Following up - sorry, I veered off from public support for news programs to public support for the arts, a very different topic.
But let’s try it this way: why don’t the people who put so much money into the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, etc., put a few of those bucks into a conservative-oriented radio/TV news broadcast, do you think people would listen?
I don’t listen to NPR because they’re “liberal” and reinforce my own prejudices. I listen because they have quiet and reasonable voices telling me the news, and because they frequently have in-depth stories that are even better than the newspaper. Their touchy-feely features and a lot of the music they use for segues are extremely annoying to me, but overall it is far superior to listening to soundbites and shouting commentators, broken up with advertisement, all at a high-adrenaline pace. I would certainly listen to a conservative network that mimicked the pace and style of NPR.
Well, again, if the public was clamouring for a “quiet” news/arts/opinion/cultural radio network with a liberal bias without the “style” of commercial radio, the market would surely provide it. Radio is a proven media. If success can be had in radio, someone can figure out how to succeed. If there were money to be made in a radio network such as you describe, investors and radio entrepeneurs would already have established such a network.
The fact of the matter is, NPR/PBS is selective government establishment of media outlets that could not survive in the marketplace without taxpayer dollars. I’m just asking a simple question. Why?
Why should the taxpayer assume that government should have a right to confiscate tax dollars and give them to a media outlet that apparently does not have sufficient public support to survive without the tax dollars?
If the programming is not good, why the hell should we take it for granted that our tax dollars are to be confiscated to support programming that has so little public interest, it cannot survive in the marketplace like every other broadcaster?
That is not to say that the public are a bunch of morons, only that there is a lowest common denominator that translates into large sums of money. And in our mass market celebrity culture, what do you think is going to get emphasized?
The fact is that quality art has almost always been done on government subsidy, whether it’s the pope paying Michelangelo or the NEA underwriting “Live from Lincoln Center.”
Let us not forget that during Shakespeare’s day, they would have said, “the public would always prefere that pop star Shakespeare to more classical literature”. It is not now, nor was it then the job of the government to tell anyone who or what is art. I hear myself listening to rap today and saying those telling words I heard from my mother, “How could ANYONE call that music?” Art is a uniquely personal experience that the government should not ever participate in.
Well, again, if the public was clamouring for a “quiet†news/arts/opinion/cultural radio network with a liberal bias without the “style†of commercial radio, the market would surely provide it. Radio is a proven media. If success can be had in radio, someone can figure out how to succeed. If there were money to be made in a radio network such as you describe, investors and radio entrepeneurs would already have established such a network.
Except that those same investors figured out a long time ago that they could make a lot more money playing 60s album rock or angry egotists shouting into the microphone.
And the public is not “clamouring” for quiet, thoughtful, challenging material. Not now, not never.
Don’t forget that the public money is largely, if not entirely, matching funds. So it’s not accurate to say that nobody wants it but taxpayers are paying for it.
Yet all you need do is ask yourself what would happen if the taxpayer money was eliminated from the equation. Either funding would emerge to fill the void, or publicly subsidized media would go the way of the dinosaur - OR, it would have to find a way to adjust, to streamline, to innovate, to respond to the market - to justify its existence, in other words.
Why should publicly subsidized media not be subjected to the same market conditions that all other media is subjected to? What makes the programming it broadcasts more worthy of taxpayer support? If I started a new radio network tomorrow, and I wanted to offer an alternative to commercial radio or TV, what would be the chances that I could gain taxpayer dollars for my venture?
Please, I’m having the most civil conversation with you that I have had to date. Justify this for me.
Following up - sorry, I veered off from public support for news programs to public support for the arts, a very different topic.
But let’s try it this way: why don’t the people who put so much money into the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, etc., put a few of those bucks into a conservative-oriented radio/TV news broadcast, do you think people would listen?
I don’t listen to NPR because they’re “liberal” and reinforce my own prejudices. I listen because they have quiet and reasonable voices telling me the news, and because they frequently have in-depth stories that are even better than the newspaper. Their touchy-feely features and a lot of the music they use for segues are extremely annoying to me, but overall it is far superior to listening to soundbites and shouting commentators, broken up with advertisement, all at a high-adrenaline pace. I would certainly listen to a conservative network that mimicked the pace and style of NPR.
Whenever I hear of a government sponsored news network in any country, including this one, I think it is tainted. I agree that NPR is “quiet”, but I also think their version is quiet and boring.
Thanks, Scott. so when are going to stop taking the $6.5M in taxpayer funds they don’t need?
Soon as you organize a campaign to lobby Congress to end federal funding for the arts.
Anti-arts folks like you had a reasonable degree of success when Reagan was president, so maybe it’s time for another whack at it.
Hurry, though. If a Democrat wins the White House and the Democrats hold onto Congress, every nonprofit in the country will be issued a blank check signed by Congress. Right?
The Third Reich had a pretty impressive program for supporting the arts. Dumped a lot of money into “art,” actually.
We’re not anti-Art, you fvck. We’re just against government funded waste-oid art… from no-talent, piles of dog sh!t who use dog sh!t as their preferred media because they think it makes a statement.
There’s a reason why they’re called “starving artists"…
Nothing of lasting value has ever come out of mass market culture.
Fair enough, point well taken, but I meant the mass market culture of the last few decades.
Well, if you’re just talking about the last few decades, I would have to agree with you. That’s when the adults abandoned the field of popular music to adolescents, real and/or perpetual. As a result, most of what’s been produced during that time has indeed been crap.
vladimir estragon - 04 December 2007 12:05 PM
We look back at the golden age of jazz, but it still wasn’t “mass market entertainment.”
