Originally published by Communities @ Washington Times
November 19, 2010- Yes, that wonderful, holiday time of the year is fast approaching and PBS always celebrates in a special way: Soon, you’ll flip your remote control around only to be sucked in and mesmerized by fantastic singers such as Celtic Woman, entertaining, yet interrupted every half hour for about fifteen minutes of fund raising. At this time, you learn that with a $300.00 or so donation, you can obtain a Celtic Woman CD that would have cost about $24.00 at Target or perhaps $15.00 at Wal-Mart. But then, you aren’t really doing it for the CD anyway. You’re doing it because of the important cause. After all, without a generous contribution, Public Broadcasting might just go off the air and life as we’ve known it will cease in America.
While pleading for chunks of change, the smiley hosts say things like, “Where else are you going to experience quality programs such as Celtic Woman?” Interesting question, being that we seldom, if ever, see these kinds of concerts on PBS unless they are raising money. For the rest of the year, it’s mostly news, documentary, and talking heads. Not that there’s anything wrong with news programs or nature programs, but one wonders why, in this age of cable television, fund raisers continue to issue those same passionate pleas which were picked up by old rabbit ear antennas back when PBS happened to be our only education sheriff in town.
Was it once a good idea to have government sponsored educational programming dependant upon 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 24 hour news networks, to cooking channels, shopping channels, movie channels, and channels that tell you how to remodel a house, assemble a flashlight, win at poker, or blow your nose, do we really need PBS any more? Is it time to hold her funeral with a lovely eulogy, inasmuch as she already headed the way of the Dodo Bird and Tyrannosaurs Rex long ago? With the recent firing of Juan Williams from PBS’ sister radio network, NPR, and a new Republican Congress, such questions are starting to ignite Washington debate.
One network’s future would be less of a news item if not for recurring discussion about the Fairness Doctrine, code words for a proposition to regulate conservative talk radio, thus making room for opposing opinion. Ironically, liberal editorializing is abundant and top heavy on public broadcasting. They already have our tax dollars supplying partial payment for this one-sided broken teeter-totter, but that isn’t enough for some media elitists. Supposedly, commercial radio also needs government imposed tempering. Meanwhile, PBS continues to ask for dollars from the private sector. No thanks. I’ll purchase my copy of Celtic Woman at Wal-Mart.
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