August 1, 2017 • 56 mins
Public broadcasting works a bit differently depending on where you are in the world. American TV made the leap more toward commercial broadcasting in the early days, yet PBS and NPR still remain a vital part of our national fabric. In England and many other countries, public broadcasting is more the standard. Learn all about the interesting history of public broadcasting in today's episode.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from how Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and Jerry, which means it
is time for stuff you should know about public broadcasting.
(00:22):
How are you feeling good full of beans today? That's
the last thing I wanted to hear. And you're stuck
in here with me for a couple of hours, buddy, dear,
that's the musical fruit. Yeah, that's what I hear. That's
what I've been here since I was six years old.
Is it musical fruit? I thought it was magical fruit.
(00:44):
Uh music, probably regional Huh, like soda and coke and
pop in all that musical magical, don't talk about it
at all, one of them. Actually I grew up. It
wasn't even musical. I just grew up with beans, beans,
good for your heart. Oh well, that that's pretty that's real. Yeah.
(01:05):
So that's the That's how I rolled in the a
t l um. So you're feeling uh, you're feeling pretty good. Yeah.
I think it's a very wonderfully disrespectful way to open
up a show about one of our finest institutions. I
really feel on edge because you know that every single
MPR personality is going to hear this one. You think
(01:27):
every single one guy ros right now is sitting there
like these two idiots. Terry Gross already thinks for idiots.
She is my hero, buddy. I don't think that there's
ever been a finer radio program than Fresh Air. Yeah.
I mean, she's the best. She's a legend, she's awesome.
Uh have you ever heard an interview with her? Uh? No, there,
(01:49):
I recommend it. She's a pretty sharp tack. So I'm
sure they're pretty fun. In fact, you know what perfect
time to shout out our buddy. Jesse Thorne of Bull's
Eye with Jesse Thorn has a short run series called
The Turnaround where he interviewers legendary He interviews legendary interviewers. Okay,
(02:10):
Ira Glass, Harrol Morris. What I think Terry Gross is
in there? I'm not sure, you gotta be. I don't
think hers is out yet. I'm not gonna promise that
because I'm not positive. Okay, but I can hold my
breath all right. But it's a really cool show. Very Uh,
it's really interesting to hear because I think Jesse's a
(02:30):
great interviewer, and then to hear him interview the great
interviewers about interviewing, it makes your head just turn a
hundred navy degrees. It's really cool. Alright, Chuck. Yes, so
we're talking public broadcasting, which depending on how you Okay,
you're a big fan. Sure, so it probably doesn't sound
a dull to you talking about public broadcasting. But I've
(02:53):
shows people out there who just walked right past this one,
and hopefully some of them said, you know what, I'm
gonna give the dude's a chance. I'm gonna listen. Those
people will be richly rewarded by this episode, because it
turns out the public broadcasting, it's history, it's present, its
future hopefully all very interesting. Yeah, and if you are
(03:16):
not a fan of it, then, um, well you're in
the minority technically. Yeah, they've got some big numbers, bigger
than I realized. Yeah, more than half of the US
population tunes into public TV or radio or online. So
we're talking PBS and NPR generally, that's a hundred and
(03:37):
seventy million Americans, and um they it says here that
PBS gets has more viewers than our dearly beloved Discovery Channel,
even HDTV and A and E, which are all thought
of as well. They are very big networks, juggernauts. Yeah,
but I think people hear PBS you get a certain like.
(03:59):
I think some people think it's the treasure that it is.
Some people might be a little bored by it without realizing.
Oh but wait a minute, I saw Monty Python and
Benny Hill on PBS. I'm so glad you when I
was a kid to think of Benny Hill or I
sure loved Dowton Abbey and oh wait a minute, that
was PBS two our Antiques road foe. I mean some
(04:20):
Mr Rogers, some some of the more legendary shows in
American history. Right, And it's not like all things considered
in Morning Edition and Fresh Air and wait, wait, don't
tell me, are like are any slouches at all? You know?
Like this? This are like if you step back and
put the rosters of MPR and PBS together, it bakes
(04:40):
up a pretty big swath of the American fabric. Totally agreed. Yeah, well,
thank you. I agree with myself on that one as well.
So I didn't realize how new they were, though, did you. Yeah?
I thought I think I thought it was seventies. Oh well,
you were dead on. It started in Actually it goes
(05:03):
back a little further than that to the public Um
Public Broadcasting Act, and actually we should go back even
slightly further than that to set this whole thing up. Right,
So radio comes up, it starts to become a mass medium, right,
and the UK and Europe, in America at the time,
(05:25):
we're basically faced with this thing, like, we've got this
huge new technology. Up to this point, it's been newspapers
and dudes on horseback running through towns. That's how we
got the word out. Now everybody's starting to get radio.
So we've got this this really powerful thing. What do
we do with it? And over in Europe and the UK,
they said, this is a public good and we need
(05:47):
to treat it as such. We need to we need
to take it seriously. We need to make sure that
public affairs programming gets onto the air and they don't
have to worry about competing for ad dollars or anything
like that. We're gonna fund it pub lookally, in the
US we released two acts. There was the Radio Act
of and the Communications Act of four and both of
(06:08):
them set up the current competitive capitalist market that we
have for broadcasting in the country, right, and it worked,
there's from what I've seen. One of the reasons why
it worked was because there was also this kind of
tacit understanding among journalists who were part of these broadcast
networks that they had a responsibility to inform the public.
(06:32):
And they were also only three of them at the time. Sure,
but um over time, broadcasting in the United States went
more and more and more toward entertainment because that could
get more people, and that's that meant you could get
more advertising money. So we got further and further away
from public affairs programming and news and got more and
(06:55):
more into entertainment. And by the fifties it became evident
to some people that we needed something in addition to
or to replace, the commercial model that we had in
the US. Yeah, and this was even pre cable TV,
like these are just the net the big three pre Fox,
even this is ABC, CBS and NBC. Uh starting to
(07:19):
show things like the Honeymooners and realizing people who are
way more into the Honeymooners than Walter Cronkite, Well maybe
not they were, people were into the news back then. Yeah,
But even if even if you do have people who
are into the news. There are some certain things that
have to do with the commercial model when put up
against the public broadcasting model, that inherently make public broadcasting
(07:42):
more appealing if you're trying to get public affairs programming across.
And one of the big ones, Chuck, is if you're
a program director for NBC and it's prime time, when
you know everybody's home, are you going to put on
one of your big money makers like the Honeymooners that
can charge top dollar from advertisers for or you're gonna
(08:03):
put on the McNeil lair News Report where you're where
you're not gonna get as many people. But there's some
really in depth investigative journal journalism because they don't have
to worry about attracting advertisers ideally, um they can just
focus on the journalism. Which one are you gonna do? Well,
you're gonna do both, but it's a matter of when
you do both, you know, right, So are you gonna
(08:25):
do one like at five thirty? Right? Are you gonna
do a prime time and at five thirty not everybody's
home from work yet, So overall you have a less
informed citizenry just from when you choose to put news on.
I haven't watched. I don't watch the news any more
at all, not even cable news. But I can't remember
(08:46):
the last time I watched like local news or a
news program on a network. I don't even know. I
guess when I lived in l A. I didn't have cable.
I would watch the news sometimes because I don't think
I had the Internet yet. I had like an antenna.
My my news Chunky Dumb has come and gone, like
over time, waxed and wayne. It feels pretty gone this time. Yeah,
(09:10):
just getting used up by cable news used Yeah, just
being done with. It's pretty freeing, isn't it. Yeah, even
networks I like, you know, I just I don't want
to hear it anymore. Um And the way people in
just news these days is just so different, you know. Yeah.
I get most of my news honestly from Twitter. Yeah,
social media, that's how it's done these days. But I
was going back to l A. I was. I used
(09:33):
to sit around and watch local news in l A.
Was pretty great. I have to admit, there's a lot
of Yeah, it was just weird and the personalities were
kind of interesting. But yeah, I mean I think it
was like started at like four thirty and ran all
the way up to whatever. The big nightly news programs were,
what like seven yeah, yeah, hours and hours of weird
(09:57):
Southland news. Yeah, was told to you by a man
wearing a cape. Maybe yeah, it was that weird yeah,
or I don't know, it was strange. But then I
kind of missed the old Atlanta News because I grew
up watching that's pretty stayed with giant helmet hair. That's
a land in local news. Yeah, And I think most
cities have these stalwarts that have been around forever. You
(10:20):
know Monica Kaufman, Yeah, who is married now she's not
even Monica Kaufman anymore? What is what's her name? Now?