Ahem ... (highlights mine) ...
...
Swing
The 1930s belonged to popular swing big bands, in which some virtuoso soloists became as famous as the band leaders. Key figures in developing the “big” jazz band were bandleaders and arrangers Count Basie, Cab Calloway, Fletcher Henderson, Earl Hines and Duke Ellington. Other Big Bands, such as Artie Shaw’s, Tommy Dorsey’s and Benny Goodman’s “Orchestra” were highly jazz oriented while others, such as, later, Glenn Miller’s, left less space for improvisation.
Swing was also dance music and it was broadcast on the radio ‘live’ coast-to-coast nightly across America for many years. Although it was a collective sound, swing also offered individual musicians a chance to ‘solo’ and improvise melodic, thematic solos which could at times be very complex and ‘important’ music.
Over time, social strictures regarding racial segregation began to relax, and white bandleaders began to recruit black musicians. In the mid-1930s, Benny Goodman hired pianist Teddy Wilson, vibraphonist Lionel Hampton, and guitarist Charlie Christian to join small groups. An early 1940s style known as “jumping the blues” or jump blues used small combos, up-tempo music, and blues chord progressions. Jump blues drew on boogie-woogie from the 1930s. Kansas City Jazz in the 1930s marked the transition from big bands to the bebop influence of the 1940s.
...
Fact is, relying on the market alone is a recipe for worthless, decadent crap. Nothing of lasting value has ever come out of mass market culture.
You are simply showing your age Vlad. CG reinforces that, when he cites the oldies, and the two of you agree that no art or music of value has been produced in the last few decades. You sound like a couple old codgers pining for the old days.
Fact is, popular music and culture has ALWAYS left behind the older generation. You are not meant to understand it or think it’s good or worthy. It’s for the young. You are emotionally attached to the things that motivated you emotionally in your youth.
There has ALWAYS been the need for the discerning consumer to sift through the crapola to get to the good stuff. That is no different now, in the “mass-market culture”. Excellent music and art is being created all the time, and much of it is elevated into the public awareness by that mass-market culture. There is plenty of excellent, “high-minded” music, film, art, etc, that thrives in our mass-market culture without subsidy from the taxpayers.
If you’re going to make an argument that public radio and TV should be subsidized in order that pop-cultural tastes of a bygone era can be sustained, that is an argument I have not heard made before, and frankly, it is the best argument I can think of to continue to rape the public trough and avoid the realities of the free market. But that is not currently what public broadcast is used for, and is not its current justification for existence.
Which brings us to a fundamental difference between conservatives and liberals. Conservatives want the freedom to pursue happiness on their own terms.
Unless that happiness includes being gay and wanting to marry your partner or adopt children, of course. The government should TOTALLY step in there.
A gay men may marry any woman who will have him. A gay woman may marry any man who will have her.
Same-sex arrangements are sometimes sanctioned by churches and mostly tolerated by society-at-large, but, as they do not comprise the elements as defined by “marriage” are not sanctioned by the state. That these activities are tolerated, but not state-sanctioned, does not block the ‘pursuit of happiness’.
True. Our smarmy criticism of Garrison Keillor and public broadcasting is not borne out by the financial records. It’s supported by the fact that Keillor sucks. Sucks hard. Stings the taste buds like a sour lemon.
[...]
Then go read the Arbitron ratings, and go back a few years, and find some for-profit station that pulled the low numbers public radio does, year after year, without a format change.
Sorry you can’t seem to set aside your disagreement with his political and social views and appreciate his immense, award-winning talent along with me and the other 4 million listeners each week on nearly 600 public radio stations across the country.
Wonder how he would do if he had to compete on commercial radio and could not rely on the taxpayer to keep him afloat. I somehow doubt he would it Rush’s or Hannity’s numbers..
That is not to say that the public are a bunch of morons, only that there is a lowest common denominator that translates into large sums of money. And in our mass market celebrity culture, what do you think is going to get emphasized?
Well a state of ‘moronism’ does explain the left, that and ‘bread and circus’. Keep that base entertained.
The fact of the matter is, NPR/PBS is selective government establishment of media outlets that could not survive in the marketplace without taxpayer dollars. I’m just asking a simple question. Why?
Why should the taxpayer assume that government should have a right to confiscate tax dollars and give them to a media outlet that apparently does not have sufficient public support to survive without the tax dollars?
The why is that the public who pays for the service do not like being called hicks and boobs by the frequently idiotic and always biased on air talent they hear.
No one likes to pay to be insulted,especially by folk who are often a good bit less in tune with the country than the listener.
Well, again, if the public was clamouring for a “quiet†news/arts/opinion/cultural radio network with a liberal bias without the “style†of commercial radio, the market would surely provide it. Radio is a proven media. If success can be had in radio, someone can figure out how to succeed. If there were money to be made in a radio network such as you describe, investors and radio entrepeneurs would already have established such a network.
Except that those same investors figured out a long time ago that they could make a lot more money playing 60s album rock or angry egotists shouting into the microphone.
And the public is not “clamouring” for quiet, thoughtful, challenging material. Not now, not never.
Don’t forget that the public money is largely, if not entirely, matching funds. So it’s not accurate to say that nobody wants it but taxpayers are paying for it.
Would the feds fund a radio network that the folk ARE clamoring for, one with a solid conservative outlook? The left would never allow it.
