The future of NPR

[jGilder]

And I repeat:
Let it compete in the marketplace. If it's in such demand and so valuable, it'll suceed. If not, let it sink.

TradR, you're incorrigible. That's like giving one guy a sports car and another guy a skateboard and seeing who can get across the country first. Please go back and read what we’ve already covered, or move on.

[IRTradRU?]

And I repeat:
Let it compete in the marketplace. If it's in such demand and so valuable, it'll suceed. If not, let it sink.

TradR, you're incorrigible. That's like giving one guy a sports car and another guy a skateboard and seeing who can get across the country first. Please go back and read what we’ve already covered, or move on.

Wow, who died and left you as moderator?

[Walden]

HINT: It's supposed to be commercial free TV

I wish it was. It's really gone downhill, no longer just a blurb of what foundations provided support, one hears blatant advertising at the beginning and ending of most PBS shows and some NPR ones.

[jGilder]

HINT: It's supposed to be commercial free TV

I wish it was. It's really gone downhill, no longer just a blurb of what foundations provided support, one hears blatant advertising at the beginning and ending of most PBS shows and some NPR ones.

You're right. I wish they received adequate funding so that they wouldn't have to resort to that. I just hope they continue to only put them at the beginning and end. But it does seem like it's very close to becoming commercial all right. If only our tax money was spent educating the population instead of killing US soldiers and thousands of people in other countries.

[Flyingcursor]

If only our tax money was spent educating the population instead of killing US soldiers and thousands of people in other countries.

Funny this hasn't come up before.

Besides, if they go commercial then the shows will have to cater to what the sponsors want. No pharmaceutical company is going to sponsor a show that is about to rake the health care industry. What'll happen to Car Talk? If Honda sponsored Click and Clack what would they do about their Jetta comments?

[Walden]

Imagine! What if A Prairie Home Companion was sponsored by The Sleep Number Bed or Lands' End! He might not could even do Lutheran jokes or Unitarian jokes!

Yeah, yeah... I know... APHC isn't actually an NPR show, per se, Minnesota Public Radio having formed its own distribution company... not sure what it's called at present... American Public Media, maybe.

[missy]

I've said it before - I listen to very few news reports on the radio, and watch even less TV.

But, to me, the news reporting isn't the reason for NPR or PBS. As far as NPR is concerned, the two stations here (that I can't listen to except in the car because our house sits in the path of another radio station that blows everything below 93 off the dial) are for all the kinds of music you WON'T hear on commercial radio. Classical. Bluegrass and Old Time. Celtic. Folk. Jazz. There's no way any station could make money playing these types of recordings, there just isn't the market for it here.
For me - the "beauty" of public broadcasting is the ability of putting on programs that only have marginal appeal. And a lot better done than community access stations (some of those people truly amaze me!!!).

As to "non-commercial" - the 5 minutes before and after the programs on PBS that talk about the "underwriters" is about as close as you can get to commercials and not call them that. But - I understand the pushing the envelop that has occurred. Doesn't mean I like it, I understand it.

[DCrom]

On the whole, I like a lot of what NPR carries. But I do think - yes, I know many will disagree, but I calls 'em as I see 'em - that their editorial bias is left-of-center. And I'd be happier if there was no discernable political content on NPR because I think, in context, NO political positions, left OR right, should be advocated by a publically funded network.

Commercial networks, all bets are off. My gut impression is that network news runs slightly left of center (CBS, NBC, ABC, and CNN vs FOX) while talk radio runs slightly right of center. But in all cases, if those stations can't attract enough listeners and advertisers to turn a profit, they're off the air. Seems fair to me.

Actually, NPR and PBS are more center than anything. CBS, NBC, ABC, and CNN are right of center, and FOX is clearly extreme right since the owner has submitted memos to his news anchors instructing them to spin the news in favor of Republicans.

Actually, Jack, I'd agree with your positioning compared to where you think the center ought to be. It may even be correct compared to your circle of friends.

But compared to the folks I know outside of the Bay Area - and the voting records of the country in the last few elections, including Bill Clinton's two presidential victories - I'll stand by where I put 'em originally.

I've seen survey claims that perhaps 20-30% of the population self-identifies as "left" and a similar 20-30% self-identifies as "right" politically. This leaves the largest single chunk - 40-60% of the population - somewhere in the middle. And I think that both the "left" and the "right" have myopia, and view the split between "them" and "us" at the bounds of their own group.