I don't know because I want the news in twenty years,
but I think someone told me, you know, she has
a married name. Now, I was like, what, huh, that's
Monica Kaufman or that you know, you would see one
of them. I've worked at the Laser Show and I
would see like Ken Burns, the weather man at the
(10:40):
Laser Show, and it's like a legit celebrity signing. Oh yeah,
he gives you like the wink, and everyone's crowding around
getting his autographs. It's the anchorman thing, you know. It's
like the salad days, Yeah, which are now gone because
of cable news in the Internet. Well, yeah, the salad
days for them. Sure, Now it's our salad days. It's time. Yeah,
(11:01):
that's true too, And that applies not just to local news.
It applies to news in general, um, including MPR and
including PBS that there's this huge shift. I don't know
if you've heard this, but there's a big shift to
the Internet now. That's true. People are starting to consume,
like you said, news in different ways, and public broadcasting
(11:22):
is having to keep up just as much as anybody.
But it's occupies this weird niche that we'll get into.
But you want to take a break first and regroup. Yeah,
we'll come back here and talk about Linda Johnson. I
can't wait. Alright, Chuck d J. Yes, lb J. Did
(12:04):
you know that he owns some I think TV stations
back in Texas when he was a senator. I don't
think I knew that he was, So he was real
in favor of public broadcasting. Well that kind of makes sense. Yeah,
so in nineteen sixty seven, Uh, well, I mean in
nineteen sixty seven, he signed the Public Broadcasting Act into law.
(12:25):
But previous to this UH, there was something called the
n ET UH National Entertainment Times WACA WACA. What was it,
I'm sure it was National Education Television, Yes, National Education Television.
They were the precursor to UH what would eventually become
(12:45):
CPB Corporation for Public Broadcasting. But at the time n
e T would UH. They would run things that could
be critical of the government and its foreign policy. And
some say, I don't think it was entirely due to that,
but some say that that did play a part, and
the government eventually funding via the Public Broadcasting Act public television,
(13:08):
so maybe they could get a little bit more favorable coverage.
It's pretty North Korean and mentality if you think about it,
you know, and if you step back and look at it,
the idea of public broadcasting, government funded public broadcasting should
terrify everybody. But the way that it's always been right, right,
But the way that it's always been pitched and and
(13:29):
um and sold is no, it's taxpayer funded, so it
belongs to the people, and that the government. It's supposed
to be insulated. It's a different estate. It's the fourth estate.
It's not the government, it's its own thing. It's supposed
to be kept separate. So I was surprised to see that,
but it makes total sense, the idea, oh yeah, we'll
bring you into the fold, will fund you, but you
(13:49):
owe us big time. Yeah. I mean I wonder what
kind of like real talks were had over that, if any,
or if it was just sort of like understood, like, hey,
here's who's right in your checks now. Well, I think
it was also a convergence of different interests, right, So
the government wanting to get rid of criticism or clamped
down on criticism coincided with people who wanted more public
(14:12):
affairs broadcasting, and then you had some endowments that were
well healed, well moneyed, and they all kind of came
together to create this Corporation for Public Broadcasting that came
out of the Public Broadcasting Act. Yeah. So this, uh,
like you said, you set it up nicely with radio,
but um radio started to decline with the advent of television,
(14:34):
and so in order, I mean, one of the main
reasons they signed the Public Broadcasting Out was trying to
get the this non commercial radio going in a legit way.
So they signed Johnson signs the act. The federal government
creates uh CPB, like we mentioned, Corporation for Public Broadcasting,
and they are not They don't produce TV. They basically
(14:58):
dole out money. Uh. They're the they're the gatekeepers. Yeah,
in here yourself a nice little radio transmitter with this.
But now that's what they do. Yeah, they do a
lot of money. They cover licensing fees, are copyright fees,
they cover a lot of the technical infrastructure, um. And
(15:20):
they give a lot of money directly to smaller market
MPR or PBS stations. Yeah, I mean they created the
cb uh I say that the whole time CPB created
uh MPR in nineteen seventy and before that PBS and
sixty nine. They basically said, we need a TV wing
and a radio wing going to create these and we're
(15:42):
gonna doll out money uh this year actually and then
projected or at least asked for for twenty nineteen. They
have requested the same amount of money. But you don't
even see that very often where they're not asking for
a raise or whatever or increased funding of four hundred
(16:03):
and forty five million dollars, which amounts to point zero
one zero one of the federal budget. Yeah, and there's
a lot of debate that will get into when we
talk about some of the controversies and criticisms of public broadcasting,
and believe me, we're talking about those. But UM, a
lot of people say, that's pretty disingenuous to point out
(16:25):
what a minuscule amount of the budget that is, because
it's still four d forty five million dollars and still
half a billion dollars. And then on the other side,
which we'll hear a little bit more about two Um,
a lot of people who are on the public broadcasting
side say, just forget, just get rid of that, just
we don't need that money. Let's go without. If there's
(16:47):
so many strings attached to that four five million dollars,
it makes up such a small portion of say like
MPR itself operating budget, that we just don't even need.
It's not even worth the trouble. Big debate, which is
weird because some some people on the UM public radio
side and some are critics of public or public broadcasting,
(17:09):
UM government funding for public broadcasting. Yeah, it's a little weird.
I mean, trust me, I've I've found myself reading some
of this thinking maybe you should just be free from
those shackles, because sometimes the public will step up and
you might get more funding. Yeah, you know, when something
(17:30):
is threatened, right, yeah, yeah, at least first the question
is whether that could be sustained for the long term,
you know. Yeah, well, we'll get into all that you mentioned.
Uh MPR they actually get UM less than one percent
of that for their operating budget. So the million, it's
(17:50):
not like they say, all right, MPR you get two
d and twenty something million, and PBS you get the rest.
Uh MPR gets less than one percent, And they actually
have a mandate CPB of their spending UM has to
be on local public media station's content development, community services,
(18:11):
and then what they they call other related needs toilet paper,
I guess, and stuff like that keep the A C on.
So chuck, here's how here's how the whole thing works.
You're ready, yep, You and I pay taxes, goes. Some
of it goes to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in
the form of about four million dollars a year. Yeah,
(18:34):
and in the form of about like four dollars per textpayer.
I saw, I saw between saw one one group found
a dollar thirty five a person and for every person.
I don't think for every tax paying person. Oh I see, okay, well,
then for every tax paying person it's about four bucks um.
So taxas go to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and
(18:55):
then um, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting spends like that
on the small local stations, right okay, Well, and you
know the other stuff of content development okay. And then
you've got the small local stations subscribing to MPR and
PBS who have shows that they create, produce mprs very
(19:19):
famously all things considered in Morning edition right started in
nineteen seventy one and the Morning Edition in nineteen seventy
nine running. So all that money goes taxes Corporation to
Public Broadcasting, smaller affiliates, and then it goes back up.
So it goes down from the top to the smaller
affiliates and then back up to MPR and PBS, ok
(19:40):
for the for the programs that they're developing. So rather
than the taxes going directly to MPR or to PBS,
it goes to the Corporation Republic Broadcasting. But even still,
rather than going directly to MPR PBS, it goes to
the smaller affiliates who then give it to MPR and PPS.
And by give it you mean they licensing fees to
(20:01):
play those shows on their right exactly. Yeah, like they
I think they subscribe and they paid like a yearly
fee to carry that show. Yeah. And when it first
started NPR, and we'll cover NPR first largely and then
get into PBS. But is when MPR started and at
the time there are only ninety member stations and now
(20:22):
they are close to a thousand member stations all over
the country licensing these legendary shows. Right. And then for
the smaller local affiliates, if you have all things considered on,
you're going to attract a percentage of your town's listeners.
The more listeners you have for that, the more pledges
(20:43):
you'll get during your pledge drive, right. And then you also,
the more listeners you have, the more UM contributions you
can get through underwriting too. Yeah, but also you'll have
to pay more money to license these shows too write
the more listeners you have, Yeah, Like, Um, well, I
guess we should go over where they get their funding largely,
(21:04):
and then how they charged the member stations. Uh and
um says was from fees and dues from member stations,
the close corporate sponsorship which has risen over the years.
I think I think that was kind of a controversial
thing for a while, whether or not they wanted to
(21:25):
take on any of that. I think, is it like
how much they're beholden to that, Yeah, that makes sense,
grants and contributions and then um, like you mentioned foundations, endowments,
colleges and universities, stuff like that will pitch in some
dough what's the big one that it's always the Katherine T.
