Word: pbs
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...ideologues has ventured full-bore critiques. A 25th-anniversary report, put out last week by a task force of the usual Establishment suspects (Vartan Gregorian, Joe Califano, Tim Wirth and so on), provoked intriguing newspaper headlines (OVERHAUL PROPOSED, teased the Washington Post), but its reformist manifesto -- the 351 local PBS stations should get less federal money, the central programming apparatus should get more -- turned out to be tepid and intramural, a birthday wish list posing as tough-minded scrutiny...
...Burns should be funded in perpetuity; documentaries sympathetic to black homosexuals and skeptical of Republicans are just fine by me. I have raised money for the A.C.L.U., call myself a Unitarian and give dollar bills to almost every bum who asks; I have standing to question just how essential PBS is these days...
...with nothing but science and nature programs, and so on. In other words, in a world of CNN, C-SPAN, A&E, the Discovery Channel, public TV begins to seem redundant. Charlie Rose, the 1990s' Dick Cavett, conducts thoughtful interviews with members of the cultural elite every night on PBS. But with the actual Cavett doing the same thing on CNBC, Rose (who last week interviewed Sarah Jessica Parker) may not be America's worthiest recipient of federal subsidies...
...once available only on public TV, public TV is increasingly putting on pop crud. Why is it so civilizing to underwrite broadcasts of Wall Street Week, Cary Grant movies, John Bradshaw new age lectures, the powerfully annoying Barney -- or Lawrence Welk reruns, which are now shown on 77% of PBS stations. Chief PBS programmer Jennifer Lawson says, disingenuously, that the Welk shows are legitimate as "an alternative to violence and gratuitous sex on commercial television." Local stations find it's those shows at the not-exactly-Susan-Sontag end of things that inspire subscribers to send in money...
Simon says he doesn't want to discourage salutary, upper-middle-class violence on TV, such as that of The Civil War on PBS. Yet his research avalanche makes no distinction between George Romero and Ken Burns in attributing crime to TV mayhem. Nope, violence is violence -- and Looney Tunes, with 1.33 violent acts a minute, is four times as bad as MTV, with only .33. Bugs Bunny creates sociopaths? "I don't want to dismiss cartoon violence," the Senator says...