Is Public Broadcasting Needed Anymore?

We do need an NPR, but opinion needs to be removed.

Facts like traffic, weather, live political speeches and other hard news should be the programing.

Do traffic on the 8s. Weather on the 3s. Hard news synopsises on the 5s. That's your loop.

 

Traffic, weather and news briefs are commercial radio's province. Longer pieces and stuff commercial radio NEVER does, like foreign news, are what drives public radio. That and interview shows where people don't scream. By "removing opinion" I assume you mean "remove mentioning facts my side doesn't want to hear." Most people do, whatever side they're on.

 

But you start bringing in other things, then you can be swayed from one side to another.

WTOP in DC is great at hard news and this format. That is the way I see public radio should function.

 

Over-the-air radio, sure (though I'd submit the radio has always cast their lures there, and that we're nostalgic for the lowest common denominator of our youth, when we were more likely to be that demographic). But between satellite radio, Internet radio and online music services such as Pandora and last.fm, there's never been a better time to be a radio fan. You just can't depend on the AM/FM to provide it.

 

93, you miss my point. If there's already a private radio station succeeding with the format you cite, then a public station in the same market has got to provide different material or it's not going to have an audience. For most U.S. media, foreign news is when some celebrity goes off the tracks in Rome or London. It is an underserved market. That's why the BBC World News channel is on my cable system. People watch it.

 

Well I just did a little Wiki...

If this is the case, then I don't see a place for news at all on NPR.

 

So I am doing a complete 180...

Get the politics out of NPR. Get the news out of NPR.

 

News is why people listen to NPR, because commercial news blows. You can't get rid of it, or you'll have 12 people listening to classical music as an audience. You seem to be arguing that journalism CANNOT be objective, that all facts are inherently political, and that government cannot finance journalism in any way, because that will make journalism biased.
PRIVATE journalism, as we all know, can be biased as all hell. Private journalism organizations in broadcast media exist as parts of businesses which are licensed and regulated by the government, weakly regulated, but regulated just the same. My point being, government and media are completely intertwined (pols are terrified of television station owners, fer instance) so arguing against public broadcast journalism seems kind of irrelevant to me.
Let's cut to the chase. Republican pols hate public broadcasting because public broadcast journalism has occasionally, not always but occasionally, run programming reporting that America's economic and social system is not perfect, and that Republican policies are not perfect. It is a political party which has already become authoritarian in thought and deed. An informed public being a prerequisite for democracy, as Thomas Jefferson noted, they want to do what they can to make sure there isn't one.

 

Technically commercial-free, yes, but there's not much difference between "This programming is sponsored by FedEx, the delivery experts" and a FedEx commercial. In fact, given that the sponsorship spots are frequently read by the on-air talent, I'd argue there's a degree of gravitas that normal advertising doesn't have.

 

I don't want to get into a big argument here about the Post Office, but FedEx and UPS have picked off some of the Post Office's most profitable business.

No one competes -- in fact its illegal -- with their basic mail service. And, even if they could, they'd be fools. It's horribly expensive to deliver to every mailbox in the U.S. It's the same reason why you read about the "digital divide". It's expensive to wire all of those rural areas and so they argue for subsidies. (At which point, I've just -- unintentionally -- made the argument for rural NPR stations.

 

It's still much less than commercial radio where the ads are endless -- a result of the consolidation in the industry. (They had a lot of debt to pay off.)

And, the sponsorship messaging is nice, but it doesn't usually come with the brand messaging companies want in a true advertisement.

 

And, I agree with Michael. It's the long form news, interviews, and foreign news that makes it worth listening to.

If they were doing traffic and weather on the eights, it would ruin it.