Romney Wages War On PBS

At a recent campaign stop Republican presidential nomination front-runner Mitt Romney, told an enthusiastic collection of supporters that he'd like to end all public funding for the Public Broadcasting System. Mr. Romney would in turn demand that PBS sell advertisements on all of it shows in order to fund its production and transmission costs

Being that I'm quite older than most traditional college students having just turned 49 in early October I've always had a fond place in my heart for what has been known to most American Public Broadcasting System better known as PBS. Scary as it may seem, I'm old enough to remember PBS's predecessor, an entity which was known as the National Educational Television system better known as NET. Please use the link on the history of educational and public television to see a great timeline on its history.

For 16 years, what has started out as a public-private experiment funded by the Ford Foundation in 1952 morphed into the series of television stations broadcasting on the  on the  UHF band providing educational programming for most Americans. Across time as programmers began to see the possibilities for more creative noncommercial programs, documentaries, and social issue-based programming private funding from the Ford Foundation begin to be challenged. And much like today, more conservative marketplaces and areas objected to what was considered to be a perceived liberal bias or slant on programming especially in terms of race and the showing of poverty through NET programming. In the early 1960s, Congress made a number of moves which cleared the way for better reception of UHF stations and a level of concern started to be expressed in regards to children's programming and the amount of commercialization and marketing directed at young people. The introduction of satellite technology and microwaves fixed service and allow for the expansion of educational programming and the Kennedy and Johnson administrations quickly embraced sending both legislation and funding request to Congress. By 1967 buoyed by successful regional regular programming from stations like W ETA in Washington DC or WGBH in Boston Massachusetts as well as a chain of national educational radio stations in April of that year; following a report funded by the Carnegie Foundation original legislation was passed creating the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

It amuses me that individuals like Mr. Romney always promote that they are for smaller less interventionist government, however in order to make public broadcasting a private corporation will require the passing of a large series of laws and that the investments of large sums of money which can no longer be recouped by the federal government by statute and by law. So in undoing PBS, the Republicans are putting into motion another fiasco much like the U.S. Postal Service.