It has become a campaign issue. We are all supposed to be outraged by Romney's position on funding for public broadcasting. Really?
As we all know, commercial media reacts to financial incentives. Viewer preferences are conveyed through two means - ad revenues and Nielsen media survey. Discounting the small sampling of the survey compared to the ad revenues, we can be pretty sure that media execs know which shows are selling and which are not. We see this in action all the time as many shows fall bathe way side - if something is not watched, so are the ads not generating the revenue.
PBS has many quality shows. I watch them all the time. But we all are paying for it in entirely different fashion - forced through our tax dollars. Some are implying that that is the only way to have quality shows. That tells us something else about the society at large - that our priorities are misplaced.
And that is also the crux of this election year - our core values. This is about 2 very different paths we could choose. If we are too dumb to pick quality TV shows for our kids, are we smart enough to vote?
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