Crikey: Public Radio and Public TV want a $550 million bailout
At least the porn industry was sort of kidding about their bailout bid. Public radio and public television — already funded with your money to the tune of some $400 million in direct federal handouts and tax deductions for contributions made by individual viewers, not to mention untold state grants and subsidies — want a big chunk of Barack Obama’s stimulus pie (a.k.a. the Generational Theft Act of 2009). And they are deadly serious.
That’s right: Government-supported NPR and PBS want even more of a bailout than they’ve lived off the last 40 years. According to Current.org, the two entities along with the Corporation for Public Broadcasting have petitioned Obama for $550 million in stimulus funding to help create more workers suckling on the public teat (big hat tip: Steve Bartin).
From the NPR/PBS/CPB letter to Obama, these are some of the projects they want funded:
National Public Lightpath
National Public Lightpath will extend the reach of super-high-speed connections among public media organizations, public schools, universities, government agencies, community-based organizations and centers of innovation across the United States. National Public Lightpath will create the ability to enter true real-time collaborations and provide access to a level of interconnection speed unsurpassed anywhere in the world. The impact on education, technology and innovation will be immediate; the strengthening of civic life and public engagement will be transformative.Stimulus impact: Construction of the National Public Lightpath will create 1,800 jobs during the one-year construction phase and approximately 270 permanent jobs to manage and maintain the network. In addition, there will be significant secondary employment effects as purchases of cable and equipment move through manufacturing facilities.
Potential partners: Ford Foundation, National LambdaRail, Bay Area Video Coalition.
American Archive
Innovation is fostered by access to trusted information. Highly-trusted content of enormous value is languishing on the shelves of public television and radio stations. Billions of dollars worth of content assets, largely purchased with public money, are effectively lost to educators, inventors, government officials and private citizens because they have not been indexed and stored on accessible digital media. Worse still, some of these assets are in real danger of physical loss through disintegration and obsolescence.Stimulus impact: The work of reviewing content, selecting material of lasting historical interest, digitizing and indexing it, clearing and cataloging intellectual property rights associated with it, and building databases and retrieval system to access it, will create hundreds of jobs. The work of maintaining the Archive’s currency as content creation explodes in a web 2.0 environment will provide new and challenging careers well into the future.
Potential partners: Library of Congress, National Archives, local academic and public libraries, local and national museums
Education
We propose an initiative that would be a preschool Teach for America, targeting over 100 economically disadvantaged communities. We will enlist and train teachers, caregivers, and childcare workers as proficient users of new-media-based educational tools for young children. Further, we will create a new service-oriented professional and paraprofessional workforce dedicated to helping young children learn to read. Moreover, we will support continuing research in the effective use of educational media materials in high poverty environments, and provide grants to stations to partner with local organizations to recruit participants, disseminate materials and hold community events.Stimulus impact: We anticipate that we will help over 500,000 young children learn basic skills associated with reading and academic success. We will train approximately 15,000 professional and paraprofessional teachers in compensated training programs. We will create 200 station-based education positions.
Potential partners: Pre-K-Now, National Association of Child Care Resource & Referral Agencies, the National Association for the Education of Young Children, the National Council of Accreditation of Teacher Education, the Council of Chief State School Officers, the National Head Start Association, local daycare centers, local educational institutions.
Crisis Response
We propose to build infrastructure and community capacity to address community crises. For example, in St. Louis, a mortgage crisis initiative conceived of and led by local public media institution KETC has brought dozens of independent community organizations together to help families save their homes from foreclosure. With a strong broadcasting and web infrastructure in place, the station urged families in need of assistance to call the one-stop “211” hotline to access a network of community assistance
organizations assembled by the station. In addition, the station has also provided content about managing debt and financial literacy. Since this initiative began six months ago, KETC and its partners have helped 8,200 families.We propose to extend this effort to 75 metropolitan areas around the country, targeting locations with the highest mortgage default rates. Stations may assist with other community problems as well, working with national and community-based partners to develop resources to help individuals from all walks of life deal with the consequences of the economic slowdown.
