The problem is that the bastards in BushCo are preventing crappy television programs from infiltrating a child's tiny, mushy little brain. We need to fund them, no matter how bad they are, and we should probably throw even more money at them. Don't fix the shows, just more money!

Kinda like a public school, ya know?

Oh sure, he picks two "harmless" examples for his little propaganda rag.

What about the non-muppet content of Sesame Street? Like that "which of these things is NOT LIKE THE OTHER, which of these things just DOESN'T BELONG" routine? I mean, if that doesn't sow the seeds of discrimination in fertile young minds, I don't know what does.

With the preponderance of cable/satellite networks with childrens programming and everybody in the country owning a vcr/dvd player and a couple dozen barney or elmos videos, who the hell is the target audiance. How much are we paying so one percent or less of the population can have free, educational programming (that is mostly duplicated or done better elsewhere)?

Elmo: Public Enemy No. 1

Bye bye NPR. You know it's bad when the head of CPB comes out and *says* there's heavy handed liberal bias. What's worse is they only do it when they need corporate sponsors. In otherwords, if da gummamint kept writing checks there'd be no need to sell out to kkkorporate intere$t$.

What a bunch of fuckin phonies.

Here's a little secret all us parents know: no sentient toddler can stand to watch Sesame Street for more than 2 minutes. And who can blame them? The frozen-in-1973 utopian multiethnic 'hood, the crap xerox animation, the mugging by frightening guest grownups like Rosie, Robin Williams and Hillary -- 3-4 year olds find it every bit as boring and stupid as you. No, the only reason Sesame Street exists is to be a government funded media tie-in for Muppet merchandise.

If you want real educational TV for your kids, let 'em watch Spongebob. It's ten times more literate, a million times more entertaining, and makes its money honestly.

I used to watch a lot of public television before we had a million channels to pick from. The problem (if it can be called that) is that channels such as the history channel, discovery, and TLC do as a good or much better job. There really is little need for public tv anymore.

Wow, EVERY commenter is RIGHT in this thread so far.

Public TV is a liberal dinosaur that NEEDS to become extinct.

Grow some 'nads, Republicans, and drop the comet already.

Later,
bbeck

You'd think a US Senator would have more important things to do.

But I guess you'd be wrong.

Once upon a time, PBS was a boon for nerdy kids like me who loved classical music and Shakespeare. I saw my first opera on PBS back in the 70s, I loved 'Previn and the Pittsburgh', and I watched several seasons of the BBC Shakespeare plays until Jonathan Miller took over all the directing and ruined them. But nowadays, it's just not necessary anymore, even for people like me. There are specialty channel for all that stuff, and even better, there are dvds for every sort of arts program you could ever want. PBS has been outstripped by technology - time to shut it down.

The likes of Sesame Street and Barney have been money machines all along. How can they possibly stay on the air without dipping into public funds?

I was all of four when Seasame Street started and didn't get past seven before I first came to wonder about the relationship between all of the merchadise in the stores and public TV. I didn't understand a thing about taxes but something just wasn't right even at that age when the channel presenting the show was so constantly out begging for money from viewers. And that was before the multi-billion dollar home video industry arose.

Then we had all of the British shows that had already been paid for by taxpayers in the UK. Covering the cost of those should amount to some very inexpensive air time for commercials but no, my parents had to pay for this regardless of whether anybody in our family cared.

I was subjected to Barney due to being pressganged into babysitting my neices and nephews. Sesame Street was subtle genius compared to this driven. If Barney had been on the air when I was a toddler I'm sure I'd be a mass murderer today, just to punish the world for permitting such to exist.

We're going to have to keep a very close eye on those kids now entering their teens.

I was listenening toi NPR tonight. They did a piece on how they were not going to change a thing due to 'inappropriate pressures' from 'interest groups', and how any changes they made were going to be 'mostly technical'.

I then listened to 1/2 hour of the straightest reporting I have heard from NPR in 10 years about Dean's (cough) misstatements and two other stories. They actually did the stories straight - I was floored.

The 'inappropriate pressures' are working.

Say Anything- "... the truly good shows will continue to make it on their own, simply because they truly are good shows. People will watch them and the shows will succeed. If they’re not good shows, they will fail..."

Agreed.
Has anyone ever watched Caillou? Its the whiniest kid show out there and as a result booted from our house at the get go. But a whole generation or two might grow up believing that such whimpering and parental idiocy is acceptable in the real world.
I think PBS needs to rethink their attitude and offerings. Demand that it spare us the Caillous and Moyers of the line-up. This publically funded station would serve itself and us better to take into consideration the character and views of their audience. The election map shows that the US is ultimately all-American in nature. To me the definition of American is a positive and beautiful thing. It means creative, challenging, intelligent, magnificent, benevolent, patriotic, strong, brave, glorious, and good.
Too bad that most of our media and PBS seem to believe that our fine nation and her defenders are something different. Thankfully its not too late to gain our voice and make known the difference.

I thought pbs viewership had dropped significantly due to , as someone else already noted, cable. I haven't watched it in years. Why does the public have to fund television no one watches?

Watch Caillous whine... Watch Moyers whine...
What's the diff, 'cept maybe the hat?

I'm tired of paying for it -- I'd rather have a new pair of shoes.