WinSmith over at Daily Kos brings up a good point: if it is so impossible for private industry to compete with the government, how public television did not destroy commercial television?
In fact, how come PBS has had such little impact?
I am certainly happy to admit that Sesame Street, and the Children’s Television Workshop broadly, were pioneers in broadcasting for children. That might not have been a good thing:
And PBS aired one of my all-time favorite programs:
I would listen to David McCullough read Sarah Palin’s speeches.
Unfortunately, for most of its history, PBS has interpreted its evening programming madate as requiring it to show this:
Leaden period dramas and an abundance of English accents. For all of the regular accusations of liberal bias, you would be hard-pressed to find a more conservative organization; where FOX News uses 1989 Miss America Gretchen Carlson, PBS uses Gwen Iffil. Little attempt to be innovative coupled with endless begging. At least advertisers have incentives to be interesting; watching PBS beg for money is simply sad.
It is tempting to assume that boredom is somehow endemic to being public, but the BBC is public – every television household has to pay a tax to support it. At the time PBS was being organized, the BBC was running this:
And then this:
And it hasn’t stopped. This might seem vaguely familiar:
Somehow the BBC – for years, the only channel in the UK – was able to develop a sense of exuberance, a desire to air appealing programming, while PBS took it upon itself to take only the intersection of shows that had no commercial appeal and were completely non-controversial. There are channels dedicated to children and dedicated to documentaries and an entire range dedicated to beautifully filmed nature. You can even watch the BBC, should you run into a sudden shortage of English accents. One of our great challenges as we consider additional government involvement in health care is that our government has an extraordinary reluctance to challenge private industry. The chances that any public option or subsidized new cooperative ends up simply as a dumping ground for cases private insurance doesn’t wish – a Medichronic, to go along with Medicare and Medicaid in providing care for working people with expensive, chronic conditions – are larger than they should be, and worrisome.
By the way, here is one easy, cost-effective way to get PBS some viewers every couple of years: use the Taunter Drug Plan logic on international sporting events. The US could pass a law – similar to the laws in the UK and continental Europe mandating that certain sporting events be shown on the state monopoly – stating that PBS will be the only permitted bidder for the Olympics, World Cup, and other international events featuring the US team. PBS will pay the per-household rate of the European Broadcast Union (an order of magnitude below the typical US fee) and make the feed available to any network or networks that wish non-exclusive access on a pro-rata basis. So if ESPN, Versus, and NBC each want to show the Olympics, they are welcome to buy in for 1/4 of PBS’ rights fee. It rips off the International Olympic Committee and gives the consumer surplus to the American networks and American viewer. PBS could then distinguish itself with live, commercial-free coverage as (for example) NBC decides to repackage each event into a tape-delayed human interest story.
“I would listen to David McCullough read Sarah Palin’s speeches.”
You’re a braver man than I, Gunga Din!
Not a fan of Tess, Taunter? Ah well…
David Chappelle is hilarious…
I think ALL governments need a Ministry of Silly Walks.
But you’ve defined one of my fears for the public option:
“Little attempt to be innovative coupled with endless begging” for funding.
I perhaps have too limited an imagination, but I simply cannot see a public option devised in such a way as to provide critical competition to the big guns. My fear is that the public option will become the dumping ground for the sick. For-profit insurance companies would accept premiums from people until they have serious health issues, and then they’ll get dumped onto the public option.
Those are my fears – no stats or anything to back them up.
Thanks for the links to the funny stuff. I’m always looking for a good laugh.
I can’t for the life of me, golly, gosh and darn, think of why we are discussing a public option, when what we should be discussing is a private option. If we have a de facto nationalized the banking industry because for all intents and purposes, it’s bankrupt (no pun intended). Let’s just nationalize the entire health care industry, which is swimming in cash. Federal Imminent Domain.
Lets’ just move along and cooperate with the inevitable, universal, single payer, heath care. If you want something more, go to the private insurers. If what you want is cosmetic scrotum sack surgery, go for it….
Ciao,
Econolicious
You studiously avoid the entire purpose of public television. It is/was to show things that are supposed to be educational/enlightening. There isn’t a market for this beyond the very narrow niche of wildlife death-porn on pay TV.
Specific to the comparison with the health care issue, Public TV does not directly compete with commercial television. I can imagine all kinds of interested groups that would like to open a secondary market that does not compete with the existing medical insurance/care industries. The results would be the same.
In the U.S. you also have the interests that wrap themselves in the mantra of ‘free markets are the most efficient’ getting angry and decrying ‘big government’ when a public agency provides the identical service more efficiently.
[...] we let the IOC auction the Games. Nationalize the rights. Or, more precisely, state that PBS is the only permitted bidder, and it will bid the same amount per-person as the lowest-paying EU state broadcaster. Then offer [...]