] local scandals.. with a blur about how our [sic] president/mayor/etc are doing a good job regarding some issue.. and ofcourse the sports and weather.
International news from what I've seen usually take up 5%, of news coverage (and you wonder why people can't point to Canada on the map), anything that talk unfavorably about the owner company (which usually owns so many other enterprises it's hard to talk negatively about any idustry/etc!)
I could go on and on.. but I think most of us recognize the problem.. let me just give you an example of lack of / disinformation that your local news is.. ask your average Joe about "Socialism."
P.S. Here in NYC there are 2 (more?) nice PBS stations: WNET13 and WLIW21. You can catch BBC World News (U.S. edition) on latter one.
This fact, alone cuts all counter arguments off at the waist, but there is an even more fundmental problem: PBS should not receive any government support, not even from tax exemption let alone direct funding because there is no way for a government supported organization to avoid political bias. If nothing else, it will have a pro-government stance -- whether that be on the right or left of the political spectrum. It just so happens the real authoritarians in the US have been leftists since around the time of Roosevelt.
I dig watching shows about the ring-tailed fox-bat or whatever, but I don't want to hear about how I need to do something to save it from extinction.
Although I am usually regarded as somewhere to the right of Genghis Khan on the "political" spectrum, this is one of PBS's messages with which I agree. Humans are special in the following sense: We can reason about our futures and can choose the degree to which we identify with "the other". In the case of genuine diversity including other life forms, I am far more "leftist" in thoughts and actions than Alan Alda, Cokie Roberts or Margot Adler. All these people (or more precisely, their backers) do is use humanity's natural identification with the surrounding ecosystem as a weapon in the millenia-old conflict between urban vs rural populations -- primarily to justify high taxation rates levied on agrarians in support of cosmopolitans (hunter gatherers are almost gone because they don't provide as good tax base for the cosmopolitans). Rural populations, agrarians as well as hunter gatherers, are more strongly linked to their natural surroundings must more closely identify with nature than urban populations. By preaching to the rural populations about preservation of the natural environment, the urban populations can use the social circuitry of the rural populations to instill guilt which can be redeemed only by paying penance in whatever form the urban priesthood dictates -- in the case of today, April 15, taxation is highlighted as the form, as mythologized in the phrase: Death and Taxes. Other than that, these neopriests preach to us that we must use transport technologies to scramble ecosystems lest we be guilty of "provincial xenophobia". They say they merely want this for human populations because "we are all the same" and at the same time they say they want to preserve human diversity as well as that of nonhuman ecosystems. But by uprooting human populations from their "blood and soil" relationships, the neopriests in fact effectively scramble everything, including non-human cultures, into a homogeneous grey goo. This grey goo, unlike Bill Joy's fears about nanotechnology, is a clear and present biological danger that is destroying vast natural wealth this instant. The problem is the grey goo is the result of a process that is of great temporary benefit to those who are well adapted to cosmopolitan environments, from which the PBS culture, itself, arises. The PBS "altruists", without any need for conspiracy, thereby follow their self-interests and lead us all to destruction.
I am especially alienated from members of my own species who destroy the primary strength of humanity by climbing atop the pulpits and preaching, usually in all self-deceptive sincerity, doctrines that cause the sacrifice of virtually all other peoples, cultures and ecologies, on the alter of their cosmopolitan heavenly city -- an artifice that itself will ultimately fall once its supporting anthrosystems and ecosystems are destroyed.
This is a uniquely human problem.
Those who claim that this is all simply "natural" evolution must then also accept the "natural" reactions thus provoked.
Seastead this.
Now, what DOES offend me is that the government GAVE these license to these rich media types for free! (granted not all regular tv stations are full of money, but most are). Imagine the amount of money the FCC would have had come in if they had to pay the fee for an HDTV license! They tax us, then give the media companies who could afford these things stuff for free. Now I am not saying I am a victim or something just because I can't get one of these license's (even if I could, I would not be able to afford the equipment let alone the real estate needed for a tower)...it's the fact that the government makes stupid choices that costs them (and us) money.
