The Vast Wasteland

I'm tried of public broadcasting being forced into a rock and a hard place when it comes to funding and serving its mission, which, in my opinion, is not doing in the case of Maryland Public Television. President Dubya has, again, cut funding for public broadcasting. As a matter of fact, he's zeroing-out the federal portion of the money. Basically he's forcing PBS to do two things: Sell-out to Madison Avenue or die. And if you think selling Barney merchandise would help, it won't.

Unless Congress wants to allow stations to air program underwriting messages far closer to traditional ads-a step many public TV stations oppose-other revenue sources aren't likely to make up for government cuts, the report says.

Secondary revenues from book, toy and DVD deals generate $7 million to $10 million annually, but they come from relatively few shows and at best merely help offset the Corporation of Public Broadcasting and PBS' limited ability to fund upfront development costs for suppliers and stations.

There's only one way to resolve this: levy $2 per month from our electric, cable and internet bills to provide a permanent source of funding for public broadcasting. That's a dollar for federal and state level, and it would total $6 a month. That's $72 a year for each person. It would substantially improve public broadcasting from it's sell out state to one that will rival BBC in it's services. The beauty of this is that you would not have to pay any extra money, the companies themselves will have to take it out of their monthly profit to the IRS to fund the public broadcaster itself. I call it the reception tax.

But don't expect the National Association of Broadcasters to like it at all, they're anti-completive when it comes to broadcasting and will fight tooth and nail to prevent such a thing from happening.