(21:49):
John d and Katherine Tee MacArthur found exactly. It's like
drilled into your head after all these years. And the
Chubb group for PBS, oh yeah, and members like you,
um Morning Edition and all things considered, they are UM
stations are charged based on the volume of their listeners
plus a multiplier, and then things like fresh air apparently
(22:13):
are priced in proportion to that station's revenue, So smaller
stations don't have to pay as much as bigger stations,
which is great because again the whole idea between behind
public broadcasting is that you have stuff that's supposed to be,
like you said, not beholden to advertisers. So if company
X is, you know, screwing over this town's water supply then,
(22:37):
but they advertise with all of the broadcast networks that
are commercially driven, those those networks. News might not mention it,
but public public broadcasting will probably do that story and
we'll let everybody know. Yeah, that's the idea. So it's
important for everybody to have public broadcasting. And that's why
(22:59):
the the smaller ones are supported by the larger ones. Exactly. Yeah, um, PBS.
On the other side, we mentioned Mr Rogers, Nova Man
Growing Up. That was a good one. Wasn't Cosmos on PBS?
I think so? I think it was. Originally it seems
(23:21):
like a very PBSC show. Sure, that turtleneck masterpiece theater.
Of course, this old house, the frugal gourmet. Who was that?
Was that? Julia Child or Jack papan Oh? Immediately thought
Julia Child. But now you have me wondering. We'll find out, Okay,
I'll get to the bottom of this child. You mentioned
McNeil Lair Report Evening at the Pops Uh Sesame Street.
(23:44):
Probably the most legendary not probably definitely the most legendary
kids show of all time, and PBS gets about two
hundred million viewers annually, representing eight t two of US
television households. So they're they're big, you know, they're not
(24:05):
like I mean, I know you think of PBS is
like the sweet little like publicly funded thing. But that's
that's big stuff. Like if they took in ads, they
probably wouldn't have to sweat it at all. No, you know,
but that's a double edged sword because then they lose
their their public value if they start taking an ad allegedly,
(24:26):
which again is why some people haven't really stuck in
their craw that they have underwriting at all. Yeah, it's
Jeff Smith. By the way, I never heard of him.
Frugal Gourmet. Yeah, well not in the seventies, it wasn't. Yeah,
it said. He released a book in nineteen eighty four
called The Frugal Gourmet. He's the only person associated with it,
Jeff Smith. It sounds like an alias to me. It
(24:49):
really doesn't. Maybe it's Jacques Popin is French for Jeff Smith. Yeah,
it says Jeff Smith. Four Jeff the chef. Chef Jeff,
he was the Frugal Gore Mate. He was, according to
the Seattle Post Intelligencer, TV's original celebrity chefs he wasn't
(25:09):
that big of a celebrity apparently about that so, um,
PBS has three hundred and fifty member stations as of now,
and um they are in all fifty states plus Guam,
Puerto Rico, US Virgin Islands and American Samoa. Yeah. I
got their own member stations pretty neat. And they, for
the record, get about seven percent of their funding from CPB. Right.
(25:32):
But just like with the NPR model, local affiliates, Yeah,
pay to carry Antiques road Show as they should. Man,
if you want to get some viewers, just have an
antiques road show marathon. Do you watch it? Have you
ever seen it? Um? Yeah, I have seen it. Uh
so good. It's just it's like how it's made you
just get stuck in it lulls you into its trap.
(25:54):
Well that's like I mean this our own article at
house stuff works as a little sidebar about the sound
of NPR. How was parodied with Delicious Dish on Saturday
Night Live so famously. But that's the thing, you know,
you I'd used to listen to public radio on the
radio during my commutes before I even really knew what
(26:14):
I was listening to, because I didn't want to wake
up to a lot of noise. Oh yeah, it's just
so soothing. It just kind of eased you into the day. Yeah, absolutely,
and it still does. I still listened to it four News,
but largely because I want to hear the voices. Yeah, man,
are you in the a MSR? The Second Cup? Oh
is that still around? Writes us? Oh? God, bless her
(26:38):
second Cup concert. Uh have you ever looked at pictures
of these people? I know people freak out about us,
but yeah, it happens. But you should see these people.
I looked at Lowis, writes us, and I think I
expected her to be like four years old. Yeah she's not. Nope,
I've no I guess I've never seen and reem is thirty. Yeah,
(27:03):
they'd like to hang on to folks. You know Herery Gross,
she's been doing that show for since the eighties. Amazing.
We should be so lucky, right, Hey, your lips the
God's ear? Okay, okay, so chuck, um, there's there's a
couple of things going on here. Okay, there are Um,
(27:28):
we're getting into the sides. Yeah, there's so. One of
the things that Congress likes to do every about five
years is say, you know that public broadcasting that left
leaning COMI drivel. Why are we playing for that? Yeah? Why?
And so I was reading this dude named David Boaz
or bows Boas, take your pick. He's one of the
(27:53):
higher ups that the Cato Institute libertarian think tank. He
hates public broadcasting in America. Most libertarians do. Like it is.
It really gets to this guy, and he makes a
couple of pretty decent points right like he his to him,
it's a transfer of wealth from the average taxpayer up
(28:17):
to produce entertainment that that you know, the upper middle
class typically consumes, even though it's intended for everybody. Um.
And so, from like a taxpayer standpoint, I can kind
of understand where if you didn't agree with if you
thought that this was leaning against you ideologically and taking
your taxpayer money, I could see how something like that
(28:40):
would drive you bonkers. Um to me, though, I think
everybody kind of assumes that public broadcasting in the US
leans a certain way, typically left ward, but supposedly, study
after study find that they may be slightly left leaning,
but they're typically a lot close sort of neutral than then, um,
(29:02):
they're they're given credit for. Yeah, there've been overall, Yeah,
there's been some things that have happened over the years. Uh. Notably,
in two thousand eleven, MPR president at the time and CEO,
Vivian Schiller had to resign UM or did resign at
least when there was a video undercover video in a
meeting where one of the executives called Tea party members
(29:25):
seriously racist, racist people, right, there was a big deal.
In fact, most of the stuff when you look up
MPR controversies is all dated at two thousand eleven. For
that reason, it was a big stink. Well, when they
got rid of Vivian Schiller, they specifically said that under
her watch some controversies had really gotten out of control
(29:46):
and they just no longer thought she could lead any longer. Yeah,
And so there was a study. Researchers at Duke University
did a study of a Twitter of the Twitter network
of MPR and like basically did all this Duke University
style math that I won't bore you with, but to
(30:07):
analyze whether or not MPR was left leaning or not.
Um And it wasn't just NPR. They did this with
a lot of news outlets and I think they never
actually posted The New York Times, didn't UM there was
a blog about all this, never posted where MPR fell,
but they were asked and um, one of the researchers said, Um,
(30:30):
MPR resides somewhat to the left of center, but further
to the right than Katie Kuric the Washington Post, the
l A Times, or Brian Williams, and that was using
their algorithm. And then MPR kind of um hit back
and said, in fact, Steve Williams Stevensky wrote it, wrote
(30:53):
a article for The Wall Street Journal and said, in
all these surveys, most listeners consistently identify themselves as the
middle of the road or conservative. So a lot of
people are like, oh, wait a minute, like that can't
be true, And so they did. Um, they got the
actual numbers from those surveys, and twenty percent of nprs
(31:14):
audience said that they were conservative or very conservative, middle
of the road and thirty seven percent liberal or very
liberal SOT or middle of the road or conservative or
middle of the road or liberals. So it's not as
heavy and this isn't their programming. This is their audience, right,
(31:36):
but it's not as heavy left as some might heavy believe. Yeah,
and and just because that's their audience. I mean that
kind of suggests that it is a little more left
leaning because people tend to go seek out stuff that
supports their own beliefs rather than challenges. It probably hats
off to the middle of the road conservative ones that listen, Yeah,
you want to take another break before we get back
to it. So the I think it's almost really just
(32:26):
kind of more a matter of perception. We were talking
about whether MPR is left leaning or not, or public
broadcasting in general. I think it's probably a little bit
left leaning, but it's not how you know, it's not
like the info wars of the left right, you mean CNN, UM.
(32:47):
The uh. The thing about criticizing MPR, though, is you
can go one way. You can say it's a little
left leaning, but if you look on the other side,
you'll find people like no, I'm chom Ski who say
that's you're getting Mayre down in the details. He said,
if you really listen to MPR, where you watch PBS
(33:10):
UM and you listen to this stuff they're saying or
the people they're having on as experts, it's the same
that you're gonna find on cable news. And I think
one MPR former MPR correspondent basically said that MPR runs
press releases for the Pentagon. Noam Chomsky was saying, it
(33:32):
was basically structurally there to support the status quo. Where
if if they're presenting a debate and all all, you know,
both sides of the debate, it's all still very structured
within the status quo. They're not bringing in somebody who's like, well,
all of this is moot point, we need to completely
redo the structure of our economy or something like that.
