Sesame Street Will Survive (But Elmo Must DIE!)

Both sides have missed something in the debate over taxpayers funding National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service.

It's not about keeping "quality" and/or "educational" or "children's" (or pick your favorite buzzword) programming on broadcast television.  With cable and the Internet, there are plenty of options to choose from for programming that qualifies as any buzzword you can think of (my current fav happens to be Netflix).  And as for the minority that rely solely on broadcast TV, the PBS option will survive (more on that in a minute).  I don't imagine any of them listening to NPR.  Really.

And it's not about ideology.  I don't give a shit how liberal NPR may be or if Sesame Street is going to create a lead-in to gay families (yes, I've seen the segment).  Because the fact is that the show is a successful marketing juggernaut for a reason:  because they attract and retain an audience.

In fact, since I've cut the cable networks out, I've had local PBS kids programming on more often, as Nickelodeon and Disney got the boot in the process.  And my daughter is on PBSkids.org right now (since it involved teaching her how to type a url to find something online).  And as I get used to no drone from the 24/7 news (which I used to turn on when talk radio got me bored), I might find myself using PBS as good white noise programming (because I despise most network TV (and their insipid commercials)).

This brings me to the reason public broadcasting should be defunded.  With the current breadth of options to get all of the things that you once could only find on PBS and NPR, there's no need for the government to take taxpayer money and spend it to prop up any broadcaster.  And in this time of ungodly debt, the idea we have to finance anything and everything is beyond ridiculous

The result of this will be what you would expect.  Stations that don't do a good job fundraising (which they all do) and can't retain corporate sponsorship (which they all also do) will fall by the wayside and shutter themselves.  The ones that don't will step it up and improve their programming with the cheaper options now available (like the computer animated shows that litter both PBSkids and their cable rivals), or use the decades of quality programming that is, in many cases, ageless to cut the amount of production costs they have.  In addition, there's plenty of independent documentaries that would be inexpensive to acquire.

The point is that there are options.  Perhaps a few more sponsors and a few commercials between shows will creep in (as adding commercials every 10-15 minutes is the fastest way to piss off their viewers).  It's nothing new.

For example, you'll see all these organizations and companies mentioned at the beginning of Sesame Street (link): The Public Broadcasting Service, the Department of Education, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, McDonalds Corporation, and Beaches Family Resorts.  The first three, of course, would be cut, as two are the funding we're talking about cutting, and the Department of Education needs to be killed completely for the simple reason that it's mostly a waste.  In fact, sponsoring Sesame Street is the least wasteful thing they do.  The others are BIIIIG EEEEEEVIL corporations, including the great fattener of children, McDonalds.  And that's not including whatever money Sesame Street pulls in from licensing the insipid image of the little red devil, Elmo, on everything they can print that unholy Muppet spawn onto, as well as all the other Muppets I don't hate with a passion.


Getting back to the point, there are plenty of ways to fund programming like this.  And if you want this programming, you'll do what you need to to support and finance it.  And as we get away from relying on the government to finance everything and start returning to a system where the people, by their financial choices, decide what survives, then the best will thrive, the good survive.  And everybody wins (except the whiners).