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Public television is not about competition
by rquantz 11y ago
Public television is not about competition
- protomyth 11y agoActually, yes it is. Watching public television is an activity that takes time. Groups compete for your time and attention. Public TV asks for donations which people could use on other things. Competition isn't a dirty word, its how we live our limited lives.
- rquantz 11y agoPublic television is explicitly and intentionally set apart from competition with for-profit television. The original intention was that public programming should not have to be a commercial success in order to continue to be funded. Inserting "competition" into a discussion about public television makes it seem as though it should be subject to the same "market forces" as for-profit television. It should not be, and attempts to make it "run like a business" are ideologically driven. I use scare quotes to emphasize that "competition" and "market forces" are human creations, not laws of physics as the hypercapitalists would have you believe, and their application is a choice.
- protomyth 11y agoI can watch TV, go ride a bike, go on a hike, or go back to sleep. Public television, and any other optional activity, is in competition for my time and attention. We only have so much time to spend (welcome to our linear existence) and we cannot get more just because its public television. It has to compete. Competition is not a dirty or scary word. It is a description of how we evaluate things to spend our limited time with. Also, the idea that Public TV doesn't have to compete is just plain wrong. It competes with every other budget item in the federal budget. It has to provide value or it will be cut. How we judge its value is up to the individual.