(33:54):
They don't bring in outside voices like that. They bring
in voices that are exact us within normalcy or whatever.
So there's a whole camp out there, um that that
tend to say, remember that thing that Lyndon Johnson originally did,
the reason why he founded the Corporation for Public Broadcasting
to kind of keep a clamp down and criticism, to
(34:14):
keep things within a reasonable spectrum. Well he succeeded. I
kind of tend to agree with that. Yeah, I don't
I feel like they usually provide counterpoints, right, They definitely
provide counterpoints, but it's all that counterpoint is something that's
still within the bounds of normalcy. There's not somebody coming
in and saying like, forget those either points, like they're
(34:36):
both we just gotta throw everything away and start over again.
That that, I think the point is that it's lacking
really really outside viewpoints, right, you know what I'm saying,
outside the status quo. So this is all come up
in the news more recently because this year when um
(34:59):
uh Trump proposed his his budget proposal for UM, which
is not you know, this is not settled or anything
by any means. In fact, MPR people are like, you know,
let's just settle down, like this isn't this is round one, um.
But the proposal at least called for the eventual complete
abolish meant that a word of public funding, uh, for
(35:23):
for PBS, n NPR or for CPBRIGHT. And again you've
got people on both sides saying, good, great, let's just
get it over with. Yeah, an eventual meaning they wouldn't
just pull it would be gradually over time, which of course,
you know, makes more sense than just like doing it
all at once, tearing the band aid off. Yeah. And
you know, like I said, I'm always been a big
(35:44):
supporter of public broadcasting, but I thought, you know, maybe
just be free from those shackles finally, maybe the public
would step up. Where where you get hurt and apparently
where UM, PBS and NPR are both kind of trying
to voice their most of their concerns is that you know,
of course your big cities are gonna be fine, but
it's the smaller market member stations that rely way more
(36:07):
on the CPB funding UM that are going to be
most hurt. And these are the people that need this
stuff the most. These rural communities UH need public broadcasting.
So it's hard to argue with that point. You know,
it is for sure there's actually UM a historical lesson
in here. You can look to New Zealand for this.
Like back in the late eighties they try to deregulation experiment,
(36:31):
but they had one channel tv n Z in the
whole country and UM the government said, you know what,
you guys are done with the teat of the government,
go sell some ads, and they tried this experiment. T
v n Z actually came out as I believe it
survived UM, but it was worse for the wear as
(36:53):
a result. And ironically UM, this deregulation opened a space
for a true UM nonprofit non commercial television called UM
New Zealand on air Uh, that actually came and thrived
in the wake of this transformation for TVNZ from public
(37:14):
broadcasting to commercially driven. So it's it's it's not necessarily
gonna work out well for the people who listen to
NPR or watch PBS if they go to completely commercially
driven programming. And the whole reason that you have the
corporation of public broadcasting ostensibly is because commercially driven journalism
(37:37):
wasn't getting the job done before, and it certainly is
it now. News rooms being cut um, news that is
on cable being more and more polarized one way or another,
and it's just shouting match after shouting match. If you
really watch the news, the only people, aside from some
of those old died in the world news people on
(37:58):
like um, you know, NBC or CBS is like nightly news.
The only ones really doing real journalism are the ones
who are working for public broadcasting at the very least,
they're the ones who are trying the hardest. For sure, Yeah,
you could totally make that argument, But at the same time,
we're in a weird limbo state where everybody's ticked off,
(38:19):
right because it's PBS and NPR are not just not
fully publicly funded, and they're not just advertising driven. There
are a combination of the two that that that compromises
them two different ways, which is why both sides are
saying one or the other. I tend to feel like
(38:40):
they should just go completely publicly funded and we should
adopt something like a British model where it's like you're
funded for the next five years, go do the public
some good and you can't have any underwriting whatsoever. Yeah, well,
I mean it's interesting and that, um, most of Europe
and Britain definitely went that other direction, like you mentioned
at the ending, and in that one article you sent
(39:02):
over talking about ways it's done public broadcasting in other
countries as a whole, and they were talking about the
BBC and they said, you know, who is the average
I can't remember who they asked, but who's the average
BBC viewer? And the answer was every British citizen right. Like,
it's a much different deal, you know. And the BBC's
(39:22):
criticized too for being a government mouthpiece in a lot
of ways too, but they're also critical of the government
in ways that other people aren't. And they'll also put
news on at a time when everybody is home to
watch it. That kind of stuff. So the future of
broadcasting public broadcasting UM isn't as simple as like are
(39:43):
they going to be publicly funded or not? UM, it's
whether or not they're still viable, uh in um. The
median audience age was fifty four years old, and in
twenty years BEFO for that it was forty five. It's
a pretty pretty big age. At least it wasn't like
(40:08):
I stayed exactly the same, the same people just got
twenty years older. So they are getting some younger listeners.
But it's the way that especially people under thirty five
years old consumed media is radically different than their parents. Yeah,
and there's plenty of people out there who are younger
who qualify as quote unquote millennials who are like listening
(40:32):
to stuff that MPR puts out there, listening to the huge,
huge slate of MPR podcasts. Right, there's a ton of
podcasts the MPR puts out. A lot of their radio
programs are repurposed into podcasts, and so there's a lot
of younger people who are listening to it. The problem
is that poses a conundrum to the public broadcasting model
(40:55):
as it stands in the US though, right, well, yeah,
I looked at the top twenty today on the iTunes
just to kind of see an NPR had eight of
the top twenty shows as stiff competition for US Hidden Brain,
This American Life, Planet Money, um I guess Stown and
Serial both they would qualify because they come out of
This American Life stable and that's where it got its start.
(41:18):
Their highest rank show today was Ted Radio Hour at
number five. Incidentally, we were number four. Good but um, yeah,
I mean eight shows in the top twenty. But it
does pose an interesting conundrum for them. I know when
they were started to dip their toe into podcasts, and
then once podcast started generating revenue via ads, they weren't
(41:40):
quite sure how to handle all that stuff. No, and
part of the part of the problem is is if
you're a small local affiliate, you've paid a lot of
money to get fresh air on your airwaves. You don't
want some twenty year old going and listening to it
on the new whiz Bang MPR app that the city
slickers came up with. You want them listening to your
station so that you can get their donations. Um So,
(42:02):
for a while MPR had uh an embargo and even
mentioning the fact that there were podcasts out there on air. Yeah, um,
right now. I think they say that it's okay to
mention that an announcer hosts a podcast, but they don't
say like, hey, go download the podcast, go to iTunes
or Apple. Right, they say that they hosted buck Well,
(42:29):
it's a legit concern. But my whole thing is you can't, like,
you can't fight on demand listening or viewing. You just
can't fight it. You can't tell a twenty six year
old no, you need to turn tune in from seven
to nine a m. To listen to us. They're like,
(42:49):
what is this tune in? What is seven to nine? Yeah? No,
it's true. And if if you're fighting against it, you're
you're going to lose. Yeah, because that's the beauty of podcasts.
What's said is, looking at it from the outside, it
looks like MPR and PBS get this because MPR has
its own apps, PBS has an on demand video app
(43:09):
as well. They it looks like the larger institutions get this.
But I don't see what anyone's doing to save the
local affiliates, the small town ones that are really going
to be the first to suffer, or if they're just
being sacrifices canaries in the coal mine, um, in which
case that's just the way it's gonna roll, because those
(43:31):
kids in those small towns are still going to listen
to MPR, they're just not listening to it on the
radio any longer. Well, but then people, you know there
there's a segment of people that would say, well, you
know what, them's the breaks, and if your little member
station goes out of business, then that's called changing times. Okay,
but let's take this back to you. Remember my example
where Corporation Next was poisoning the water in your small town.
(43:54):
No one outside of the town knew about it. Incorporation
Next advertised on the networks, the local news, so the
local news weren't going to take them on. That's why
you need that small, tiny affiliate who not have to
worry about funding and advertising so that they can do
good journalism and expose that corporation to the rest of
the town. Well, if that's small radio station and that
small PBS affiliate drives up because of the MPR app
(44:17):
Corporation Next gets away with poisoning the whole town. Nobody
knows town Dies gets blown over by dust and it's
like it was never there. I wonder, and certainly there
are people in NPR corporate that are way more knowledgeable
and trying to solve this, Peter falken Flick than me.
But I wonder if they could, like on the podcast
(44:38):
Peter Overbee David folken Flick, I combined the two into
one super host. It should one super correspond to supergroup.
