You seem to be right that Arbitron does track NPR, so I stand corrected. My previous opinion was based on the second paragraph but I missed the preceding statement here:
NPR and PBS split roughly $500 million federal dollars each and every year which figures out to roughly $400,000 for each station. And President Obama has asked to increase that in 2014.
Actually what I read was $445 million, which divided by roughly 1350 NPR and PBS stations would be more on the order of $329k for each, so your rounding up of figures is noted,
but-- that 445 million isn't for NPR and PBS; it's for CPB, which allocates to those entities but also to many others including lots of public stations not affiliated with
either NPR or PBS. So that's even less, significantly. The other part of the equation you leave out is that these funds are supplemental to what the station can raise on its own from its listeners/viewers, and that the federal allocation is pro-rated depending on the station's own level of support, i.e. the more a station can demonstrate its local listener/viewer support, the more it's eligible for from CPB, the other side of the coin meaning that a station with little or no support gets little or no federal funding. The point remains, the largest part of a station's funding is what it raises on its own.
They belong to all of us? Then why is it that they so seldom express my point of view about much of anything?
You're an individual. A public forum's purpose is to present the forum; not to take a stand on it. This wouldn't be much of a message board if it only allowed opinions from one side, would it?
Of course not. Limblob's goal, like ESPN's goal or Maury Povich's goal, is to attract listeners to make his profit, and the way he does that is through controversy. Controversy for its own sake is not public discourse; it's hucksterism. That would truly be a waste of public funds.
I certainly didn't make that argument, and as you correctly noted they're apples and oranges and thus not a valid comparison. As I noted, one's goal is to maximize listeners regardless of content, while the other's goal is to maximize content regardless of listenership.
I've noted in the past that NPR as an organization is bloated and overgrown (centralization does that), and that's why they get competition like PRX. Then again those organizations represent only a slice of public radio anyway, so to limit what CPB does to NPR and CPB is to ignore a lot. One example I've noted in the past is KILI in Porcupine South Dakota. Community station serving the Lakota community there, receives CPB funding to help it survive, and has nothing to do with NPR.
Yet public broadcasting is in general underfunded due to the constant yammering of Congresscritical demagogues, resulting in their having to rely on "underwriting" and "enhanced underwriting", which is a fine line away from commercials, which is anathema to public service -- because as soon as you're taking money from a corporate entity you're beholden to what that corporate entity wants to hear and more to the point, what it doesn't want to hear. We're getting health stories now on All Things Considered that are tagged with the disclaimer that they've been funded by some major health insurance company (I forget which). And that's not a good thing. Government funding on the other hand has no say whatsoever in content.
I'm on the road without much time to think so this is a quick post, back to expand later...
Okay, I have no problem going with your numbers. But you missed my point. Whether $446 million or $500 million, that is a LOT of money out of somebody's pocket. Money that in my view of liberty, people should not be forced to fork over for non essential spending, most especially, when it often opposes their values and/or point of view. Perhaps it is a tiny percentage of the federal budget, or even of the NPR/PBS budgets, but it doesn't take many $400 million dollar items to equal more than a billion, and billions add up to trillions, and we now owe more than $17 trillion dollars that is growing by billions every single day.
The national debt passed $17 trillion a week ago and is already past that amount by more than $300 billion, an amount that was not that long ago counted as evil and irresponsible and corrupt for an annual deficit. How much longer can we keep pretending that $400 million dollar expenditures are chicken feed and can be ignored?
Real Time US National Debt Clock | USA Debt Clock.com
I was not suggesting either that the Rush Limbaugh program, as a profit making enterprise, be included in the NPR programming. The point I was making is that the CONTENT of the Rush Limbaugh program would be unacceptable to you and most other people who regularly listen to NPR.
So if I am not allowed to hear libertarian views on NPR, but you can hear all the leftwing slant that makes you feel good, how does NPR belong to both of us?
NPR should not be funded by the federal government because:
a) There is no constitutional authorization for it. . . .
b) It does not belong to or represent all of us
c) It is dangerous to the integrity of the First Amendment and free press for the federal government to hold the purse strings for any part of the media.
With Rush Limbaugh, you can change the station or turn off the radio and that does not cost you or anybody else a single dime.
I am not required to listen to NPR, but the government forces me to help pay for it while allowing it to report news and provide political and social commentary that conforms to a particular point of view.
And that is wrong.
Ah, so many fallacies, so little time.... much as I hate to go the lazy route I'm going to have to use the "generic quote" feature without your name attached, forgive me...
