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Comment by unraveller | Hacker News Reader

It's a fools errand to put elitist classical music and opera on TV to compete with the slop when mass TV dispersion is anti-elitism to the core, operating over the work week schedule not the broadway season.

Any one who cares about experiencing art as a pastime can see that government subsidies of culture performances could be better spent anywhere else than TV. Surely the TV station will just game it so whatever appears on the screen is slop-adjacent, they never wanted a high-culture wing, they gain nothing from a critical thinking audience.

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Unless it's outright public broadcasting itself e.g. check fantastic European arte.tv as probably best of class (?) example.

Hooray for public broadcasters. They do it in my country too. If you have good sound system connected to the TV it can be quite nice, though it's still not nearly the same as being there. And the recordings are available to be streamed.

There's also this new world's largest modern concert organ that's a good piece of attraction. https://musiikkitalo.fi/en/organ/

A lot of people (like myself) don't even get broadcast/cable TV any longer. But lots of stuff streaming/purchased if you want it.

Being there is certainly different (plusses and minuses). But, of course, things like world-class opera and ballet aren't widely available (and are expensive).

Public broadcasters offer the same content as live stream or on demand. You can watch with a phone if you want to. Some summer we watched football world cup with a friend while having beers outside.

I don't really consider football world cup the same thing. There's a fairly limited amount of theater etc. available streaming.

But arte is clearly not good because of music. They do some,but what we watch it for are their mindblowing and regular documentaries they either produce or purchase. As well as their debate shows (I can spend a month watching their daily debates show C dans l'air).

But there is something I learned eventually: I work deep in finance now, on a trading floor in HK, and all their cool documentaries about Finance feel to me, now, very populist and not very honest: so they probably have an agenda trending left wing at least in France. Which is fine, just need to know.

I think AI is BS, but if it could voice-translate to English most of Arte, maybe that'd be interesting enough.

They regularly transmit live concerts and music features on many genres even.

Can you be more specific in your critique? Why were the documentaries not honest in your opinion? Which one(s)?

Am not GP, but my experience is that the deeper I know a topic, the more uninformed and slanted any reporting / documentary / media article becomes.

It’s probably natural, because (1) journalists only have a given amount of space to convey an idea, (2) need to capture a non-expert audience, (3) are usually working across a broad range of topics.

Extrapolating from my specializations I can say that most documentaries on arte.tv - even while having to compress and simplify by necessity - had been pretty poignant actually. German and French documentaries for example also tend to be pretty "dry" from the edutainment perspective. I'd call that a feature.

I don't agree that any reporting / media gets it overly / inherently wrong the deeper your knowledge is. There are plenty of great journalists out there that often have varied and deep backgrounds on topics and / or interface well with top experts for the given material they are publicizing.

> check fantastic European arte.tv

There are some good stuff on Arte. But most of the stuff on Arte has got to deal with two major Arte problems:

    - Arte's brain is so far left it fell out of its skull
    - it is *the* perfect example "artsy fartsy"

I am not thrilled when my EU taxpayers money goes toward funding artsy fartsy far-left stuff.

Maybe art is just not your thing? I mean the program is in its name quite literally?

It's objectively good that this gets government funded as cultural institutions and creators get highlighted.

As per one of the foremost analysts of a major airline I worked for many years ago:

"Europe is a cultural Disney Land"

I wouldn't underestimate the impact tourism has on EU economies.

I don't know about that. The BBC have had great success with the Proms festival[1]. Tickets to go in person are cheap (if you're promming ie standing that is) although you have to queue to get them, and everything is broadcast on TV. The quality of the music is extremely high with a mix of new commissions, established works etc.

The key thing is that it is a public service broadcaster though. I don't think it would be possible otherwise.

[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/events/rfbp5v/series

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