Stimulus impact: Based on our experience in St. Louis, we anticipate that public broadcasting stations and their community partners will assist 750,000 households. We will fund producers to create content that is delivered on multiple platforms and community engagement staff at stations to work with local partners, creating approximately 750 positions in all.
Potential partners: local community service organizations, counseling and call centers, and local financial organizations.
Access 2.0
Innovation requires access to media. New digital platforms allow consumers to be active creators of knowledge and culture, while traditional broadcast platforms continue to serve large numbers of people. Unfortunately, access to the media channels and the tools and techniques that enable people to contribute their voices to our society is uneven. As public media, we have an obligation – and many opportunities – to enable and encourage all citizens to tell their story as part of America’s story.We propose to train thousands of community-based and professional digital content creators in multimedia production, bringing new voices to public media. We will also provide start-up staffing for 30 new Native American radio stations recently authorized by the Federal Communications Commission. In addition, we will support expansion of content and services of interest to, and reflecting the experiences of, Native American, Latino and African American audiences.
We propose to help our local public media institutions create a Community Issues Initiative to support local journalism, hyper-local content and organizing and convening activities to bring local organizations together to solve problems and enhance community life.
Stimulus impact: This initiative will result in a significant expansion of local content and engagement. Several hundred positions will be created at local public media institutions; several hundred additional positions will be created outside of stations, and hundreds of content producers will have the opportunity to improve their skills.
Potential partners: Native Public Media, Independent Television Service, TV and Radio Minority Consortia, Youth Radio, Public Radio Exchange, Bay Area Video Coalition, Ford Foundation, Knight Digital Media Center, Association of Independents in Radio, Radio Arte, StoryCorps, Ford Foundation.
Support for Station Capacity
The uniquely American system of public media, which leverages the effectiveness of national networks while anchoring operations in radio and television institutions in local communities, is showing signs of stress. On one hand, stations are facing sharply declining revenues (preliminary estimates indicate potential current year losses could amount to $300 million). On the other hand, stations are also trying to meet a sudden escalation in the need for local services. A one-time investment of federal resources would help stations help communities cope with the economic crisis, protect as many as 1,000 station jobs now at risk, and assure continuity in services used daily by tens of millions of Americans.
The public radio/TV bid is one of untold numbers of applications flooding the Obama transition team in the wake of Obama’s pledge to create a “social investment fund network.”
Sound familiar?
I reported on the social investment fund network back in August. Here’s how I pegged it:
“In practice, this Barack Obama brainchild would serve as a permanent, taxpayer-backed pipeline to Democrat partisan outfits masquerading as public-interest do-gooders…Birds of a Big Government feather flock together– and look out for each other. Watch your wallet.”
The inevitable lard-up of the left-wing stimulus package is well underway.
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- The Latest Pig$ at the Trough: « The Sisyphus Files
- Experts Say Real Tax Cuts, Not an Obama ‘New Deal,’ Will Lift Economy « Goodtimepolitics
- Public lands legislation bill Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is calling up for an under-the-radar Sunday vote. « Goodtimepolitics
- Obama lowers expectations, raises taxes; Surprise Surprise! « Riggword Weblog
- Vocal Minority
- Liars, Leftists, & Loonies or “How we destroyed the Mainstream Media” « Mark Epstein
- The Wide Awake Cafe » Are We A Nation Of Pigeons?
- Obama Bailout Mania continues! | Fire Andrea Mitchell!
- The Rude News » Blog Archive » No NPR / PBS Bailout
- Right Angles » Blog Archive » More begging from NPR and PBS
- Obama climate czar Carol M. Browner has socialist ties « Goodtimepolitics
- $550 MILLION bailout for public radio and TV? « The Oink Report
- Swamp Hermit’s *QUICK* Bits « The Swamp Hermit’s Report
- Wizbang
- Steynian 307 « Free Canuckistan!