Whether $446 million or $500 million, that is a LOT of money out of somebody's pocket. Money that in my view of liberty, people should not be forced to fork over for non essential spending,
Actually in its context it's not a LOT of money. It's well under
one-thousandth of what that same government spends on the military, which in turn is also a greater amount than the next fourteen big spenders combined. Nearly half of all war spending in the world, your tax dollars and mine.
And
that's wrong. Especially when your basis claims to be fiscal; it's as if your house is being flooded by a river and your reaction is you want to fix a drip in the bathroom faucet.
It's also not only a tiny amount in comparison to the level of public broadcast funding with which other so-called "developed" countries serve their populations, but it's also less than the budget our same Congress gives to the Broadcast Board of Governors, the guys who run Radio Marti, Radio Free Europe, Radio Free Asia, Radio Sawa and other propaganda outlets that don't even broadcast to the American public.
Money that in my view of liberty, people should not be forced to fork over for non essential spending, most especially, when it often opposes their values and/or point of view
Non essential, is it? A free discourse IS essential to a free people. If the idea of free discourse opposes your values, well too bad, you're outvoted.
And btw, how does your sentiment here apply to the BBG mentioned above?
I was not suggesting either that the Rush Limbaugh program, as a profit making enterprise, be included in the NPR programming. The point I was making is that the CONTENT of the Rush Limbaugh program would be unacceptable to you and most other people who regularly listen to NPR.
The content, as in revenue-generating sensationalist demagoguery, yes that would be inappropriate in a pubic forum. The content, as in a right-wing viewpoint, not at all. This contrast is exactly why when William F. Buckley hosted his thought-provoking TV show, he had to do it on
public television -- PBS. Because intellectual idea-driven fare doesn't sell soap -- yelling "slut" for three days does. Again, the difference between exploring an ideology and exploiting hucksterism -- the former is welcome in public broadcasting; the latter is cheap commercial pap.
So if I am not allowed to hear libertarian views on NPR, but you can hear all the leftwing slant that makes you feel good, how does NPR belong to both of us?
Nobody says you're not allowed libertarian views on NPR. There's no particular "banned" ideology; if anything NPR leans to the right and the conventional, but it's not
exclusive. And I put it to you that the absence of hair-on-fire far-right wackoism does not mean the presence of hair-on-fire far-left wackoism.
NPR should not be funded by the federal government because:
a) There is no constitutional authorization for it. . . .
That's absurd. There's
Congressional authorization for it, and that IS authorized by the Constitution:
"No money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law; and a regular Statement and Account of Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time." (Article I, section 9, clause 7)
To expect that nothing not mentioned in the Constitution may exist is ludicrous. Do you drive a car? Where are cars authorized in the Constitution?
b) It does not belong to or represent all of us
To be technical nothing can represent literally everybody. But public services (libraries, fire departments, and the like) exist for the potential benefit of everybody. If you never have a fire in your house or never use the library, should you get a refund of that portion of your taxes than went to pay for the fire department or the library?
c) It is dangerous to the integrity of the First Amendment and free press for the federal government to hold the purse strings for any part of the media.
It could be indeed. As already noted, the federal grants to public stations represent a supplemental portion, moreover there is no content litmus test for that grant at all. And to amplify your point, it is equally dangerous for a commercial corporation or consortium of commercial corporations to hold the same purse strings, for the same reason. This goes for advertisers as well as owners.
Case in point: when General Electric owned NBC, any news coverage by that network was automatically compromised when any news might involve, say, Congressional allocations for defense (since GE was deeply involved in profits from that) or might involve nuclear power controversies (ditto). That conflict of interest is far more pernicious. Especially given which of the two entities (government / corporatia) controls the other.
With Rush Limbaugh, you can change the station or turn off the radio and that does not cost you or anybody else a single dime.
Actually it does. It just uses a different system. Every time any of us buys a product advertised on Lush Rimjob it funds the show, through the advertiser. They pay him, we pay the advertiser. And I don't get the choice of stipulating that I'm buying this product independent of the Limblob advertisement.
Incidentally, do you know how much those commercial broadcasters, making their profits on the medium of airwaves defined as
belonging to the public... pay us in rent for those airwaves?
Zero. Nada. Bupkis. Nothing. We give them the ability to do that absolutely FREE.
Maybe
that's wrong too. Imagine getting your own storefront on Main Street, rent-free. Sweet deal.
I am not required to listen to NPR, but the government forces me to help pay for it while allowing it to report news and provide political and social commentary that conforms to a particular point of view.
Your subjective analysis aside (and I expect I'd get the same level of documentation on this that I got for these "jealous" posters), now you seem to be suggesting that the government
should step in and dictate programming after all -- until it reflects what you want to hear. That's a convenient fantasy but I don't think it fits the model of public service.
