Just Asking:
When I was making my posts a couple of days ago that is why I deliberately added to one of them the words "...in 2006". The most current World Almanac tells that, comparing 1990 to 2004 (most recent year available) the viewing split for Network-Independent-Public-Basic Cable-PPV Cable went from 55-20-3-21-6 to 37-10-2-53-6. "Majority dominance" tv no longer truly exists.
The only growth area in that time span went to the segment that has the largest variety available...and the segment offering the most hope to those yearning for quality programming. The successes of these smaller, nimbler cable networks has bedeviled the "big 3" and forced them to try to compete and change. Not unlike what's been going on in Detroit for decades.
No, I doubt Joanie Chen will trade in her "Big Brother" duties and be introducing a segment of Masterpiece Theatre anytime soon. I have nothing to guarantee a PBS would survive on its own, but I think the environment is the most favorable it has ever been when you consider the 'crap factor' that passes for a lot of mass-market tv...despite their efforts to change. Plus, these smaller cable channels can survive by finding a viewing niche and not worrying if they out-pull "Survivor" or not.
Changing gears slightly...After you got out of bed the other morning, I think you began to subscribe to the Dark Side of what you (and others) thought I might have meant by bringing up the moniker "rich, white, and middle-aged". Let me give it another go.
First, this whole topic, to me, is being argued on its own merits. I'm not trying to play "6 degrees of separation" with it and the war in Iraq, tax cuts, or white men voting to free slaves in 19th-Century America. To do that will result in a thread where the 150th post would bear zero likeness to posts 1-10.
In regards to NPR and PBS, all I am saying is that despite the admitted quality of both outlets and the fact that anyone can watch/listen to them, unfortunately it does not mean everyone does. The majority of those that do belong to the financial segment of our population with the most disposable income & ability to seek out news and entertainment on their own. Yes, these same listeners do also exercise their free right to help support these networks, but the crux of the matter to me is (narrowly) should the gov't be helping, at all, to keep those networks afloat when given the fact$ of who predominantly listen$ to them? It has nothing to do with any desire to extinguish their existence on my part.
I've made it clear that I have no issues with complete sentences, programming that exists where opposing views aren't shouted down (thank you Crossfire for that I guess), and where issues are explored at ground-level, not just looked at from 500,000 feet and passed judgement upon. If that is what PBS/NPR represent to many/all of you, then we're in the same boat.
If the market-related factors were totally different, and poor whites, blacks, hispanics, etc., were the #1 audiences of NPR and PBS, then you'd have had none of this out of me and I would have joined Stronzo's petition link. I just feel, rightly or wrongly, that there is a disconnect between what many in this country feel NPR/PBS does for everyone and who actually it is that takes advantage of what it offers.
I never meant my viewpoint as a slap against you or Stronzo or as a latter-day Republican argument to try and save humanity by randomly cutting $115 million from the budget...where it gets cut be damned. I don't claim to be a perfect classical conservative, but I'm working on it.