- Next In Line In The Bailout Aisle: Public TV And Radio « Jane Q. Republican
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- Let the Absurdity Begin (or Continue) « Zipline Conservative
- Michelle Malkin » And now, back to our regularly scheduled spending orgy
- Riehl World View
- Fairness Doctrine Coming to an Intarweb Near You [Dan Collins; UPDATE]
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Don’t Barney and Big Bird already rake in over a billion dollars each year?
As they both belong to “public broadcasting” why don’t they just ask both of them to drop in a few coins?
We cannot allow PBS to fail. Where will I get my Anne of Green Gables fix?
Oh wait…I have them on DVD.
Never mind. Fail away.
PBS does not own Barney or Sesame Street. They have to pay to show those.
Let them compete in the free market of ideas. No bailout for “public” broadcasting!
Leading the charge against infrastructure, in the proud tradition of conservatives who opposed funding for highways, for the internet (begun with encouragement from Al Gore as an experiment in digital communication (ARPA was not DARPA then)), the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, etc.
The “invisible hand” of Adam Smith is sooo last century (wait, more than that). Modern counties are made great by national investments in infrastructure. Even the Romans built infrastructure. Expensive engineering marvels that you still can see all over Europe
Are there any conservative legal foundations that can sue over the constitutionality of all this crap, and the rest of Obama’s crappy, unconstitutional agenda?
The long and Winding Road
I think it is a great idea. Let’s fund this!
This would make Lenin very happy.
BHO said that the gov is the answer to all our problems. Too bad he doesn’t realize that the gov had a huge hand in creating the current economic woes and has a snowball’s chance in hell to fix them. I’m so looking forward the this malignant narcissist being the White House.
This isn’t going to be over until just about everyone has at least come around begging for a bailout.
RWR
http://www.rightwingrocker.com
This isn’t going to be over until just about everyone has at least come around begging for a bailout.
RWR
http://www.rightwingrocker.com
The last thing our children need is more exposure to media. The recent push to use media-based tools in the classroom has led to millions of students believing that teachers must “entertain them”. It has prevented students from learning basic skills and contributed to the budget shortfalls in the public school systems. Thanks for the offer, NPR/PBS/CPB, but I’ll teach my children to read the old-fashioned way…with those quaint little things called books.
*If they were to compete in the open, free market, they would be no more; And so it should be.
*These past bailouts and proposed bailouts are not unlike cancer; The GOP had better get on/stay on the right side of this overall issue and stop with the feeding of this cancer and commence with the excising; If they don’t, it will go beyond bankrupting the USA for future generations to threatening its’ very existence; You cannot dig yourself out of a hole by continuing to dig deeper, and you cannot save a Republic by converting it to socialism!
They can either sell advertising or go out of business. Programs on pbs will be picked up by commercial networks if they are of any value. NPR is a liberal propaganda station that is a waste of tax money.
We can’t let NPR fail. Where would all the people with fake English accents work?
Even though the Left and the Democrat Party already have ABC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, NBC, and at least half the people at FOXnews in their pocket (not to mention most of the Newspapers in this country) they still feel the need to have a government controlled news outlet with which to spread their lies and half truths. PBS and the associated entities give them that capability along with plausible deniability if they are pressed on their control of those organizations. Of course they’re going to give those people every penny they ask for and there is nothing we can do about it.
I choose not to spend money on cable. I get a slightly bigger budget that way, and I don’t miss having cable at all. I have Netflix and a personal DVD collection instead; I get news from the Internet and radio. (Not NPR.) I therefore don’t get PBS, so why am I paying for it at all? How dare the government decide the best use of money is for the “necessity” of television programming even if it were actually available on my personal television.
Honestly, PBS, if you would just use commercials and get off the government funding like everyone else in your industry, people would still watch your BritComs programming blocks. Actually, they might watch them more often, since presumably you would not keep randomly replacing or interrupting them with pledge drives that bore everybody and repeat themselves. Regular commercials serve as restroom breaks and are sometimes even entertaining. (See CapitalOne, Geico, and a certain credit card commercial that I want to see as a bonus feature on an SG1 DVD.)
