Is PBS still relevant?
Re: “Change or die; With cable programming crowding public television’s niche, why do we need to give our tax dollars to Inspector Poirot?” May 8 Arts & Entertainment article.
I was dismayed at Michael Booth’s article attacking PBS for being stodgy and irrelevant. Were it not for PBS, there is little on television I’d bother watching – particularly in the news analysis category. Granted, I’m in the over-the-hill age group, so my allegiance to traditional PBS programming is predicable.
In the comparisons Booth makes between “Newshour,” “Masterpiece Theatre,” “Mystery!” “Frontline,” etc., and comparable programming on commercial or cable television, he overlooks a big difference: lack of advertising breaks during the program. Except for HBO and Showtime, which not everyone can afford or wishes to subscribe to, everything else is riddled with increasingly long commercials. And his dismissal of local programming as “featuring talking heads on bad sets … with only the most obvious voices …” is grossly unfair. I don’t find the guests on “Colorado State of Mind” the most obvious voices. And really, would you call George Stephanopoulos’ and Tim Russert’s sets imaginative?
I personally don’t want more of “Hannity and Combs,” “CSI,” MTV or another banal sitcom. I want my PBS – and I’m not irrelevant.
Jeannie Dunham, Denver
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Kudos to Post writers Michael Booth and Joanne Ostrow for taking aim at the offerings on public television. But along with the applause, here’s a throat clearing: I think Booth, swinging an entirely readable but unwieldy ax at PBS, goes too far.
“SpongeBob SquarePants” is better educational fare than “Sesame Street”? That’s like suggesting “The Three Stooges” is a primer lesson in physical education. And as for suggesting PBS match its adult entertainment offerings to HBO shows like “Carnivale” and “The Sopranos”: Lobby the FCC to relax broadcast standards, then try this facile argument again.
But really, why would we want PBS to become yet another subject to cable TV’s market forces? I’ll admit: I’ve never tried to endure “Nova.” And Brit-flavored stuff like “Mystery!” turns me off entirely. But making PBS justify itself by meeting some popularist quotient would rob us of its quirkier, enriching, non-commercial fare.
Could the wonderful “America’s Test Kitchen,” hosted by balding, pock-faced nebbish Christopher Kimball, exist on the personality-driven Food Network? (Or, for that matter, could the often unintelligible “Yan Can Cook” and Julia Child?) Could Fred Rodgers – whose slow, deliberate manner can’t help but trip modern society’s creepy-guy radar – make it on hyperspeed Nickelodeon? Would the Discovery Channel ever devote eight hours of airtime to something as powerful as “The Power of Myth,” Bill Moyers’ blissfully insightful interview with Joseph Campbell?
No way. Sure, PBS may need a dusting. But an overhaul?
Chris Page, Phoenix
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Michael Booth is right about one thing: PBS does need to overhaul some things if it is to survive. But writing off a public resource as passé and fossilized simply because there are alternatives that are offered by corporate America for those who can afford it is elitist and wrong. I would hope that Booth realizes there are people out there who choose every month between buying a bus pass so they can get to work or waiting on paying their electric bill because they haven’t gotten a cut-off notice yet.
Does he really think that these people are going to buy cable to watch the History Channel? Odds are, they might not have time to watch PBS either, between working two minimum-wage jobs and parenting, but the fact remains that PBS is there if they want it. While I appreciate his big-hearted gesture of using the federal funding that makes up 15 percent of member station budgets to give these people access to the profit-driven alternatives to PBS available on cable, I heavily doubt that it would fly with those people in power who don’t even want there to be welfare programs to help those in need.
PBS is a lot of things to a lot of people. It’s not just shows like “Nature,” “Nova” and “Newshour.” The children’s programming is not just “Sesame Street.” When children are getting ready for school in the morning, each network has a morning show that repeatedly over-emphasizes non-stories like the “runaway bride,” saturates the airwaves with the latest news in the Michael Jackson trial, and tries to sell whatever products the network’s parent company wants you to buy. PBS has shows like “Arthur” and “Clifford the Big Red Dog.” Sure, every children’s show on PBS doesn’t have teaching multiplication as its primary goal. But would you rather your child watch children’s programming on PBS or watch the “Today” show and know all the lewd details about the Kobe Bryant case?
I’m in my late 20s and would rather watch “Arthur” most days. I’m glad that alternative is there.
Piper LeMoine, Denver
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Michael Booth writes from so high above the clouds that he fails to see what is really happening on the ground with public television, particularly Colorado Public Television, KBDI-12. Where else can you find lively discussion and debate on six or more local programs each week about issues and matters that concern Coloradans? Who aired “Colorado Decides,” more than 100 hours of debate with candidates and ballot items before last fall’s important election, the most of any TV station in Colorado? KBDI.