They're like Damn Yankees Um. I was on a plane
flight with him one time, by the way, where they rowdy.
They weren't in first class, but I remember being like,
however old I was when that came out fifteen or
(45:00):
sixteen seventeen something like that, were you really and like
Jack Blade was sitting on one side of me, Ted
Nugent was in front of me, Tommy Shaw was behind me,
and it was like I was part of the band.
I was sitting in the middle of these that's really
cool music legends, and I thought, man, I love Night
Ranger and I love Sticks. But he's reading I remember specifically,
(45:22):
I'm reading a hunting magazine. Yeah, I can believe that
just fantasized. Yeah, I'd rather be hunting. Well, I can
tell you Ted Nugent is not listening to this particular episode,
certainly not. Uh So my idea was, maybe, like I
wonder if they could encourage via the podcast, say, hey,
we know you enjoy us on your podcast, but why
don't you donate money to your local members affiliate even
(45:46):
though you don't consume it through the there to keep
the calls alive, you know, yeah, I mean that's just
my dumb outsider's opinion. Well, what if you turn local
affiliates from broadcast bay, Like, you know, you've got to
spend a lot of money on a transmitter and up
links and all that kind of stuff. What if you
(46:06):
just turned them into news bureaus like they were for
investigative journalism and recording for local and then that local
stuff could be kicked up the line, you knoww some
local reporting appears on the national edition of Morning Edition
or whatever. What if you just turned them all into
into news bureaus instead, and then they just went completely
(46:28):
online consumption. What if like the head of MPR just
like swerved off the road. It was like, oh my god,
these guys figuring it out so uh getting back to
their new models that the the mp mp R one
is the app and about of their users or under
thirty five that coveted demo and um, but here's the thing.
(46:51):
They did some surveys and they said a third of
those users seldom listen to traditional radio, but said they
because of the app, we're starting to listen to more
terrestrial radio, which I'm not sure I get how that works,
but well, I could see just being like, oh, I
didn't know this was here. Wait a minute, there's like
a whole radio station that has this. I'm gonna go
(47:12):
check that out. And I can see that. Uh. And
then there is Passport, which you mentioned was I don't
think by name, but that's the PBS video on demand
service that you get if you donate to your local station.
I think five dollars a month donation will get you
access to Passport. And that's if you wanted to binge doubt,
(47:34):
n Abby, you could have done that via Passport. Did
you watch that? I saw an episode or two. I
just never tickled my gizzard. Okay, I love it, big fan. Yeah,
I know a lot of people did. And I didn't
hate it or anything. And shoot the TV when it
came on. Yeah, you didn't go shoot my passport app
(47:55):
uh and then the other big shake up in recent years.
Um last year in Sesame Street made the big jump
over to HBO after forty six years on PBS, and
there were a lot of mixed feelings about this, some
people saying, oh man, what a what a drag. You're
now on a pay station and these uh, these kids
(48:19):
and that can't afford cable TV and HBO maybe that
really need Sesame Street can't watch it anymore? Or these
new episodes of the Big Birds said t S, I
got some money, Big Bird said, you want Sesame Street
to stay on the air, and this is the only
way it's gonna happen. And you can watch these episodes
nine months after they air on HBO. So to me,
(48:40):
it's kind of a win win. I thought that was
cool that Big Bird win in negotiated that that PBS
still got episodes after a certain time. Yeah, good for you,
Big Bird and elm So. So to me, Chuck, this
is my thing. I think public broadcasting should be public. Originally,
IDA was when you bought a television set, there was
(49:02):
a tax on it that went specifically to fund public broadcasting,
so it got looped into the appropriations process. Which so
they have to go beg for the money every year. Um,
if it were publicly funded through some sort of tax
that was designated just for it, and um there was
(49:23):
also this is a really big point to this is
how it was originally supposed to be. They were shielded
from government meddling by a nonpartisan board of directors whose
entire job it was was to keep the government out
of public broadcasts and they could just focus on good,
unfettered journalism. That would be the ideal, And I don't
(49:46):
think it's too late to go to that model. I
think commercial commercial broadcasting shows that there's a huge need
for it, but that in the US it's in this
weird limbo state. Is it commercial, is it publicly funded?
You know what's the There's so many easily fixed problems
with it. But you have to go all one way
or all the other. To me, do you know? It
(50:08):
would be great and also a disaster, now that I
thought about it for half a second. Is if you could, like,
when you go to pay your taxes, you could select
a box that say I would like a portion of
my taxes to go to funding public broadcasting or to
funding schools. That wouldn't work. Well, if that was just
what they relied on, it might not work, but why
(50:29):
not added on there could do it as well in
addition to let's public broadcasting. I got a few little
facts here, though, we got some more public broadcasting. Um,
I just looked up MPR's own like interesting facts about
NPR all things consider. Their very first episode was covering
the m twenty thousand person protests of the Vietnam War.
(50:53):
Featured a twenty four minutes sound portrait of the protests,
the very first thing they ever did. Yeah, it's pretty ballsy,
we say balls. I don't know. We'll find out how
much I heard Terry Gross. She was on a Mark
Mayrin episode and she talked about not kind of a
bit of a desire to be free from the shackles
(51:16):
of her the restrictions of being on MPR. Oh yeah, yeah. Mainly,
she said, when they do like readings from an author
and they have to really go in ahead of time
and say, hey, you can't say this word from your
reading on the air and stuff like that, she doesn't
want to get up there and just Phil Flor and
Phil foul that's not Terry Gross style. No, But she
(51:38):
also doesn't want to be like, by the way, you
can't say the B word. Yeah, exactly. Um. MPR had
a lot of first one of them, Susan Standberg All
Things Considered host in nineteen seventy two, was the very
first woman to be an anchor for a national news broadcast,
The Simpsons, A special love for them. Terry Gross, Bob Boylan,
(51:59):
Robert Siegel, and Carl Cassell have all been Carl Castle.
What say Cassell? You're thinking of? Howard Cosell was Carl Castle.
They were all on The Simpsons and then Morning It
had some other names before they settled on that morning air.
First things first, it's not bad, very MPR. And then
(52:22):
this sounds so MPR. It's probably why they didn't do it.
Tweet Jack starting line, Yeah, that's sound too bad. I
think Morning Edition is good. I think it's the best. Uh.
And then finally, Bob Boylan's great, great show Tiny Desk Concerts. Steward,
listen to those, No, but I'm familiar with them. Man,
(52:43):
it's just the best. Uh. He had a band called
Tiny Desk Unit, and that was why he named the
show Tiny Desk Concerts. Thank you Music Shows for clearing
that up. I had no idea. Why well, I mean
it's named that because they performed in the his MPR office, Right,
(53:04):
That's what I thought, But it's still Yeah, it is
his desk, like miniature. I've got one more for you,
all right. So there was this two thousand eleven study
um that found that of fourteen Western democracies, the United
States was the only one to rely almost entirely on
commercial broadcasting to inform at citizenry. That's precarious. Interesting, and
(53:25):
that the same article you sent did a lot of
studies that found that those countries, those other countries are
generally much more well informed about news events. Yes, traffic accident,
everybody knows. Uh. If you want to know more about
public broadcasting, go listen to MPR, watch PBS, and decide
(53:48):
for yourself what you think about them. Uh. And in
the meantime, you can also type those words in the
search bar how stiff first dot com Since I said
search parts time for listener mail. Uh. This is from
a Ron in Miami, A R O N. I think
(54:08):
it's just I don't know a Ron the great key
and peels kit. Uh. Hey, guys, just got into podcast
a couple of months ago, and I'm a Catchup fan.
We did a Remember That Ketchup podcast, good one. I'm
a firm believer it belongs in the pantry, not the refrigerator.
That many debates about this, mostly while intoxicated, But that's
(54:30):
beside the point. Many things work well in contrast, like
a frosty beverage with buffalo wings or crunchy potato chip
alongside a softer sandwich. But who wants to dip a
hot French fry into cold ketchup? H I gotta agree
with this guy. Yeah, uh, he said. To be clear,
my claim is based solely on memory. However, I recall
(54:51):
Heinz introducing their fridge Fit Catchup bottle in two thousand six.
During a debate about pantry versus refrigerated, someone on the
other side pointed out it was not either to refrigerate
after opening for best results, refrigerate after opening. It was like,
not either or I'm not sure what he's saying there, confusing.
I was completely for it. I've never seen such verbiage
(55:11):
on a Hines bottle before. Uh. And then it dawned
on me. Hines had just hit uh and released the
fridge fit bottle. Of course, they will direct you to
keep this in the fridge. It's part of the marketing strategy.
