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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."
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*
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.
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
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
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
(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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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
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
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
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?