KBDI has positioned itself before our community by stepping up and airing programs like “Colorado Inside Out Live,” “Crossing the Line,” “Aaron Harber Show,” “Independent Thinking” and “Latin View.” The cost of producing local shows is considerably more than re-broadcasting shows off the satellite from PBS, which it also does. KBDI believes it has a vital role to play in our community by challenging people to think, by airing divergent views, and by broadcasting programs that cause us to reflect and question things around us. Instead of being driven by ratings, KBDI is motivated by a strong sense of community purpose.
It’s true that KBDI receives federal funding that permits the station to deliver a combination of quality programming from PBS while producing local programs important to Colorado. A cessation of federal funds would severely affect the ability of KBDI to continue bringing such issues home.
Scott Shirai, Board Chair, Colorado Public Television, KBDI-12
Politics and funding
Re: “Public broadcasting politics,” May 8 guest commentary.
James N. Morgese, president and general manager of Rocky Mountain PBS – the public television station that plays all those history shows – has an oddly truncated perspective on recent history. He apparently isn’t aware there were several presidents between Nixon and George W. Bush and that at least one of these got an eight-year wink-and-nod from PBS.
Until about 1980, PBS did a pretty good job of discharging its duties in a relatively politically neutral fashion. Programming from the subtly biased “Sesame Street” to the foaming-at-the-mouth vituperation of Bill Moyers, which routinely ridicules and vilifies mainstream Americans, may look good to Morgese’s left-liberal bosses back in D.C., but in solidly red states like Colorado? Not so much.
A blinkered Morgese will continue to believe that complaints about the inarguably far-left political bias of what is supposed to be a neutral public broadcasting outlet is simply more wild-eyed, conspiratorial nonsense from the wacky right. Still, even if all of us out here who love our country and support our president really are ignorant, redneck nutjobs, well that’s Morgese’s market. Maybe he should respond to it.
J.M. Schell, Arvada
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If the leftist ideology promoted by PBS can’t stand on its own merits (that is, obtain enough volunteer funding to keep spreading its tripe on the airwaves), then there is no reason why the public, or PBS’s betters in the broadcasting industry, should be taxed to fund that ideology. I’ve stopped watching PBS and stopped listening to NPR because I’m tired of the incessant leftist drumbeat: Global warming will kill you, big business is evil, religious conservatives hate you, gay HIV-positive minorities should be idolized for producing art that no one cares about, and so on. We get that kind of message from the mainstream media for free every day. No one should be taxed to pay for PBS to provide more of the same.
Either PBS should find the support it needs from people who voluntarily contribute or it should die. PBS doesn’t deserve life support through taxes. As its aging audience dies off, let PBS die a natural death too.
Bart Rhoten, Aurora
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James N. Morgese discussed how government funding impacts PBS content. With two PBS stations in the Denver market constantly soliciting viewers for support, let’s look beyond the content to the quantity. As much as we enjoy “Antiques Roadshow” and “American Experience,” we’re being asked to support two stations with essentially duplicate programming. With a VCR, a viewer can capture a program any time and view it later. All the funding, whether from “the government” or “viewers like you,” comes out of your pocket; do you want to pay for it twice?
F. B. Clarke, Denver
Cover the Uninsured Week
Re: “Health coverage is elusive for millions,” May 8 editorial.
Your editorial on the uninsured was excellent, and with employer-based health plan premiums continuing to climb, the problem can only get worse. I especially appreciated your pointing out that when the uninsured hit hospital ERs or physicians’ offices, the cost is passed on to insured consumers and employers.
In my view, the continued reporting of health plan premiums escalating at 15 percent to 20 percent per year is confusing to the public. The truth is that the U.S. has not had a double-digit increase in health care costs in any of the last 20 years. Private health plan premiums and health care costs are two different things.
You touched on one of the reasons that employers and employees are seeing rapid increases in their health plan premiums – the uninsured. However, there are two other major contributors to this problem – Medicaid and Medicare. Medicaid, in particular, pays only a fraction of the costs of recipients’ care. Since the late 1990s, Medicare has continued to fall further behind in terms of covering the full costs of hospital and physician care. Employers and employees pick up the difference, thus their 15 percent to 20 percent premiums increases.
Cost shifting from those who get a discount, or pay nothing, to better-paying customers goes on in almost every industry. However, the problem has become so serious in health care that it threatens to destabilize the entire system. We continue to be disappointed about the lack of serious discussion concerning the growing underpayments by almost 40 percent of the population (e.g., uninsured, Medicaid, Medicare) to employers and those covered by private health plans.
