Note: The following was originally posted as a (too) long thread over at BlueSky. This is largely the same content with a few edits and tweaks for a larger character count.
I was on YouTube recently as I am wont to be, and I came across a video where the host talked about how PBS was “like the BBC” in that they are both publicly-financed.
This is true on paper, but it’s more complicated than that. That complication reveals a big issue with how the US government treats the arts and entertainment industry. And since I’ve written about this on every other platform, I figured: what’s one more?
The UK government has a significant number of parliamentarians who see the BBC as a jobs program. It’s not just “fun shows,” it’s an opportunity to train people in useful skills and find them paying jobs.
The US government, on the other hand, sees PBS as an entitlement program.
US moderates and conservatives hate entitlement programs.
This split in how the two governments understand the very concept of public broadcasting has a lot to do with how each of these models began. In the UK, the BBC was one of the first widely-available television and radio services. Public broadcasting was there from the start. The US, on the other hand, decided to leave that industry to private corporations until 1967. That’s because private corpos in the US offered a quick and easy plan to finance broadcasting. Instead of a per-house fee, all they asked was the ability to sell people stuff. The government would continue to moderate and license the airwaves, and they would get a small time slot each day dedicated to news and public interest in exchange.
Now, the US government didn’t run that time slot. It was just promised that the corporations would provide it and fill it with their own choice of public interest programming as their compensation to the American public for their use of — and their profiting from — a public resource. So most American news programs started out as a way of meeting minimum requirements. They could provide a few minutes of news each day from a single, inexpensive set and fulfill their obligation to the American people, then focus on the things that sold for the rest of their schedule.
And, thus, American programming was decided by what could or could not move product. If an advertiser got a bunch of buyers, they would continue sponsoring a show. If they didn’t, Billy Jones and Ernie Hare would need to find a new sponsor they could fit into the lyrics of “If You’re Happy and You Know It.“
The BBC, meanwhile, was deciding its programming by appointing committees to produce reports on their potential value to the public. As when the popular success of Quatermass was followed by the BBC producing a report on the social benefits of Science Fiction. This report would lead directly to the long-running British phenomenon “Doctor Who.”
In 1967, the US Congress passed the Public Broadcasting Act and it was signed into law by LBJ, creating the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (which some damn fool in the White House recently eliminated by executive order). It took partial ownership of the Ford Foundation’s existing channel, National Educational Television. Two years later, the broadcasting wing of NET would officially become the Public Broadcasting System — although NET as a production entity would continue on as one of its chief suppliers of programming — and PBS would expand from solely educational content into “Public Interest Content.”
One thing it helps to remember at this time is that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting actually provided a small portion of funding taken from an incredibly small amount of tax revenue. After a while of the budget not being allowed to increase, that funding was not really enough to make quality productions on its own. It was always a way of subsidizing production. Not fully financing it.
The BBC, meanwhile, was largely financing its productions on its own. The money collected by the government for television fees went directly into the BBC’s operating budget. They were funded to a point that they could actually afford to produce shows at varying levels. News magazines, local interest, light entertainment, and cultural interest were all directly funded.
Sesame Street is often thought of as one of the triumphs of PBS, but it was only subsidized by the CPB. When it started development in 1966, the rest of its funding came from the Carnegie and Ford Foundations — private, non-profit entities. As the demand for Sesame Street to do more for American kids rose, CPB funding remained relatively frozen and the private non-profits ran out of available grants. They had to seek out corporate sources of funding, leading them to sell toy licenses and to make ill-received deals with HBO.
Other projects — like a series adapting classic American science fiction stories — stumbled right out of the gate despite how critically praised the productions were. Only three of the planned adaptations made it to air: “Between Time and Timbuktu,” “The Lathe of Heaven,” and “Overdrawn at the Memory Bank.” The latter’s low production values didn’t stop it from being one of the most requested PBS productions of the time, although they did ultimately land it on Mystery Science Theater 3000.
The United States Congress — in particular the conservatives and right-leaning moderates therein — kept the CPB from growing. This would make production prohibitively expensive save for single-set news magazines and special interest programs like Stewart Cheifet’s “The Computer Chronicles.” With no money to produce their own original dramas and comedy, PBS would find itself increasingly turning to… the BBC. British taxpayers paid for quality programming for the UK population, and US taxpayers paid for that same programming to be licensed because it was cheaper than producing our own.
Even with the CPB’s funding kept so gallingly low, conservatives would still hone their argument against public broadcasting into suggesting that its mere existence was stifling private industry. As an example: In the 90’s, National Public Radio was home to investigative journalism, in-depth cultural programming, light entertainment, and educational shows. That variety was ignored by Republicans who argued, “There’s no need for NPR because there will always be classical music on the air in any market where there’s enough demand for a private company to step in.” Classical music was only around 5% of NPR’s available programming at the time.
That argument also ignored that “enough demand” is exactly why the CPB was founded in the first place — because sometimes the practical need for something to be available in a society far outstrips the kind of market demand that justifies private companies spending money. To continue with their oversimplified example of “classical music,” not every community has the popular demand to justify a radio station dedicating its programming to classical — but there is undeniable value in the entire community having access to it, should they choose to check it out.
And, of course, none of the arguments addressed the jobs that would be lost by canceling the pittance of public funding that was actually being paid. A foundation of private enterprise steering television turned the idea of entertainment and information without corporate oversight into an “entitlement program.”
Something the BBC did (and may still do — it’s been a decade since I checked) that PBS was never able to afford was that it provided pathways into the industry. You want to write a show? Send a script to the BBC. If you live in the UK, it has to be read and they have to provide feedback. Part of that feedback is providing classes for aspiring writers where they can learn the ropes of storytelling for radio and television, and learn how to pitch their stories more successfully. It’s literally vocational training for people who want to write for entertainment.
A slight digression that I promise is coming back to the matter at hand. I had a friend when I was in grad school who married a UK citizen and moved there from the USA. We used to talk back and forth online about how she was attending BBC writing classes and working on short films and pilot scripts, and she would relentlessly kick my ass for not doing the writing I was supposed to do. She passed away a few years ago in a car accident while visiting her family here in the USA, and every time I think of her I kinda get a little teary-eyed because she was an amazingly friendly, funny, and kind person and the world is poorer without her.
She was able to pursue her passion due to the BBC’s writers’ programs. And other programs exist for people who want to direct, for aspiring cinematographers, for people who record audio, for people who love radio — if it’s a part of the media industry, there’s a BBC program to help you learn. In the United States, PBS never had the funding necessary to do that. Instead, the CPB was constantly underfunded and constantly under attack because it was seen 1) as the government competing with private industry, and 2) as providing “just entertainment” to everybody.
And there’s the rub.
If you know anything about the USA and its broken systems, you know that these systems continue to be broken — and are oftentimes broken down even further — because of the fear that something might go to someone who “doesn’t deserve it.”
Which is ridiculous.
Define for me who doesn’t deserve to see a performance of August Wilson.
Define for me who doesn’t deserve to hear John Adams’ “Doctor Atomic.”
Define for me who doesn’t deserve to know the news.
Define for me who doesn’t deserve to learn how to goddamn read.
While you’re at it, define for me who doesn’t deserve to have willing eyes read what they’ve written and give them advice on how to get better. Define for me who doesn’t deserve to even briefly use a camera so they can learn how it works.
Define for me who doesn’t deserve to learn something new.
Define for me who doesn’t deserve to chase their dream.
And then just admit that you’re actually refusing to acknowledge that person as a human fucking being.
Featured image by This_is_Engineering from Pixabay