Has nothing to do with the best way to enjoy
the ketchupy goodness, this guy was wasted when he wrote
this is becoming clear. It's a little confusing in the
middle there, but he said that. Thanks for the information, entertainment,
(55:35):
and remember say no to refrigeration of ketchup the a
A Ron, thank thanks for that. Read the sentence. Maybe
it's me no, no, I heard you say it, and
it it sounded like you were reading it correctly. Okay, well,
thanks A Roan. We hope you feel better in the morning.
(55:58):
If you want to get in touch with us, like
A Ran did, you can tweet to us at s
y s K podcast. You can join us on Facebook
dot com slash stuff you Should Know. You can send
an email to stuff podcast at how stuff works dot com.
Has always joined us at her home on the web
Stuff you Should Know dot com for more on this
(56:19):
and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff Works
dot com
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from how Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and Jerry, which means it
is time for stuff you should know about public broadcasting.
(00:22):
How are you feeling good full of beans today? That's
the last thing I wanted to hear. And you're stuck
in here with me for a couple of hours, buddy, dear,
that's the musical fruit. Yeah, that's what I hear. That's
what I've been here since I was six years old.
Is it musical fruit? I thought it was magical fruit.
(00:44):
Uh music, probably regional Huh, like soda and coke and
pop in all that musical magical, don't talk about it
at all, one of them. Actually I grew up. It
wasn't even musical. I just grew up with beans, beans,
good for your heart. Oh well, that that's pretty that's real. Yeah.
(01:05):
So that's the That's how I rolled in the a
t l um. So you're feeling uh, you're feeling pretty good. Yeah.
I think it's a very wonderfully disrespectful way to open
up a show about one of our finest institutions. I
really feel on edge because you know that every single
MPR personality is going to hear this one. You think
(01:27):
every single one guy ros right now is sitting there
like these two idiots. Terry Gross already thinks for idiots.
She is my hero, buddy. I don't think that there's
ever been a finer radio program than Fresh Air. Yeah.
I mean, she's the best. She's a legend, she's awesome.
Uh have you ever heard an interview with her? Uh? No, there,
(01:49):
I recommend it. She's a pretty sharp tack. So I'm
sure they're pretty fun. In fact, you know what perfect
time to shout out our buddy. Jesse Thorne of Bull's
Eye with Jesse Thorn has a short run series called
The Turnaround where he interviewers legendary He interviews legendary interviewers. Okay,
(02:10):
Ira Glass, Harrol Morris. What I think Terry Gross is
in there? I'm not sure, you gotta be. I don't
think hers is out yet. I'm not gonna promise that
because I'm not positive. Okay, but I can hold my
breath all right. But it's a really cool show. Very Uh,
it's really interesting to hear because I think Jesse's a
(02:30):
great interviewer, and then to hear him interview the great
interviewers about interviewing, it makes your head just turn a
hundred navy degrees. It's really cool. Alright, Chuck. Yes, so
we're talking public broadcasting, which depending on how you Okay,
you're a big fan. Sure, so it probably doesn't sound
a dull to you talking about public broadcasting. But I've
(02:53):
shows people out there who just walked right past this one,
and hopefully some of them said, you know what, I'm
gonna give the dude's a chance. I'm gonna listen. Those
people will be richly rewarded by this episode, because it
turns out the public broadcasting, it's history, it's present, its
future hopefully all very interesting. Yeah, and if you are
(03:16):
not a fan of it, then, um, well you're in
the minority technically. Yeah, they've got some big numbers, bigger
than I realized. Yeah, more than half of the US
population tunes into public TV or radio or online. So
we're talking PBS and NPR generally, that's a hundred and
(03:37):
seventy million Americans, and um they it says here that
PBS gets has more viewers than our dearly beloved Discovery Channel,
even HDTV and A and E, which are all thought
of as well. They are very big networks, juggernauts. Yeah,
but I think people hear PBS you get a certain like.
(03:59):
I think some people think it's the treasure that it is.
Some people might be a little bored by it without realizing.
Oh but wait a minute, I saw Monty Python and
Benny Hill on PBS. I'm so glad you when I
was a kid to think of Benny Hill or I
sure loved Dowton Abbey and oh wait a minute, that
was PBS two our Antiques road foe. I mean some
(04:20):
Mr Rogers, some some of the more legendary shows in
American history. Right, And it's not like all things considered
in Morning Edition and Fresh Air and wait, wait, don't
tell me, are like are any slouches at all? You know?
Like this? This are like if you step back and
put the rosters of MPR and PBS together, it bakes
(04:40):
up a pretty big swath of the American fabric. Totally agreed. Yeah, well,
thank you. I agree with myself on that one as well.
So I didn't realize how new they were, though, did you. Yeah?
I thought I think I thought it was seventies. Oh well,
you were dead on. It started in Actually it goes
(05:03):
back a little further than that to the public Um
Public Broadcasting Act, and actually we should go back even
slightly further than that to set this whole thing up. Right,
So radio comes up, it starts to become a mass medium, right,
and the UK and Europe, in America at the time,
(05:25):
we're basically faced with this thing, like, we've got this
huge new technology. Up to this point, it's been newspapers
and dudes on horseback running through towns. That's how we
got the word out. Now everybody's starting to get radio.
So we've got this this really powerful thing. What do
we do with it? And over in Europe and the UK,
they said, this is a public good and we need
(05:47):
to treat it as such. We need to we need
to take it seriously. We need to make sure that
public affairs programming gets onto the air and they don't
have to worry about competing for ad dollars or anything
like that. We're gonna fund it pub lookally, in the
US we released two acts. There was the Radio Act
of and the Communications Act of four and both of
(06:08):
them set up the current competitive capitalist market that we
have for broadcasting in the country, right, and it worked,
there's from what I've seen. One of the reasons why
it worked was because there was also this kind of
tacit understanding among journalists who were part of these broadcast
networks that they had a responsibility to inform the public.
(06:32):
And they were also only three of them at the time. Sure,
but um over time, broadcasting in the United States went
more and more and more toward entertainment because that could
get more people, and that's that meant you could get
more advertising money. So we got further and further away
from public affairs programming and news and got more and
(06:55):
more into entertainment. And by the fifties it became evident
to some people that we needed something in addition to
or to replace, the commercial model that we had in
the US. Yeah, and this was even pre cable TV,
like these are just the net the big three pre Fox,
even this is ABC, CBS and NBC. Uh starting to
(07:19):
show things like the Honeymooners and realizing people who are
way more into the Honeymooners than Walter Cronkite, Well maybe
not they were, people were into the news back then. Yeah,
But even if even if you do have people who
are into the news. There are some certain things that
have to do with the commercial model when put up
against the public broadcasting model, that inherently make public broadcasting
(07:42):
more appealing if you're trying to get public affairs programming across.
And one of the big ones, Chuck, is if you're
a program director for NBC and it's prime time, when
you know everybody's home, are you going to put on
one of your big money makers like the Honeymooners that
can charge top dollar from advertisers for or you're gonna
(08:03):
put on the McNeil lair News Report where you're where
you're not gonna get as many people. But there's some
really in depth investigative journal journalism because they don't have
to worry about attracting advertisers ideally, um they can just
focus on the journalism. Which one are you gonna do? Well,
you're gonna do both, but it's a matter of when
you do both, you know, right, So are you gonna
(08:25):
do one like at five thirty? Right? Are you gonna
do a prime time and at five thirty not everybody's
home from work yet, So overall you have a less
informed citizenry just from when you choose to put news on.
I haven't watched. I don't watch the news any more
at all, not even cable news. But I can't remember
(08:46):
the last time I watched like local news or a
news program on a network. I don't even know. I
guess when I lived in l A. I didn't have cable.
I would watch the news sometimes because I don't think
I had the Internet yet. I had like an antenna.
My my news Chunky Dumb has come and gone, like
over time, waxed and wayne. It feels pretty gone this time. Yeah,
(09:10):
just getting used up by cable news used Yeah, just
being done with. It's pretty freeing, isn't it. Yeah, even
networks I like, you know, I just I don't want
to hear it anymore. Um And the way people in
just news these days is just so different, you know. Yeah.
I get most of my news honestly from Twitter. Yeah,
social media, that's how it's done these days. But I
was going back to l A. I was. I used
(09:33):
to sit around and watch local news in l A.
