Bad Reception

Columnist George Will has taken aim at the Corporation of Public Broadcasting (CPB), and I'm peeved.

First, Will starts his complaint with the establishment of CPB in 1967, and ignores the prior history of public television altogether. Public TV was a saving grace of the 'vast wasteland' of the 50's and early 60's television, well before CPB was established. I remember!

Disdainful Will asks:

Why should government subsidize the production and distribution of entertainment, and even worse, journalism?

That's easy to answer, Mr. Will. Being ubiquitous, the air waves are a public resource. To prevent their abuse (another 'tragedy of the commons') use of this public resource (like many others, such as water) should be licensed by the government, and the government has an interest in their proper use. The government can and should require producers of entertainment and news to use their skills for the broad betterment of the country, or to produce such goods itself, should it choose. Hell, even Herbert Hoover recognized that government had a role to play! Why can't Will?

This is true even if Cable (carried by wire, and hence not technically carried in the ether) is part of the media mix. Cable relies, after all, on satellite transmission for part of its delivery.

In a sense, the public's attention is the real resource, and it's dangerous to let a single agency, or group of agencies, whether public or private or both, to dominate that resource. "Tragedy of the Commons" can apply to how we use the fruits of entertainment, as well as how those fruits are transmitted.

George Will proceeds to bite the hand that feeds him in this laughable quote:

Furthermore, journalism and imitations of it have become social smog. Even in airport concourses you are bombarded by televised human volcanoes verbally assaulting each other about the "news," broadly - very broadly - defined to include Kobe Bryant's presence on Michael Jackson's witness list.

It is exactly this degradation of the news that Public Television is best able to combat (e.g., The News Hour on PBS). The unfortunate effect of the systematic crippling of Public Television with budget cuts over the last 25 years, however, is that some of the best, most informative news available anywhere on Cable TV today comes from Jon Stewart's Daily Show: a freakin' SATIRE of talking heads JUST LIKE YOU, Mr. Will, as well as the rest of the volcanoes in the 'Ring of Fire' of human boob-tube mouthpieces! Even in 'airport concourses' (one of the few places I'm sure where Mr. Will might find himself mingling with unwashed common folk and other hoi-polloi), can't he sense the seething contempt directed to opinion-floggers like himself? Is Will that insulated from reality? Doesn't the question practically answer itself?

Public Television still fulfills its basic function even in the Cable Multiverse we have today. Where else can you see shows featuring, say, Broadway songs, on Basic Cable? Nowhere else. Same with popular shows from Britain. "Austin City Limits:" there are many other examples.

Public Television is not 'vestigial,' as Will would have us believe, but rather beleaguered. Public Television is having a harder time of late, but that is because it has so many powerful, Republican enemies, and because media interests have an interest in killing it off.