Almost 60 years. This country will never recover from the death of meaningful public education and discourse. Enjoy your algorithms.
Feel like I need a t-shirt with some version of that on it. “Fuck education and science — all hail the algorithm.”
Edit: Em-dash added for additional impact.
Hopefully we fall sooner rather than later, for the rest of the worlds sake
I just hope that you wouldn’t take half the world down with you, but with the threats on Venezuela, Cuba, Colombia, Greenland, it isn’t looking good.
I’m more worried about the fact that our fascism cancer is spreading.
One of my most boring college classes was the Study of Public Broadcasting. We went through the whole history and the meaning of it all. The amount of good PBS alone has produced for the whole world, not just USA, is being thrown in the trash. Having access to PBS does so much for poor and working class communities that we take for granted everyday. The amount of cooky shit you can find on public TV is just gonna vanish like a fart in the wind. Fuck this administration for taking away an American staple.
The same is true of the BBC. Yes, the news arm of it is a problem, but the arms that educate and entertain have done untold good over its near 100 years. Even now, the BBC does more to keep all of British broadcasting honest than most people realise.
But it costs us, and has been under fire from conservatives for at least my entire lifetime as little more than a stealth tax. £170 a year (per household that accesses it) is a small price to pay for the good it does, but I fear that’ll come to an end sooner rather than later.
Its sorta funny to. Like I wonder how much british shit is sold due to bbc shows playing abroad and japanese shit from anime playing abroad. I mean it feels like it should almost pay for itself.
So, remember public access tv? I know PBS doesn’t do Public Access, but was that a Corporation for Public Broadcasting thing? I just know the local churches liked to broadcast their services on sundays on public access and i’m queueing up a leopard meme.
Yeah. CPB is a government non-profit corporation. Basically a shell to put taxpayer money into for keeping a spectrum of broadcast waves open to everyone. IIRC when TV was invented they had to update the 1934 communications act to account for TV waves. Instead of amending that act directly they passed the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 which created the CPB. It was supposed to be educational but they were pretty loose on those rules. They set aside a bunch of broadcast waves because they knew the spectrum to be used for all broadcasting could grow exponentially with time. There was so much free space early on that they designated a bunch of bands for public use. Anybody could get a slot and put something on air as long as it followed FCC rules. Again it’s a taxpayer operated corp, so anybody can use it if they have the means.
i had so much fun on public access back in the day. we did some, uh, let’s call it high school quality stuff. i looked it up and there are still a few stations, but if it goes for good that’ll be sad. i guess youtube has taken its place.
Destroying shit is so easy and fast.
Shit like this is why it’s hard to me to believe in a “comeback” for the U.S anytime in the next 50 years. This is a major victory for the right, for corporations, for anyone who hates education, etc. the people involved are gonna find new jobs, move on. Even if the next president reinstates funding for this type of stuff, it’ll be a decade before it has time to matter at least. And let’s be honest, most likely the next president, whoever it is, will not be reinstating this funding.
Sad day
RIP My childhood
Maybe a dumb and selfish question - but what does this mean for PBS shows like Sesame Street?
If the station can stay online at all, shows that they just re-broadcast will probably be fine. It’s local stuff that will get cut first. Local news, events, alerts, emergency information, etc.
PBS is a network of independently owned stations, so it will vary. Shows by well-funded entities like CTW and WGBH will be largely unaffected.
I thought that most of their funding wasn’t federal.
The individual TV channels and radio stations… no.
The framework industry that created the network of PBS and NPR - very much so…
Fuck. Thanks for the clarification.
I hope it’s possible for another “framework” group to rise without federal funding. I’m well aware of the dangers of “new management”, but the knowledge and skills that are going to be lost is insane.
The CPB was the bit that was federal.
Thanks for the clarification!