Was pretty great. I have to admit, there's a lot
of Yeah, it was just weird and the personalities were
kind of interesting. But yeah, I mean I think it
was like started at like four thirty and ran all
the way up to whatever. The big nightly news programs were,
what like seven yeah, yeah, hours and hours of weird
(09:57):
Southland news. Yeah, was told to you by a man
wearing a cape. Maybe yeah, it was that weird yeah,
or I don't know, it was strange. But then I
kind of missed the old Atlanta News because I grew
up watching that's pretty stayed with giant helmet hair. That's
a land in local news. Yeah, And I think most
cities have these stalwarts that have been around forever. You
(10:20):
know Monica Kaufman, Yeah, who is married now she's not
even Monica Kaufman anymore? What is what's her name? Now?
I don't know because I want the news in twenty years,
but I think someone told me, you know, she has
a married name. Now, I was like, what, huh, that's
Monica Kaufman or that you know, you would see one
of them. I've worked at the Laser Show and I
would see like Ken Burns, the weather man at the
(10:40):
Laser Show, and it's like a legit celebrity signing. Oh yeah,
he gives you like the wink, and everyone's crowding around
getting his autographs. It's the anchorman thing, you know. It's
like the salad days, Yeah, which are now gone because
of cable news in the Internet. Well, yeah, the salad
days for them. Sure, Now it's our salad days. It's time. Yeah,
(11:01):
that's true too, And that applies not just to local news.
It applies to news in general, um, including MPR and
including PBS that there's this huge shift. I don't know
if you've heard this, but there's a big shift to
the Internet now. That's true. People are starting to consume,
like you said, news in different ways, and public broadcasting
(11:22):
is having to keep up just as much as anybody.
But it's occupies this weird niche that we'll get into.
But you want to take a break first and regroup. Yeah,
we'll come back here and talk about Linda Johnson. I
can't wait. Alright, Chuck d J. Yes, lb J. Did
(12:04):
you know that he owns some I think TV stations
back in Texas when he was a senator. I don't
think I knew that he was, So he was real
in favor of public broadcasting. Well that kind of makes sense. Yeah,
so in nineteen sixty seven, Uh, well, I mean in
nineteen sixty seven, he signed the Public Broadcasting Act into law.
(12:25):
But previous to this UH, there was something called the
n ET UH National Entertainment Times WACA WACA. What was it,
I'm sure it was National Education Television, Yes, National Education Television.
They were the precursor to UH what would eventually become
(12:45):
CPB Corporation for Public Broadcasting. But at the time n
e T would UH. They would run things that could
be critical of the government and its foreign policy. And
some say, I don't think it was entirely due to that,
but some say that that did play a part, and
the government eventually funding via the Public Broadcasting Act public television,
(13:08):
so maybe they could get a little bit more favorable coverage.
It's pretty North Korean and mentality if you think about it,
you know, and if you step back and look at it,
the idea of public broadcasting, government funded public broadcasting should
terrify everybody. But the way that it's always been right, right,
But the way that it's always been pitched and and
(13:29):
um and sold is no, it's taxpayer funded, so it
belongs to the people, and that the government. It's supposed
to be insulated. It's a different estate. It's the fourth estate.
It's not the government, it's its own thing. It's supposed
to be kept separate. So I was surprised to see that,
but it makes total sense, the idea, oh yeah, we'll
bring you into the fold, will fund you, but you
(13:49):
owe us big time. Yeah. I mean I wonder what
kind of like real talks were had over that, if any,
or if it was just sort of like understood, like, hey,
here's who's right in your checks now. Well, I think
it was also a convergence of different interests, right, So
the government wanting to get rid of criticism or clamped
down on criticism coincided with people who wanted more public
(14:12):
affairs broadcasting, and then you had some endowments that were
well healed, well moneyed, and they all kind of came
together to create this Corporation for Public Broadcasting that came
out of the Public Broadcasting Act. Yeah. So this, uh,
like you said, you set it up nicely with radio,
but um radio started to decline with the advent of television,
(14:34):
and so in order, I mean, one of the main
reasons they signed the Public Broadcasting Out was trying to
get the this non commercial radio going in a legit way.
So they signed Johnson signs the act. The federal government
creates uh CPB, like we mentioned, Corporation for Public Broadcasting,
and they are not They don't produce TV. They basically
(14:58):
dole out money. Uh. They're the they're the gatekeepers. Yeah,
in here yourself a nice little radio transmitter with this.
But now that's what they do. Yeah, they do a
lot of money. They cover licensing fees, are copyright fees,
they cover a lot of the technical infrastructure, um. And
(15:20):
they give a lot of money directly to smaller market
MPR or PBS stations. Yeah, I mean they created the
cb uh I say that the whole time CPB created
uh MPR in nineteen seventy and before that PBS and
sixty nine. They basically said, we need a TV wing
and a radio wing going to create these and we're
(15:42):
gonna doll out money uh this year actually and then
projected or at least asked for for twenty nineteen. They
have requested the same amount of money. But you don't
even see that very often where they're not asking for
a raise or whatever or increased funding of four hundred
(16:03):
and forty five million dollars, which amounts to point zero
one zero one of the federal budget. Yeah, and there's
a lot of debate that will get into when we
talk about some of the controversies and criticisms of public broadcasting,
and believe me, we're talking about those. But UM, a
lot of people say, that's pretty disingenuous to point out
(16:25):
what a minuscule amount of the budget that is, because
it's still four d forty five million dollars and still
half a billion dollars. And then on the other side,
which we'll hear a little bit more about two Um,
a lot of people who are on the public broadcasting
side say, just forget, just get rid of that, just
we don't need that money. Let's go without. If there's
(16:47):
so many strings attached to that four five million dollars,
it makes up such a small portion of say like
MPR itself operating budget, that we just don't even need.
It's not even worth the trouble. Big debate, which is
weird because some some people on the UM public radio
side and some are critics of public or public broadcasting,
(17:09):
UM government funding for public broadcasting. Yeah, it's a little weird.
I mean, trust me, I've I've found myself reading some
of this thinking maybe you should just be free from
those shackles, because sometimes the public will step up and
you might get more funding. Yeah, you know, when something
(17:30):
is threatened, right, yeah, yeah, at least first the question
is whether that could be sustained for the long term,
you know. Yeah, well, we'll get into all that you mentioned.
Uh MPR they actually get UM less than one percent
of that for their operating budget. So the million, it's
(17:50):
not like they say, all right, MPR you get two
d and twenty something million, and PBS you get the rest.
Uh MPR gets less than one percent, And they actually
have a mandate CPB of their spending UM has to
be on local public media station's content development, community services,
(18:11):
and then what they they call other related needs toilet paper,
I guess, and stuff like that keep the A C on.
So chuck, here's how here's how the whole thing works.
You're ready, yep, You and I pay taxes, goes. Some
of it goes to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in
the form of about four million dollars a year. Yeah,
(18:34):
and in the form of about like four dollars per textpayer.
I saw, I saw between saw one one group found
a dollar thirty five a person and for every person.
I don't think for every tax paying person. Oh I see, okay, well,
then for every tax paying person it's about four bucks um.
So taxas go to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and
(18:55):
then um, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting spends like that
on the small local stations, right okay, Well, and you
know the other stuff of content development okay. And then
you've got the small local stations subscribing to MPR and
PBS who have shows that they create, produce mprs very
(19:19):
famously all things considered in Morning edition right started in
nineteen seventy one and the Morning Edition in nineteen seventy
nine running. So all that money goes taxes Corporation to
Public Broadcasting, smaller affiliates, and then it goes back up.
So it goes down from the top to the smaller
affiliates and then back up to MPR and PBS, ok
(19:40):
for the for the programs that they're developing. So rather
than the taxes going directly to MPR or to PBS,
it goes to the Corporation Republic Broadcasting. But even still,
rather than going directly to MPR PBS, it goes to
the smaller affiliates who then give it to MPR and PPS.
And by give it you mean they licensing fees to
(20:01):
play those shows on their right exactly. Yeah, like they
I think they subscribe and they paid like a yearly
fee to carry that show. Yeah. And when it first
started NPR, and we'll cover NPR first largely and then
get into PBS. But is when MPR started and at
the time there are only ninety member stations and now
(20:22):
they are close to a thousand member stations all over
the country licensing these legendary shows. Right. And then for
the smaller local affiliates, if you have all things considered on,
you're going to attract a percentage of your town's listeners.
The more listeners you have for that, the more pledges
(20:43):
you'll get during your pledge drive, right. And then you also,
the more listeners you have, the more UM contributions you
can get through underwriting too. Yeah, but also you'll have
to pay more money to license these shows too write
the more listeners you have, Yeah, Like, Um, well, I
guess we should go over where they get their funding largely,
(21:04):
and then how they charged the member stations. Uh and
um says was from fees and dues from member stations,
the close corporate sponsorship which has risen over the years.