Now, sometimes the goverment needs to step in and do things to spur development. But obviously this HDTV thing is being botched. The way they did this stuff is nothing close to the way that they handled AM/FM. Most of us do not remember a time when AM was the only game in town. The first successor to AM failed because it required the user to buy a new radio. When the FM standard was shown to work along side the AM standard, then FM finally took off. Now you have both AM and FM stations. I think the FCC screwed up when they drafted that all stations should be SD/HD capable by a certain date. That's not right. Analog TV works fine for 90 percent of the things broadcast. Only things that benefit from the resolution increase are movies and sporting events.
Gorkman
Seems like a nice distinction but in reality it isn't. Most TV advertising is to establish brand recognition rather than directly telling you to buy stuff. Look at how few advertisments actually tell you to "Buy this". Many of them don't even try to extol the virtues of the product ("Here is a funny ad, let's mention the product in passing").
So in my mind, advertising is advertising. I was considering donating some money to PBS (I am originally from England so I feel that ad free television is a good thing and I heard that PBS is a great thing). But then I noticed the "brought to you by" ads at the beginning/end of programs. So I am holding off while I reconsider my position.
The funny thing is that in the UK, on the commercial channels, in-between-program advertising used to be OK but "brought to you by" advertising wasn't allowed. It caused a (small) fuss when they started allowing it. Not only that but the "brought to you by" advertising was often particularly annoying (content, not just by being there). That's partly why I'm against it but it has to be said that for childrens' programs, it's a heck of a lot better than "Buy this new sparkly plasticy thing"
Rich
Imagine if we paid a company to maintain our roads, just like we do power lines, cable TV, airport runways, etc.
I'm can see it now: The roads would intermittantly go out of use, be filled with advertisements and vacuous popular culture, and we'd all have to wait two hours just to use them. Where do I sign up?
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PBS does regular begging sessions too, I don't think the BBC could lower themselves to that
Except the BBC have lowered themselves further than that. Every household in the UK that owns one or more devices capable of tuning television signals must pay the BBC a user fee.
Disclaimer: I am not a UKianWill I retire or break 10K?
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c
This one is about the challenge which KQED (San Francisco PBS affiliate) is facing with the conversion to digital broadcasts and digital studio equipment. They have raised (through private donations) $48M of the $70M required for the conversion.
Ah, the familiar refrain:
Why is PBS vital? Discovery, TLC, etc. etc.
I'll tell you why PBS is vital; because not all good programming on television can exist under our all-encompassing running-dog capitlist-pig free market system.
All the 'competing' cable channels are commercial ventures- designed to turn a profit. They sell advertising, they cross-promote, they merchandise. But, some things deserve to be produced and aired which would never, ever, in a million years, make it on any of these faux-enlightenement commercial networks.
Tell me with a straight face that I would be able to tune into the History channel on a Sunday afternoon and wach six hours of, say, 'The Civil War' or 'Connections' or 'Cosmos'. Certainly not all at once, and certainly not without having their content shot full of holes from commercial breaks every 10 minutes, or, worse yet, have the producers of such programming greased by sponsors who would demand changes to the program's content.
I can't speak for everyone, of course, and I'm probably getting ready to sound like a PBS membership drive, but this sort of in-depth stuff is what I grew up on, inspired me to not be afraid to have the big ideas, and that my big ideas don't necessarily have to be 'sponsored by Hyundai'. Commercial broadcasting is designed to sell advertisers' shit to the lowest common demoninator of the audience watching. In public broadcasting, each piece of programming is designed to be very interesting to a small segment of the population. I don't watch 'Arthur' too often, but I damn sure catch 'Frontline' when it's on. Find me a commercial network that would keep airing 'Frontline' for years and years and years.
The acts of law which orginally established the current rules for broadcasting acknowledged that the need for this sort of material existed, and mandated that each market have space in the channel spectrum reserved for such a station. Over time, of course, our corrupt goverment has been bought off and talked into believing that, like so many other issues of public interest, the market will decide.