FWIW, I think of myself as moderate, but leaning *slightly* to the right (and pretty laisez-faire small-l libertarian, mostly). Outside the Bay area, most folks I know would agree with me, or even consider me slightly *left* leaning. But on this board - and in some parts of the Bay area - I get the feeling that folks categorize me somewhere over on the hard right (along with some folks whose views I out-and-out despise).

Out of curiousity - not a verbal trap, but an honest question - where do you see yourself on the political spectrum? I'd put you in the "hard left" category, but that may just the perspective from where I'm sitting.

[BigDavy]

DCrom said

Out of curiousity - not a verbal trap, but an honest question - where do you see yourself on the political spectrum? I'd put you in the "hard left" category, but that may just the perspective from where I'm sitting.

Hi DCrom, you are being a little hard on jGilder here (excuse the pun) he is at most soft left. I understand that you are judging by American standards and I am judging by Red Clydeside standards of left wing - they are poles apart I can tell you.

Ask dubhlinn or Wombat if they would consider jGilder hard left and I think you would find their categorisation significantly different from yours.

David

[dubhlinn]

DCrom said

Out of curiousity - not a verbal trap, but an honest question - where do you see yourself on the political spectrum? I'd put you in the "hard left" category, but that may just the perspective from where I'm sitting.

Hi DCrom, you are being a little hard on jGilder here (excuse the pun) he is at most soft left. I understand that you are judging by American standards and I am judging by Red Clydeside standards of left wing - they are poles apart I can tell you.

Ask dubhlinn or Wombat if they would consider jGilder hard left and I think you would find their categorisation significantly different from yours.

David

I would never begin to speak on behalf of Wombat but for me that was spot on.
gilder is one of us..just froma different background and a world that we only get to hear , or read about.
A true brother of ours..even if he is a Yank

He has a celtic type of humour as well...

Slan,
D.

[dapple]

Quote:
Out of curiousity - not a verbal trap, but an honest question - where do you see yourself on the political spectrum? I'd put you in the "hard left" category, but that may just the perspective from where I'm sitting.


Hi DCrom, you are being a little hard on jGilder here (excuse the pun) he is at most soft left. I understand that you are judging by American standards and I am judging by Red Clydeside standards of left wing - they are poles apart I can tell you.

Ask dubhlinn or Wombat if they would consider jGilder hard left and I think you would find their categorisation significantly different from yours.

I understood that to be the point of DCrom's post, David, that such categorizations are a matter of the categorizer’s perspective. I agree with DCrom's analysis except that I would categorize jGilder as extreme, radical left instead of simply hard left, which might make one think that my perspective of jGilder is a bit from the right of DCrom. And jGilder may very well see me from his perspective as extreme, radical right which, of course, from my perspective, I am not.

[spittin_in_the_wind]

I haven't read all the pages of this thread, but if PBS goes, I'm throwing out my TV, as there's nothing else worthwhile to watch on it.

Robin

[s1m0n]

I agree with DCrom's analysis except that I would categorize jGilder as extreme, radical left instead of simply hard left, which might make one think that my perspective of jGilder is a bit from the right of DCrom.

Wow - Do you really mean that you perceive *no* political real estate available on Jack's left flank? No room for Karl Marx? Stalin? (OK, I'd assign him to the right) Che Guevara? Fidel Castro? The Red Brigades? Julius Rosenberg? Klaus Fuchs? Baader-Meinhoff? Leon Trotsky?

Or do have some other kind of meaning in mind when you say "extreme, radical left"?

Americans are *so* sheltered.

[BigDavy]

Hi Dapple

JGilder extreme left wing???, sorry to disagree with you here, but if you think that then you would be considered very politically naive by the left wing on this side of the pond. I would categorise myself as being more left wing than him and I would be considered as old fashioned socialist here.
To be extreme left wing here you would have to be Trotskyite or the far end of the Marxist/Leninist spectrum (They would give a very cogent argument that the old Soviet Union was really right wing and an example of monopolist capitalism rather than socialism).

David

[Jim W]

If I'm reading Dapple correctly, he's saying that it's a matter of position / perspective. I don't take him to say that someone to the left of Mr. Gilder is beyond his imagination, but that to him (who some would take to be on the extreme right,) Mr. Gilder appears to be rather far on the left. If I'm 5 miles down the road, someone who's only 100 feet down the same road seems to be awfully near the beginning of it; to someone at the 10 foot mark, the 100 footer is a ways down, and I'm distant.

Just wondering - if someone advocates total anarchy, would that individual be considered left wing, right wing, or just the joining point of a circle?