If you agreed with John Hood?s recent recommendations about the future of taxpayer funding for public broadcasting outlets, you might enjoy the following snippet from James Lileks? latest National Review column.
Lileks puts forth the novel idea of forcing public broadcasters to seek advertisers:
Granted, the very idea, of crass splashy ads crashing into the well-tempered palaver makes public-radio advocates rar back like Dracula confronted with the cross. Public radio is known for its seamless tone, its even temper. Mournful interstitial banjo music leads into a reasoned but rueful account of Sudanese atrocities, followed by gently effervescent baroque quartets that yield to a station ID with a hopeful flute fillip. Somewhere on Olympus, Daniel Schorr nods in approval. Commercials would spoil it.
But many shows already have a commercial, fore and aft. ?This program on the folk music of Depression-era transgendered African-American pigeon fanciers has been brought to you by a large corporation whose board vainly believes this will engender good will, and a grant by the Gotrocks Foundation: spending its largess in a fashion that would give its capitalistic benefactor a coronary for over 30 years.? The corporation grants are a particularly pathetic piece of danegeld; British Petroleum could sponsor every single public-radio show, and no listener would conclude, ?Well, I hated you for killing the earth, but you sponsored that show on the impact of lead-based makeup in Renaissance commedia dell?arte, so we?re even.?
