Yes, it’s that wonderful, fund raising time of the year when PBS broadcasts those quality concerts. You know, fantastic singers like Celtic Women, programs that get interrupted every half hour for about fifteen minutes of fund raising. At this time you learn that with a $300.00 donation you can get a Celtic Women CD that would have cost you about $24.00 at Target and perhaps $15.00 at Wal-Mart. But then, you aren’t really doing it for the CD. You’re doing it because of the important cause. Why…why…without such contributions, Public Broadcasting might just go off the air and life as we’ve known it will cease in America.
While asking for your donations, the smiley hosts say things like, “Where else are you going to get quality programs like Celtic Women?” Interesting question, being that you never see these kinds of concerts on PBS unless they are raising money. For the rest of the year it’s news and documentary and talking heads. Not that there’s anything wrong with news programs or nature programs. It’s just that I’m wondering why, in this age of cable television, PBS continues to issue the same passionate plea that they did back when they were the only sheriff in town.
Was it once a good idea to have government sponsored educational programming that needed extra contributions in addition to your tax dollars? Possibly. But these days, with cable channels in the hundreds, ranging from, The History Channel to Arts and Entertainment, to Animal Planet to five 24 hour news networks, to cooking channels, shopping channels, movie channels, channels that tell you how to remodel a house, and channels that tell you how to assemble a flash light, do we really need PBS any more?
I suppose I wouldn’t care about any of this if I wasn’t hearing so much about the Fairness Doctrine that wants to regulate talk radio so that the liberal view can also be represented. The liberal view is the ONLY view represented on public television and public radio. They already have our tax dollars paying for this one sided diatribe but that isn’t enough for them. They also want to regulate commercial talk radio. And on top of that, they need our extra contributions? No thanks. I think I’ll just buy my copy of Celtic Women at Wal-Mart.
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