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Comment by gavinpc | Hacker News Reader

To me, anybody who argues that PBS should be cut loses all credibility as a budget hawk (if they had any to begin with). PBS is an incredibly valuable public-private partnership. For every dollar the federal government spends, two or three listeners listeners voluntarily contribute a dollar of their own money, much of which goes to their local community. Other programs should be looking to public broadcasting as a financial model to be emulated.

edit Not to mention the lasting value created by the content.

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From an ideological perspective, the idea of any state-run media is pretty dissonant with my views. Being opposed to the very idea of PBS or anything like it is a totally understandable position.

The case for PBS is a pragmatic one: it serves millions of kids everyday and supplies unrivaled public educational programming, for what most would consider a very reasonable public expenditure. I completely agree that other agencies should look to PBS as a financial model to be emulated.[1] But it's unfair to discount the validity of your opponent's argument just because the pragmatic counter-argument is strong.

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/penta...

There's an important distinction between https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_broadcasting and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_media though. I'm pretty into the former but share your distaste for the latter.

From a practical perspective I completely agree, but my nightmare scenario for PBS isn't seeing it defunded, but seeing it lose some or all editorial control. That scenario seems very unlikely at present, but not impossible. I just wanted to point out that it's not a completely unreasonable case to make.

I certainly believe people who say they want to cut PBS simply because they don't like it, or don't see it as the government's province. But in the context of trying to balance the federal budget over time, PBS is beyond a micro-optimiziation (if, indeed, it would not actually backfire in the long term). I'm willing to assume that anyone who puts it on their shortlist is being disingenuous about their motives.

I see media as being at least partly behind this. They can't advertise toys and games to kids on PBS. Regardless of how much time kids spend watching ads on non-PBS channels, there could always be more. The broadcaster hunger for these ad dollars can't be greater than now, when kids and their parents have other media vying for control of their time (internet video, I'm looking at you). It's completely in the wheelhouse of broadcasters and cable providers to try to meddle with policy through lobbying and strategic placement in policymaking positions. If only our government were transparent enough to follow the money...

Not that I'm pro-cut, but to a budget hawk any spending is too much spending regardless of matched contribution.

Edit: Keep on downvoting, it's not going to change the opposition's persepctive.

I think the term "budget hawk" has been misapplied so much that it's essentially meaningless. Libertarians seem to want a Federal government as it maybe existed 100 years ago. Right wing Republicans aren't necessarily interested in lower spending or deficits, but claim "deficit spending" as a problem when the tax levels are higher than they like, or when the spending levels for programs they don't like are too high. Everything else is okay.

There are a few people who actually care about running a government that isn't running in the red for eternity, but that's not really what they campaign on or they wouldn't get elected, in my opinion.

That's a straw man of a budget hawk. Real budget hawks are more reasonable.

> That's a straw man of a budget hawk. Real budget hawks are more reasonable.

Is this an ironic no-true-scotsman?

Bury your head in the sand, man. We're not looking at reasonable folks. It's just one side trying to piss on the other.

Thank you Captain Obvious. Can you also shed light on some deep mysteries like the colour of the sky, if water is wet, and where bears poop?

Do you have something constructive to add?

I need answers man. What's the hold up?

PBS is in a dying industry. Television. Perhaps another equally good public-private partnership will arrive. The Khan Academy and Wikipedia are something like that.

You should familiarize yourself PBS Digital Studios. They have several high quality Youtube channels. CrashCourse, Space Time, Infinite, etc. are much better at using the Internet medium and specifically video for learning than Khan Academy, with high production values for a Youtube series though they have different objectives. Khan Academy is like a traditional classroom via the web.

The PBS shows are bingeworthy. Seriously, take a look at SpaceTime. It's so much better than anything the Science or Discovery channel puts on. And I've binged on several topics in Crash Course

The USFG is "an execution company," not an "innovation company." If we had diverted 50% of CPB's budget a decade ago to funding "new technologies for public interest educational programming," it's very unlikely it would have turned into Wikipedia or Khan Academy. PBS is an extremely successful program whose benefits don't show any signs of slowing down. Eventually, it will evolve or be replaced by something better, but there's no reason to get hasty with that. I watch Nova pretty regularly on my appleTV. They don't seem to be anywhere near technological obsolescence just yet.

PBS is actually in a growth industry: financing high-quality original video content. Take a look at what Netflix and Amazon are investing in that direction, for example.

My kid watches PBS shows frequently. She has never watched TV in her life. But she knows PBSkids.org and asks for it by name.

Yes, we should all get our under ten year old kids a computer and let them loose on Wikipedia. I'm sure they'll learn tons of stuff and never get into any trouble whatsoever.

There's a place for things like PBS. It's inexpensive, it's curated, and it's hard to mess around with.

Are those resources as easily accessible to people who are not privileged? What about the children's shows? Are those easily accessible to underprivileged people's televisions?

Cause it's a stretch for them to freely publish online using the same model?

Cause they're already doing that.

I'd say PBS is no longer necessary thanks to YouTube, Periscope, Minds, Kickstarter and hundreds of other sources of content actually created by the public. And I actually know several VPs who work there. You mention the financial model to be emulated - that would be Kickstarter, GoFundMe, Patreon, etc. The best argument for why PBS funding should be cut is because the amount of government funding that goes to running their operations is small in comparison to the non-government funding. Defunding PBS is a direct shift of power from institutions directly to the people. People can still fund PBS if they so choose, or they can simply fund the projects they deem worthy through the many sites mentioned above.

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