PBS Launches NERDTV

Posted Sep 9, 2005 1:38 UTC (Fri) by jwb (guest, #15467) [Link]

PBS works are not produced by the government, although they are frequently underwritten by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The difference is subtle.

Posted Sep 9, 2005 13:10 UTC (Fri) by Duncan (guest, #6647) [Link]

PBS (Public Broadcasting Service, http://pbs.org ) isn't government at
all, altho they do get some fraction of their support from government
grants.

http://www.pbs.org/aboutpbs/

"PBS, [...] is a private, non-profit media enterprise owned and operated
by the nation's 349 public television stations."

http://www.pbs.org/aboutpbs/aboutpbs_corp.html

"PBS' operating revenue in fiscal year 2004 was $333 million. Leading
sources of revenue included: station assessments (47%); CPB and federal
grants (24%); royalties, license fees, satellite services and investment
income (14%) and educational product sales (12%)."

Individual stations are "listener supported" and regularly (generally
twice a year) have pledge telethons. That's where that 47% station
assessments ultimately comes from, above. Individual programs will
usually have national and local corporate sponsors underwriting most of
the cost for the program and time slot, with "Funding provided by..."
announcements, usually with a 2-5 second blurb about the funding company
(slogan, logo, perhaps a couple second "image portrayal" ad"). Everything
is run privately enough, however, that I'd say the non-government aspect
is far more than a technicality. It's "non-commercial" in that it isn't
funded by traditional commercials, but as I mentioned, there are still the
"funding provided by..." announcements, and the regular funding telethons.

PBS is TV. NPR (National Public Radio, http://npr.org ) is the radio
parallel (and is considered by many to be the more liberal leaning of the
two).

The US federal government doesn't have an official internal general
purpose media voice at all, only the externally targeted VOA (Voice of
America, http://www.voa.gov, which redirects to http://www.voanews.com ),
which originated during WWII as a foreign propaganda propaganda outlet
targeted at Germany, and was targeted and funded by the US Congress as
counterpropaganda to the message coming out of the USSR, for most of its
history. However, it is SPECIFICALLY prohibited from broadcasting into
the US, according to the faqs at the above link.

FWIW, state governments likewise don't normally have an official voice,
altho some city/local governments have a generally low viewership
local-only cable-only "community access" channel that televises local
council meetings and the like, in addition to providing an almost-gratis
forum for local groups of various types. This would normally be provided
as a condition of the cable franchize granting practical local monopoly
CATV rights to some cable company or another.

So... PBS isn't government owned, which answers your question within
context. However, the larger assumption isn't necessarily correct in the
US, either. On point of fact, not a whole lot from the US government is
placed in the public domain at all. In most cases, fortunately or
unfortunately, research dollars are granted to universities, which then
sell the resulting discoveries to various private companies (or the
researchers, still owning the rights to their discoveries, form their own
companies to exploit them, after their papers). The thinking is that
private enterprise is more efficient at distributing the output without
"artificial" controls on the price, thereby providing a deeper incentive
to others to invest in /more/ research.

It's a far different viewpoint than much of the world, including, it would
seem, than your own. Of course, the viewpoint of most (including myself)
within the Linux community is that such a corporate centered
no-community-commons approach ultimately leads to what amounts to
"intellectual property" gridlock, which we see as the biggest contributor
to the fall of the US as the leader of technology and innovation it once
was, thru most of the 20th century.

Duncan