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Location: New Albany, Indiana (Greater Louisville)
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PBS viewers and NPR listeners tend to be affluent and highly educated. I believe there should be a gradual and complete pull back of govt funds for both not to shut them down (I enjoy both) but because a right wing factory worker shouldn't pay tax to support programming they don't like. I like the Jazz24 model, commercial free with no govt funds but supported by their upper income fans.
They can't seem to sustain a series (e.g., the cancellation of "Mercy Street"). They play and replay music shows from the pop-50s. When they do have something that seems promising it only seems to happen on fund raising weeks.
When PBS began we had ABC, CBS, and NBC and an occasional independent channel in bigger cities. Now we have literally hundreds of cable channels.
Personally, I think it's time to pull the plug on PBS...or do more people watch it than I think?
Mercy Street had about 6.5 million viewers every week. The cancellation was due to funding - it's an expensive show to make - and the difficulty getting all the cast together at once in order to film the episodes.
They can't seem to sustain a series (e.g., the cancellation of "Mercy Street"). They play and replay music shows from the pop-50s. When they do have something that seems promising it only seems to happen on fund raising weeks.
When PBS began we had ABC, CBS, and NBC and an occasional independent channel in bigger cities. Now we have literally hundreds of cable channels.
Personally, I think it's time to pull the plug on PBS...or do more people watch it than I think?
Pbs should stay. Any channel or TV show that deals with quality programming is worth leaving on the air even if it's ratings are not as high as other stations'.
And frankly, I think it would be a extremely wrong to take off Pbs but leave on Keeping With The Kardashians, endless Real Housewives of (fill in the blank) shows, & other pointless "reality" shows.
Pull the plug? Doesn't bother me if they do or don't. Stop US taxpayer assistance to keep them running? YES. If they cannot make it on their own, so be it.
I love PBS! Great Performances is enough reason to keep it around. Masterpiece Classic is another reason to keep PBS. Every now and then I'll indulge in a Friday night episode or two of EastEnders. If there is one channel that should be here till the end of time it should be PBS. I can't live in a world where E! and Bravo outlive PBS.
They can't seem to sustain a series (e.g., the cancellation of "Mercy Street"). They play and replay music shows from the pop-50s. When they do have something that seems promising it only seems to happen on fund raising weeks.
When PBS began we had ABC, CBS, and NBC and an occasional independent channel in bigger cities. Now we have literally hundreds of cable channels.
Personally, I think it's time to pull the plug on PBS...or do more people watch it than I think?
I watch it all the time. We watch the BBC miniseries, the documentaries, the old British tv shows, the new British tv show, Rocktopia Live in Budapest!
Love PBS. The next best thing is Amazon Prime where you can also catch some of these later on.
I live in Toronto, Ontario, just across Lake Ontario from Buffalo NY.
About half of the donations for WNED Buffalo's PBS station come from Canadians who live in southern Ontario.
I have the "full house " cable system offered by Rogers cable here ( 900 channels ) , and I still watch PBS shows as well. I have a week long "watch list " that I use to keep track of the programs that I like, both on Rogers and on PBS.
Why do I watch PBS ? Great content, and some of the programs are ones that the mainstream networks would not run.......because it's too intellectual for their audiences. I call that dumbed down TV.
Jim B.
I think KSPS in Spokane gets most of their donations from Edmonton and Calgary, in fact all three cities are listed on the station ID.
They can't seem to sustain a series (e.g., the cancellation of "Mercy Street"). They play and replay music shows from the pop-50s. When they do have something that seems promising it only seems to happen on fund raising weeks.
When PBS began we had ABC, CBS, and NBC and an occasional independent channel in bigger cities. Now we have literally hundreds of cable channels.
Personally, I think it's time to pull the plug on PBS...or do more people watch it than I think?
As noted above Mercy Street could not line up funding sources to match production time lines.
Regarding the music shows from the 1950's, 1960's and now 1970's have you not run the sums? Those are the baby boomer decades. That demographic has quite a lot of money are is one of the most frequent and generous donors to public television. You want something else then dig into your stash and send PBS some cash.
Personally enjoy PBS programming and have since was *that* big.
Began with children's programming (Electric Company, Zoom, Sesame Street), moved onto Great Performances, Julia Child and other cooking shows, Frontline, NewsHour, Frontline and then scores of British programming from Upstairs/Downstairs, I Claudius, Jewel In The Crown, and so much more.
Learn more from NewsHour each night than regular network so called "news" programming. Washington Week is the same. Though greatly miss the late and wonderful Gwen Iffil.
If anything PBS has suffered over the years from funding cuts from Congress meant to drive the thing out of business. Much of this is due to either their hatred of what many conservatives consider "smut" programming (such as the broadcasting of "Tales Of The City"), and or their unbiased and often deep news coverage that goes where the (corporate owned) network news/media outlets won't dare.
PBS was one of the few American news media outlets that didn't toe the line in reporting the Iraq War, something it took such great corporate outlets like the New York Times years afterwards to apologize for their lack of independent journalism.
You pick on Mercy Street, yet Downton Abbey was a huge success for PBS and part of the reason that series got renewed as many times as it did. If MS had attracted the same funding then perhaps things would have been different.
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