What a bunch of goddamn red-tie republican cowardice bullshit. Another example of our whoremongering elected officials making their mortgage payments by selling off the idealistic notions of earlier generations.
But why is it in our national interest to make sure we switch to digital?
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SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
It has as you allude, been made into a joke by the savage gelding strokes of American Mullahs, and also through the more lapidarian trimmings of corporate curators of acceptable public opinion, and the patronage of the Phillip-Morrisonian Bonsai Gardeners of Kulture.
Sometimes I am resigned to the idea that it could be better (all things considered) if the fascists had prevailed and eliminated PBS altogether. They have done a pretty thorough job already of subverting its journalistic freedom and they have completely annihilated it as a cultural actor. Leaving PBS in place but censored and powerless as it is only serves to mask the presently totalitarian nature of the American media landscape.
Better perhaps that people should be faced with the unambiguous truth that they cannot further deny by saying "Oh but I have an alternative -public broadcasting". Because in truth as an American, you have no alternative. As a consumer of media and culture, you cannot buy an alternative, not even with a million fucking dollars. (If you have billions on the other hand, you are at liberty to present whatever you think is advantageous to you but then that's just more of the sewage and brainwashing we already have, not an alternative).
You are completely naked and alone with your disbelief and outrage:
They own both major political parties - one of which proudly bills itself as the party of Corporate Cocksuckers without a trace of shame.
They own all the media outlets, which are in business it seems to tell you what to think, and more importantly, what not to think about, ever; not to discover what questions to ask.
They went on a buying spree and now own all the think-tanks, and have owned most of them for 10-15 years.
(Ergo, if you were a non-corporate cocksucker with an outlet through the media --highly unlikely, I know, I know, but let's pretend-- you would be hard pressed to host a pundit or book an expert for your show who was not a proficient cocksucker[1} even before their first media appearance.
How bad is it? Well consider that at this point in time even Christopher Hitchens now dangles from the teat of Richard Mellon Scaife. That my friends is 100% total, safe, and reliable capture of visible media dissent.)
No place left.
No place left but the streets. And it takes alot to get fatassed Americans into the streets but I confidently predict we will see it in the next 4-5 years. Fat American asses in the streets by the million. The Happy Meal is over.
[1] No offence intended to those for whom fellatio is an expression of love, or sexual attraction and affection, or just a tasty kinetic substitute for casual salutations like, "Good Morning", or "Nice Pants". No actual cocksuckers were harmed in the fabrication of this post.
Johnny Quest has two Daddies.
Perhaps I misread the UN Declaration of Human rights, but the last I heard tv was a luxury.
There has been a lot of likening of PBS to BBC. I live in the UK and I pay £104 ($160) a year for the luxury of BBC1 and BBC2. That is more than I spend on my whole (albiet limited) cable TV package in a year. It's also more per channel than any of the movie channels I have on digital satelite.
For those of you in the USA, we actually have to pay for a tv license here (or they give u big fines apparently). And for that we get just TWO television channels (completely commercial free i might add) that manage to have more quality programming than the 300 or so i have on satelite.
You cant really have things both ways. Personally I prefer the way of having everyone pay a blanket fee to produce quality programs, but in the US you chose (surprise surprise) the more commercial route.
There's no such thing as non-bias. Everyone has a bias of some sort, because we haven't grown up in a vacuum.
The point is to try and recognise your biases. And in trying, you must remember that you will NEVER be perfectly succesful.
Note that having a bias doesn't necessarily mean that you are wrong. I'm biased against neo-Nazi's, the KKK, and the campus fascist's at my university who insist that only they have the right to express an opinion because their's are politically correct and everyone else is just biased.
Recognise that the line between bias and opinion is very slim indeed.
. --- If you're looking for free e-mail you won't find it here! http://www.noemailhere.com
For me, the quality of public television is measured by its ability to do something that market driven tv cannot dare to do -- outrage. A good public tv station, like a good judiciary, depends on some level of insulation from both the financial and the political world. Its success as a public slervice lies in its ability to leverage this insulation in order to push the envelope of free speech.