Dean C. Coddington, Greenwood Village
The writer is a senior consultant for McManis Consulting, a health care research and consulting firm.
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In your editorial on health coverage, you said you hope that Cover the Uninsured Week “prompts state and federal lawmakers to focus on solutions.” Solutions? I’d be happy if these lawmakers focused on not causing the problem in the first place!
Is it a coincidence that health insurance involves the two most regulated industries in the country – medicine and insurance? To take just one example, insurance companies are to a great extent forced to charge everyone the same premium (for a given level of coverage), regardless of individual risk. It’s no surprise many young, healthy people would rather take their chances than pay these artificially high prices. If you forced the residents of Phoenix and New Orleans to pay the same for flood insurance (enough to cover overall flood payouts for those two cities), few in Phoenix would think it’s worth it.
Other forms of regulation include: forcing “insurance” coverage for conditions that are under individual control, such as drug abuse; licensing of doctors, which confers monopoly privileges; and patent laws that give monopolies to drug companies, making drugs much more expensive.
We must get the government out of health care, not further into it. Our lives depend on it.
John Schola, Littleton
State’s crumbling schools
Re: “Crumbling schools,” May 8 Perspective article.
As a former elementary school administrator and teacher, I sympathize with the students and teachers who attend and work in schools in disrepair.
They are unsafe and offer a depressing learning environment. Unfortunately, the widening gap between the rich and the poor contradicts the No Child Left Behind mandate. Inept politicians are so caught up with test scores that they neglect the importance of safe, inspiring conditions. I do not believe that our legislators’ and school board members’ children attend dilapidated schools.
I should like to offer an idea that is inexpensive and easy to implement. It would be a small beginning in correcting the problems. I, personally, would be willing to contribute to the purchase of materials for volunteers to use. “Adopt a School” or “One School at a Time” could be the theme.
I will only contribute to the cause if the usual bureaucracy does not interfere.
George S. Evans, Westminster
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For those of you who believe that we “shouldn’t throw money” at our crumbling schools for fear of funds being wasted, have you applied the same logic to our national defense? Our military spending is increasingly unregulated and unsupervised even when we know that the Pentagon has a history of waste, and major defense contractors such as Halliburton are under investigation for multimillion-dollar rip-offs.
Few people question our military spending, but when our schools are in need of basic building maintenance and science supplies, we gripe and moan about waste. As Martin Luther King Jr. said, “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.”
Brian Sherwin, Boulder
Federal energy policy
Re: “Looks like a good time to buy a hybrid,” May 8 Gail Schoettler column.
I appreciated Gail Schoettler’s column regarding energy policy. Too many of us still don’t get it. The energy bill just passed by the U.S. House of Representatives is further testament as to just how far we have to go. The bill pays big dividends to the fossil-fuel industry and relative lip service to conservation and renewable energy.
We have reasonable laws limiting excessive waste of water; it is too precious a resource, and wasting it harms our fellow citizens and the environment. Arguments that it’s my “personal choice” to waste water would fall on deaf ears, and rightfully so.
Our roadways, on the other hand, are a veritable contest to see who can consume the most petroleum – an equally precious resource. For years. Sen. Wayne Allard and like-minded members of Congress have trumpeted the “personal choice” argument to justify head-in- the-sand, market-driven policies. If I choose to race by you in a gas guzzler, this increases demand, which increases cost – for everyone.
For our nation’s security, and in honor of our military’s immeasurable and ongoing sacrifice in the Middle East, I urge every citizen to take personal action to conserve oil, via adjustment in buying and driving habits, and by supporting dramatic expansion of renewable fuels and technologies. Detroit and Washington can do much better, but only if we demand it.
Jerry Stevenson, Pueblo
TO THE POINT: Short takes from readers
Vic Vogler’s column on the justification of men getting their religion in strip clubs (“Intimate lies, distant desire dance as one,” May 8 Style) was bad enough; publishing it on Mother’s Day was idiotic.
Margot Plummer, Golden
The headline above an article in the May 5 Post states, “Oil-company profits surge like they’re printing money.” Since the end of 2003, oil companies have earned a combined $97 billion, including $23 billion the first three months of this year. And you are wondering why you are paying too much for gas!
Gordon Riley, Littleton
I see Iraq now officially has its own government. Well, that’s good enough for me. Job well done. Mission accomplished. Let’s go home.
Ben Anderson, Castle Rock
A Pew Research Center study found 45 percent of Americans believe little or nothing of what they read in daily newspapers. Some 14 percent of Republicans said they believe almost nothing they read in The New York Times. Only the view that liberalism is a religion accounts for newspapers losing this kind of credibility and still not changing.
David Cook, Loveland
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