What are the odds the some of the organizations involved in Lightpath would be The Manhattan Institute, The American Enterprise Institute, the NRA, the Heartland Institute…?
HEY!!!! I ONLY asked for One Million… To HELP THE ECONOMY!!!
You know, build a NEW HOUSE, Buy a NEW CAR (American of Course) and pay off some OLD DEBTS.
Now THAT is money WELL SPENT! I dont even watch PBS, is Big Bird still on?
This is the opposite of the un-Fairness Doctrine and is the perfect opportunity for the democraps to disseminate their propaganda to the under-educated (courtesy of the socialist teachers “unions”).
Heck! I’m not greedy just a simple one time investment of $500K in Boomer Enterprises will allow me to liquidate our debt and start putting Americans back to work. I promise to stimulate the economy by buying a modest Class C mobile home for the wife and I and we can then tour the country stimulating the economy of most states throughout the United States that honor the Idaho CCW. A guarnatee that we would only use the largesee stolen from the American taxpayer in conservative states. I sure couldn’t do any worse than the failing and unnecessary Public Broadcasting folks.
ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒE (mo-lone lah-veh) Translation: Come and take them!
Unfortunately, Boomer Enterprises business model does not include the furthering of the liberal/democrat agenda, and therefore your request for funds has been denied. Have a nice day.
Next….
As a former Grant writer this drivel has all the catch words and phrases the current bailout contenders are using to throw their hat in the ring and get a piece of that bailout pie. If you read clearly what it says it says NOTHING just more regurgitation of the mantra of the left. Nice words no reality.
Personally, I am considering starting a non-profit to establish carbon credits at the grass roots level to assist local level institutions hardest hit by the down turn in the economy who will not be able to serve the most deserving citizens. By establishing a carbon credit non profit I can mitigate the effect of global warming while creating jobs, providing educational opportunities to those at-risk while advancing the agenda of the reality of the coming crisis. This project will be a model for other small rural communities to create similar outreach programs designed to maximize resources and provide for community engagement in issues confronting economic stability and utilizing localized platforms for the betterment of minorities and those at risk, while increasing economic opportunities and combating the threats to the planet.
Needs a little more work. I think I may have missed a “vital” word or two but you get the idea. I’m only going to ask for a couple of million anyway so it doesn’t need to be as thorough as NPR. Want to take any bets on me getting the money???
Defund them both.
Michelle, glad to see you again.
On January 11th, 2009 at 1:47 pm, Patronedheart said:
I guess its back to the drawing board with my buisness plan using all those liberal buzz words like empowerment, global warming/climate change, green jobs, and social justice.
I stopped listening to NPR years ago when I actually heard a program on “anal cleansing”. I am NOT kidding. They had that on public radio in Chicago. When I moved to Georgia two years ago and was waiting for Comcast to come finally hook up by cable TV, I was forced to listen to radio for a week or two. Only clear-channel radio I could get was NPR. Same old same old, “problems in Ghana”, “problems in Indonesia”, problems in every other backwater in the world, little on “problems in the USA” outside their usual racial litany of “problems” discussed daily an nauseum. BS, pure and simple. The fact these idiots are still on radio is a travesty, the fact MY tax dollars support their travesty is idiocy, pure and simple.
Boomer don’t forget the “for the chillins” bit also.
I noticed lately that all programming on PBS in south Georgia consists of 25-year-old British sit-coms in Saturday night, and marginally-produced programs on wildlife in swamps. How many years does “Are You Being Served” get to run before the tapes wear out? Half the cast is dead now, a lot like the mind-set of PBS television executives.