Public TV should be outrageous, or not at all.
-- look, cheese ahoy!
digital infrastructure costs money.
hope won't help
send money . i've been a donor to my local PBS/NPR affiliate for three years -- i started out at $30 and can now afford $120.
it's PER YEAR, people. like, a dime a day.
your hope is worth less than nothing, because it falsely assuages your conscience without doing anything to solve the problem.
slashdot is a relatively good place for hearing about certain stories that won't get covered by ABCTIMEWARNERMSNBC.COM. But networks like NPR are invaluable to disseminating in-depth cultural, financial, scientific information [instead of everything being standard soundbytes, stories/issues get anywhere from brief to a full day of coverage.
your money is your vote. please cast your vote for Public Broadcasting, even if it's only a few bucks.
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Hollywood, Television, has become the dream machine. We need to take that back; each of us is a Dream Machine
Someone mod this flamebait as such. The rest of the world is very nearly Socialist and you think Liberalism is dead? Get a clue, it may appear this way in the USA because USians have abandoned their democracy to be ruled by the Corporate Elite; and they like it! The rest of the world hasnt - and dont like the idea at all.
I have watch Newshour and I must say they are the most informative news programs I have ever seen.
The problem is they are so boring. Guess they don't care about ratings so they just report the news and don't need to sensationalise everything.
And with nobody watching don't need to worrying about offending anybody.
I would like to point out, as a system engineer working for a PBS station, That not a lot of people are aware of what a PBS station does for their community. For example: One of the services we provide is giving class content to teachers to use. They need a show on dinosaurs we can boradcast to them as needed. We are also the ones that broadcast the local city council meetings so you can stay informed (you do watch don't you) we provide topical on target content to that people can use it to learn. If we did not provide this for free then the teachers would have to buy this content. We know how little money the school have can they afford to pay the robber barons so that they can teach the kids? I think not, or at least they would not have as large of a selection.
The next thing we provide is free computer support. One of my key duties is helping the local school systems with their computer issues. Most schools do not have a trained system admin and cannot afford one. They usually have a computer lab teacher, who has had no training and cannot get any, trying to support the internet connection and the servers in their schools. They quickly get in over their heads and I come to their rescue providing free support to get them on their feet. And speaking of bandwidth we provide that to, all the schools come through us to get low cost bandwidth. We diseapear and their goes the schools internet access with us.
We support the community in computers, we give free workshops to teachers to show them how to use word and power point, we sponsor and run our areas great computer challenge for middle and high school age children. I was a room monitor last time myself on my own time and money.
The local PBS radio stations are part of us, when the tv part goes they go too. Besides no classical station and no public talk radio we are also the station that provides reading to the blind. Everyday we read the paper to the blind to help keep them informed. This service is provided free once again with no adds and no breaks, something a commercial station cannot do.
PBS is just not sesame street, it is ALL of the public services in an area. Those computer classes you where able to take in public school existed becuase of us. Their is no budget for these things, so when we go, tech teaching in the schools goes with us.
We are publicly supportted to free us from the ties that would stop us from providing USEFULL content and services. This way they do not have to buy them but we can provide them. When Digital TV comes to us, and takes 10 Million to upgrade (our estimated costs) it is not just the fact that we go off the air if we cannot raise the money, the kids are affected also, and that is a shame.
If you want to see the kinds of things that we provide for free to people go to www.whro.org We are streaming the content of our radio stations. Catch the show logon on fridays at 1:30pm EST laying on 89.5 . It's a free user call in show that fixs peoples problems. No hostile company beholding tech support, but knowledgable people who want to fix your problems correctly for free. It's a great example of the level of service we provide in a specific area as that show is locally created and boradcasted.
Papa Legba come and open the gate
Maybe it's because both of us know that the adoption rate will stay slow-as-molasses and so as a result analog TV won't be discontinued?!
sulli
RTFJ.
Then there is the obnoxious habit of saving their most popular programming for fund raising marathons (e.g. new episodes of Red Dwarf).
Yeah, how dare they try to raise money! They should operate for free, or better yet, steal money from tax-payers through government subsidies!
