Word: pbs
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Newt Gingrich, poet laureate of the Yahoos, wants to stop federal funding for Public Broadcasting Services [Television, Jan. 23]. He calls public television a ``sandbox for the rich''--as if Big Bird were watched only by the kids of millionaires. PBS takes only a tiny fraction of the national budget, but this crude man would rather spend money on pet projects like Star Wars...
...away from this idea of economic class warfare that gets thrown into this discussion over and over again by the Democrats," said Republican Representative Bill Archer, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, on pbs's MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour the other day. "I'm really sad that they continue to go back trying to divide America...
...PBS supporters insist that government funding remains as essential today as it ever has been to fulfill the mandate of public television: to provide a place where high-quality programming can flourish without the commercial pressures that dog the networks. Yet with both Democrats and Republicans looking desperately for places to cut government spending, public TV seems to many a frill that can be eliminated with relatively little pain. What's more, TV has changed markedly since the Public Broadcasting Service was created in 1969. Back then, PBS was the only alternative to the three commercial networks. Now the cable...
Senator Larry Pressler, the South Dakota Republican who is a leading congressional foe of CPB funding, contends that public TV could survive just fine if it were off the government dole. For one thing, Pressler suggests, PBS could make up the money by negotiating for a piece of the revenue from the merchandising of Big Bird, Barney and other popular PBS children's characters. (The producers of Barney have done just that...
Public TV's defenders, too, are marshaling their forces and arguments. Bill Moyers, speaking to a press conference this month, caustically noted the role that for-profit cable networks -- PBS's competitors -- have played in providing a platform for Gingrich's attacks: the new House Speaker has his own show on National Empowerment Television, a conservative cable network, and was recently inveighing against the CPB in an hourlong interview on C-SPAN. Moyers expressed suspicion of "publicly supported politicians in the service of a commercial industry that, frankly, would like to see public television not exist...