I just figured out my estimated taxes due on 1/15/09 and was thinking what bailout con artist is going to get his portion of my tax dollars. I don’t mind paying taxes that support our national defense, infrastructure, and law enforcment. However, watching my tax dollars go to bailout a bunch of whining nincompoops is p!ss!ng me off.
Personally, let NPR, PBS, etc. fail.
As a mom of a 5 year old boy, I get a slightly different take on this bailout, at least from the PBS angle. PBS used to be the “educational tv” of choice simply because it was the ONLY source for said programs when I was a kid. Now, they’ve got all that competition from channels like Noggin, Disney, NickJR, etc. and the little ones are not being indoctrinated at PBS any longer. They need this bailout to stretch their influence, hence the educational side of it, with “trained” professionals. Give me a break!
Let the market sort it out and PBS should be gone. Unfortunately, with “The Chosen One” in office, they’ll be around for years to come.
And if we pull the plug on PBS any number of private cable or broadcast stations would pick up any shows with an audience.
Little guys SHOULD be watching the Outdoor Channel and learning how to reload their own ammo. There is Car and Driver, Right Wing Extremism for Beginners–lots of good shows for the kiddies.
Here we generally watch SpongBob SquarePants, but that is a whole different issue.
Howsabout they tap some of that $200 million Ray Kroc’s widow left to NPR?
Howsabout Bill Moyers tips back some of the huge profit he makes off of his lousy DVD sales etc? He doesn’t seem to be hurting, and should set an example…
No prob. Let’s direct more public money toward partisan/PC programming. That’s where I want our money to go.
It’s the last item on the laundry list of proposals that is most important to them—keeping the stations in business. The other items, like the Pre-K ed, are fluff.
Revenues are down, demand is…escalating? Everyone wants the services, but not enough people are willing to pay for them. The people must not want it that bad, but let’s force them to pay for it anyway.
Urgh, my government feels bloated. It needs to purge, but it keeps getting fatter.
I hate public television. It’s so “revolutionary.”
There are hundreds of channels, WHY is “public” television necessary?
BTW, Rick Steves may have a good show, but he is some kind of radical lefty, and I no longer respect him. It’s so hypocritical to be a pacifist when strong men with guns are protecting you all the time…. He should take his show to Pakistan and call it “Rick Steves travels in Pakistan” and see how long he lasts. Liberal idiot.
The only thing that stopped FDR and his un-Constitutional Socialist takeover of the USA was the Supreme Court.
Since there are already at least 9 channels dedicated to PBS on the current cable, what could possibly be missing?
From the descriptions included here, there seems to be a major possibility of funneling some of these funds to the failing newspapers. One way being the support of ‘archiving’ the propaganda from last week for posterity.
My district would be happy if they’d just buy a new round of textbooks. Ours are from the 1980’s.
There is very little on the shelves of public television and radio stations that is the least bit trusted or of marginal value, let alone highly trusted or of enormous value to anyone with an IQ above room temperature. What little there is doesn’t justify the waste of taxpayer dollars that have been pi$$ed down a rathole to fund NPR and PBS.
There is nothing to be be gained in the way of innovation by anything on the shelves of these 2 losers.
If I were king for a day, NPR and PBS would be kicked out of the kingdom forever. If private citizens want to fund their Barbra Streisand, fine. There is no justification for their existence as taxpayer funded entities.
Honestly, i dont really have a problem with public television.
But the concept of publicly funded television, getting more government handouts than it does already…well, does that mean when the ad comes on after every show that “we stay on the air from contributions we recieve, from viewers like you”…that i dont have to give them anything because they’re getting bailed out already?
lgm, its not the infrastructure people contest. The ideas being put forward by these folks are good ideas, on their face. But there’s a problem. The private sector is already doing these things…and not recieving bailouts. Innovation and business are doing things like providing teaching resources, extending internet capability, and so on. While you mock the virtue and strength of a capitalistic society, you seem to directly benefit from it yourself, living here and being able to reap the benefits of the system. I honestly think Phil Valentine has it correct when he says the private sector should do things “government can’t, won’t or shouldn’t do”. And generally, the market has taken up the items listed above already. So why shove government funds that could be used more constructively, to give to a broadcasting system that is already funded by its viewers? If its not getting the money it needs…well, then that would be the market working. Air America ran into that problem, while conservative talk radio has flourished and been profitable.