My donations went to the EFF, thanks...
You're welcome.
"And like that
I don't watch TV much, but PBS falls into a class of
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things that I consider vital to our nation's citizenry. I hope things work out ok
Those who really do feel PBS is "vital to our nation's citizenry," please donate money to PBS by becoming a member:
http://www.pbs.org/insidepbs/membership/local.htm
And for those corporations that would like to help:
http://sponsorship.pbs.org/
"And like that
It's almost like shucking that same old Yahoo-porn post again and saying "I don't watch much porn."
"Here's a bit from howto.com about where to hide the bodies - but I don't kill people much."
"I caught this Linux article from the NAMBLA newsletter. I don't know how it came to my house..."
PBS receives funding from three sources: charitable private donations, corporate sponsorship, and government. The government bit is permanently controvertial, corporate sponsorship is done in a way that avoids interrupting programmes with adverts - there's usually a thank you at the end of each program which goes through the list of sponsors, and programs might end up named after the sponsor too. Finally, private donations are solicited through telethons, where programming is suspended until enough donations have come in.
PBS is part of the CBC (Corporation for Public Broadcasting) which also runs a national radio network NPR. The latter is closish to a cross between Britain's BBC Radio's 3 and 4 in content.
Content varies as PBS is heavily regionised: all stations are nominally independent and usually have a reach covering a handful of counties. The two local PBS stations, from Miami and West Palm Beach, I receive here usually have a mix of imported news programs (from the UK's ITN and BBC), some news and financial programs from PBS, a documentary series or two such as Nova (equivalent, and I think sharing material often, with the BBC's Horizon series), and large amounts of imported British sitcoms varying from Blackadder (yay) to Keeping Up Appearances (God help us.)
OTOH, when I go up to Connecticut, as I do on a regular basis, the station tends to have some very high-quality home grown history programs and such.
The network is famous internationally for the Sesame Street series.
I can't comment on the financial comparisons between the BBC and PBS except in pointing out that the comparison is unfair on all levels. Not only are the sources of income entirely different, but the BBC provides two national TV stations with a small amount of regionalisation, five national radio stations, several hundred local radio stations, and even a symphony orchestra, for the price of the licence fee - a source making it accountable only to TV owners. (cable/satellite stations like BBC World TV and the World Service have seperate sources of funding.) PBS funds a heavily regionalised TV network, where the funding from each region will heavily impact the funding of that region's programming.
Does that answer the question?
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You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Like they don't get enough from ADM, GE, Pepsico, GM,
If you want to give money/support to true independent media, here are some:
There is no central PBS programming authority. Individual stations know that Buckley and McLaughlin ( Issue 1) are popular and bring viewers.
The reason liberal voices aren't heard is because NOBODY WILL ADMIT TO BEING LIBERAL! Liberalism is dead. It failed. Deal with it. The debate now is between Neo and Classical conservatism.
Bye Bye!
This problem was talked about on NPR. Basically all PBS stations must be broadcasting digitally by by May 2003. the transition will require about $4.5 million. Also about one-third of the 347 member stations, or about 115 stations, of the Public Broadcasting System are in danger of closing because of this.
Diplomacy is the art of letting people have your way
...run ads like every other channel? Bingo, no more funding problems, and no more annoying telethons. I realise that PBS is sorta a niche market, but then, so is, the History channel.
TODO: Something witty here...
the only reason that I can see provided by /. posters is "because I enjoyed it" What about those who didn't (and since it is publicly funded , payed for it regardless)?
This is the perfect oppourtunity to sell all these stations that can't comply. The government shouldn't be in the business of owning media outlets.
by the way, I enjoyed Sesame Street, too. but not enough to imply that others should pay to keep it around, even if it is educational. Mr. Wizard was on nickelodeon for quite some time, and was the best show around, as far as I was concerned.
Reason, free market capitalism, and individualism
Once upon a time, it was the only place on the dial one might possibly catch a glimpse of actual nudity. But then, once upon a time televisions had actual dials.
Vital for what, exactly?