…is PBS, according to Tim Goodman of the San Francisco Chronicle. His critique of public television:
The Public Broadcasting Service is unfixable. Never mind the laughably utopian notion that member stations drive the bus. The real woe rests with the highly charged, artistically stifling politicizing that is destroying PBS.
I don’t agree with that critque–PBS is bad enough that “stifling politicizing” couldn’t hurt it–but I do agree with the conclusion: cut the federal subsidy.
How does PBS survive without federal money? It reinvents itself. It takes a gamble. It takes — wait for it, now — some action. There will certainly be casualties. Small PBS stations may fold. Rural counties may lose their PBS channel. You know what? That’s life. Walk it off. Rub it out. Someone always feels the pain of tough love.
The system and stations like KERA would be forced to do what they do best–and somehow I don’t think that’s Maya and Miguel’s Sportacular.