Seems kind of clear to me, anyway.
It’s a fact that when it comes to their own money, liberals have deep pockets and short arms. They are the stingiest people on the planet.
Liberals are only interested in spending other people’s money, never their own.
Yep, you said it and even the ultra liberal Nicholas Kristof called them out on charitable giving in a December 21, 2008 Op-Ed piece.
A recent study even confirmed it. When it comes to philanthropy, charitable giving, etc., conservatives are far more giving than liberals.
Bill Moyers is still alive? Now that is a shame At least HE belongs on PBS/NPR.
If Liberals, Ar-tists, and others want PBS and NPR they should pay for it by subscription.
Of course Public (whatever) wants a bailout…nobody watches/listens to it.
Just another Government failure needing pork spending.
Well PEBO Barack Hussein, Allah be Praised, Obama says EVERYBODY’s Going to Have to Give’. As told to that manly man, George Stephanopoulos,
Imagine that, He Who Has Come IS NOT Perfect.
Weather forecast for January 20 in DC:
High of 29*/ Low of 14* Hope for snow.
Malt liquor concessions should do well, think?
which column would list new workers for PMS or NPR in Prez elect hurry up scheme. Government or Private Sector? Or are they already the same!
They’ll get it, its for the children and Bill Moyers.
How odd that I get NPR on my Sirius satellite radio. Apparently they can compete with other programming. Cut off the funding immediately.
Holy ballooning government. I think I’m going to be sick.
Well I saw on Fox that the porn industry is trying to get a piece of the bailout pie too. I guess we will get it coming and going.
It is only a matter of time before the government tries to ensure that EVERYONE gets an above average wage. I read that in a science fiction book once. It seems to be coming true.
As a matter of fact, the Hurricane Brewing Co. issued a press release stating that “we are shipping 2.3 million bottles of Colt 45 to D.C. for the inauguration. The product will be in our famous 40 oz. size and will be pre-packaged in brown paper bags. Colt 45 the official drink of the New America”.
HMMMMM maybe singapore has something here…
Thats RACCCIISSSSTTT, funny, but RRRRAAACCCIIISSTTT.
3 weeks in the re-education camps for politicaly incorrect humor, and damn I will be there with you because I thought it was funny…
Why shouldn’t Dear Leader’s Ministry of Truth be publically funded?
Yeah, but I don’t think they used unionized labor to build them; else, they would have crumbled away along with their bloated, over extended empire.
I am not really against updating the inferstructure, it has to be done, but can we do it another way???
So Public Radio & TV want to create a dedicated pipeline direct to schools for their politicized product can be piped directly to the kids unobserved by the general public? Hmmmm. What could go wrong with having a bunch of radical lefties propagandize kids every grade of elementary and high school that their country sucks?
If we’re trying to sort out the difference between industries deserving bailouts, what’s the difference between sexual porn and political porn? At least Penthouse doesn’t pretend to be intellectual nor foist its politics, if it has any, on you. I’d favor bailing out the porn industry over NPR. At least the kids would learn something useful watching porn.
I guess by user-supported radio they mean all the users of America who own a radio? Can we all agree: NPR means National Publicly-financed Radio?
Bailout, the new pork!
National Propaganda Radio (NPR) and the Propaganda Broadcasting Service (PBS) would like to strengthen and deepen their socialist tentacles into our lives at a time when marxist democrats talk openly about silencing conservative broadcasting with something they have the audacity to call the Fairness Doctrine.
We are loosing out freedom.
Actually, as part of the deal to allow the satellite companies to merge, the channels are made available to NPR regardless of listeners.
So, no, they do not actually compete on equal footing. Just another communist public service.