Why NPR?
Matthew Yglesias: Why NPR?: "NPR feels a special need to bend over backwards to appease conservative critics. In a market environment, something would arise to serve the NPR market niche that actually needed to serve its market in order to survive. The resulting situation would, I think, make everyone happier."
The deep issue, here, has always been whether there would be any alternative to advertising-supported broadcasting. To a large extent, the conservative campaign -- now largely successful in my view -- against public broadcasting, has been a subversive one, aimed at making public broadcasting over into just another advertising-supported outlet. The "market" an advertising-supported broadcaster or publisher "serves" is large-scale, corporate business, and the character of its offerings is dictated by that reality. Seeking an audience or a readership is decidedly secondary. There have been instances of magazine editors, who have launched, for example, highly "successful" car magazines or teen magazines, which have found fervent audiences; those efforts have failed miserably, however, because businesses are unwilling to advertise in a car magazine, which isn't in the tank for car makers, or a teen magazine, which speaks frankly and realistically about sex instead of hyping cosmetics.
Having outlets for news and information, which are not advertising-supported, and therefore not controlled by and for corporate business, is highly desirable, but, probably a lost cause. PBS became advertising-supported a long-time ago. That programs like the News Hour are supported by right-wing institutions, like the James M Olin Foundation, just reinforces the larger reality.
The American people are going to get the Media and the Politics and Government, they are willing to pay for, and the fact is, a majority would rather get crap for "free", provided by the corporate right-wing, than pony up for something that genuinely served their interest. Not enough people are even willing to pay for TIVO! So, now TIVO will survive by serving us advertising. Egad.
The logical policy prescription would be heavy taxes on advertising of all kinds. Most people in this country are employed in marketing and salesmanship of one kind or another. That's more than 50%, whose "work" is not actually making anything of value, but, rather, just annoying each other as well as everyone else. Reduce the noise generation, and reallocate resources, and we could all be enjoying a quieter life, and six weeks of vacation a year, and still have the same amount of stuff in our lives. And, we might even end up with a liberal media!
The deep issue, here, has always been whether there would be any alternative to advertising-supported broadcasting. To a large extent, the conservative campaign -- now largely successful in my view -- against public broadcasting, has been a subversive one, aimed at making public broadcasting over into just another advertising-supported outlet. The "market" an advertising-supported broadcaster or publisher "serves" is large-scale, corporate business, and the character of its offerings is dictated by that reality. Seeking an audience or a readership is decidedly secondary. There have been instances of magazine editors, who have launched, for example, highly "successful" car magazines or teen magazines, which have found fervent audiences; those efforts have failed miserably, however, because businesses are unwilling to advertise in a car magazine, which isn't in the tank for car makers, or a teen magazine, which speaks frankly and realistically about sex instead of hyping cosmetics.
Having outlets for news and information, which are not advertising-supported, and therefore not controlled by and for corporate business, is highly desirable, but, probably a lost cause. PBS became advertising-supported a long-time ago. That programs like the News Hour are supported by right-wing institutions, like the James M Olin Foundation, just reinforces the larger reality.
The American people are going to get the Media and the Politics and Government, they are willing to pay for, and the fact is, a majority would rather get crap for "free", provided by the corporate right-wing, than pony up for something that genuinely served their interest. Not enough people are even willing to pay for TIVO! So, now TIVO will survive by serving us advertising. Egad.
The logical policy prescription would be heavy taxes on advertising of all kinds. Most people in this country are employed in marketing and salesmanship of one kind or another. That's more than 50%, whose "work" is not actually making anything of value, but, rather, just annoying each other as well as everyone else. Reduce the noise generation, and reallocate resources, and we could all be enjoying a quieter life, and six weeks of vacation a year, and still have the same amount of stuff in our lives. And, we might even end up with a liberal media!
posted by Bruce Wilder at 9:44 AM
<< Home