I think I think that was kind of a controversial
thing for a while, whether or not they wanted to
(21:25):
take on any of that. I think, is it like
how much they're beholden to that, Yeah, that makes sense,
grants and contributions and then um, like you mentioned foundations, endowments,
colleges and universities, stuff like that will pitch in some
dough what's the big one that it's always the Katherine T.
(21:49):
John d and Katherine Tee MacArthur found exactly. It's like
drilled into your head after all these years. And the
Chubb group for PBS, oh yeah, and members like you,
um Morning Edition and all things considered, they are UM
stations are charged based on the volume of their listeners
plus a multiplier, and then things like fresh air apparently
(22:13):
are priced in proportion to that station's revenue, So smaller
stations don't have to pay as much as bigger stations,
which is great because again the whole idea between behind
public broadcasting is that you have stuff that's supposed to be,
like you said, not beholden to advertisers. So if company
X is, you know, screwing over this town's water supply then,
(22:37):
but they advertise with all of the broadcast networks that
are commercially driven, those those networks. News might not mention it,
but public public broadcasting will probably do that story and
we'll let everybody know. Yeah, that's the idea. So it's
important for everybody to have public broadcasting. And that's why
(22:59):
the the smaller ones are supported by the larger ones. Exactly. Yeah, um, PBS.
On the other side, we mentioned Mr Rogers, Nova Man
Growing Up. That was a good one. Wasn't Cosmos on PBS?
I think so? I think it was. Originally it seems
(23:21):
like a very PBSC show. Sure, that turtleneck masterpiece theater.
Of course, this old house, the frugal gourmet. Who was that?
Was that? Julia Child or Jack papan Oh? Immediately thought
Julia Child. But now you have me wondering. We'll find out, Okay,
I'll get to the bottom of this child. You mentioned
McNeil Lair Report Evening at the Pops Uh Sesame Street.
(23:44):
Probably the most legendary not probably definitely the most legendary
kids show of all time, and PBS gets about two
hundred million viewers annually, representing eight t two of US
television households. So they're they're big, you know, they're not
(24:05):
like I mean, I know you think of PBS is
like the sweet little like publicly funded thing. But that's
that's big stuff. Like if they took in ads, they
probably wouldn't have to sweat it at all. No, you know,
but that's a double edged sword because then they lose
their their public value if they start taking an ad allegedly,
(24:26):
which again is why some people haven't really stuck in
their craw that they have underwriting at all. Yeah, it's
Jeff Smith. By the way, I never heard of him.
Frugal Gourmet. Yeah, well not in the seventies, it wasn't. Yeah,
it said. He released a book in nineteen eighty four
called The Frugal Gourmet. He's the only person associated with it,
Jeff Smith. It sounds like an alias to me. It
(24:49):
really doesn't. Maybe it's Jacques Popin is French for Jeff Smith. Yeah,
it says Jeff Smith. Four Jeff the chef. Chef Jeff,
he was the Frugal Gore Mate. He was, according to
the Seattle Post Intelligencer, TV's original celebrity chefs he wasn't
(25:09):
that big of a celebrity apparently about that so, um,
PBS has three hundred and fifty member stations as of now,
and um they are in all fifty states plus Guam,
Puerto Rico, US Virgin Islands and American Samoa. Yeah. I
got their own member stations pretty neat. And they, for
the record, get about seven percent of their funding from CPB. Right.
(25:32):
But just like with the NPR model, local affiliates, Yeah,
pay to carry Antiques road Show as they should. Man,
if you want to get some viewers, just have an
antiques road show marathon. Do you watch it? Have you
ever seen it? Um? Yeah, I have seen it. Uh
so good. It's just it's like how it's made you
just get stuck in it lulls you into its trap.
(25:54):
Well that's like I mean this our own article at
house stuff works as a little sidebar about the sound
of NPR. How was parodied with Delicious Dish on Saturday
Night Live so famously. But that's the thing, you know,
you I'd used to listen to public radio on the
radio during my commutes before I even really knew what
(26:14):
I was listening to, because I didn't want to wake
up to a lot of noise. Oh yeah, it's just
so soothing. It just kind of eased you into the day. Yeah, absolutely,
and it still does. I still listened to it four News,
but largely because I want to hear the voices. Yeah, man,
are you in the a MSR? The Second Cup? Oh
is that still around? Writes us? Oh? God, bless her
(26:38):
second Cup concert. Uh have you ever looked at pictures
of these people? I know people freak out about us,
but yeah, it happens. But you should see these people.
I looked at Lowis, writes us, and I think I
expected her to be like four years old. Yeah she's not. Nope,
I've no I guess I've never seen and reem is thirty. Yeah,
(27:03):
they'd like to hang on to folks. You know Herery Gross,
she's been doing that show for since the eighties. Amazing.
We should be so lucky, right, Hey, your lips the
God's ear? Okay, okay, so chuck, um, there's there's a
couple of things going on here. Okay, there are Um,
(27:28):
we're getting into the sides. Yeah, there's so. One of
the things that Congress likes to do every about five
years is say, you know that public broadcasting that left
leaning COMI drivel. Why are we playing for that? Yeah? Why?
And so I was reading this dude named David Boaz
or bows Boas, take your pick. He's one of the
(27:53):
higher ups that the Cato Institute libertarian think tank. He
hates public broadcasting in America. Most libertarians do. Like it is.
It really gets to this guy, and he makes a
couple of pretty decent points right like he his to him,
it's a transfer of wealth from the average taxpayer up
(28:17):
to produce entertainment that that you know, the upper middle
class typically consumes, even though it's intended for everybody. Um.
And so, from like a taxpayer standpoint, I can kind
of understand where if you didn't agree with if you
thought that this was leaning against you ideologically and taking
your taxpayer money, I could see how something like that
(28:40):
would drive you bonkers. Um to me, though, I think
everybody kind of assumes that public broadcasting in the US
leans a certain way, typically left ward, but supposedly, study
after study find that they may be slightly left leaning,
but they're typically a lot close sort of neutral than then, um,
(29:02):
they're they're given credit for. Yeah, there've been overall, Yeah,
there's been some things that have happened over the years. Uh. Notably,
in two thousand eleven, MPR president at the time and CEO,
Vivian Schiller had to resign UM or did resign at
least when there was a video undercover video in a
meeting where one of the executives called Tea party members
(29:25):
seriously racist, racist people, right, there was a big deal.
In fact, most of the stuff when you look up
MPR controversies is all dated at two thousand eleven. For
that reason, it was a big stink. Well, when they
got rid of Vivian Schiller, they specifically said that under
her watch some controversies had really gotten out of control
(29:46):
and they just no longer thought she could lead any longer. Yeah,
And so there was a study. Researchers at Duke University
did a study of a Twitter of the Twitter network
of MPR and like basically did all this Duke University
style math that I won't bore you with, but to
(30:07):
analyze whether or not MPR was left leaning or not.
Um And it wasn't just NPR. They did this with
a lot of news outlets and I think they never
actually posted The New York Times, didn't UM there was
a blog about all this, never posted where MPR fell,
but they were asked and um, one of the researchers said, Um,
(30:30):
MPR resides somewhat to the left of center, but further
to the right than Katie Kuric the Washington Post, the
l A Times, or Brian Williams, and that was using
their algorithm. And then MPR kind of um hit back
and said, in fact, Steve Williams Stevensky wrote it, wrote
(30:53):
a article for The Wall Street Journal and said, in
all these surveys, most listeners consistently identify themselves as the
middle of the road or conservative. So a lot of
people are like, oh, wait a minute, like that can't
be true, And so they did. Um, they got the
actual numbers from those surveys, and twenty percent of nprs
(31:14):
audience said that they were conservative or very conservative, middle
of the road and thirty seven percent liberal or very
liberal SOT or middle of the road or conservative or
middle of the road or liberals. So it's not as
heavy and this isn't their programming. This is their audience, right,
(31:36):
but it's not as heavy left as some might heavy believe. Yeah,
and and just because that's their audience. I mean that
kind of suggests that it is a little more left
leaning because people tend to go seek out stuff that
supports their own beliefs rather than challenges. It probably hats
off to the middle of the road conservative ones that listen, Yeah,
you want to take another break before we get back
to it. So the I think it's almost really just
(32:26):
kind of more a matter of perception. We were talking
about whether MPR is left leaning or not, or public
broadcasting in general. I think it's probably a little bit
left leaning, but it's not how you know, it's not
like the info wars of the left right, you mean CNN, UM.
(32:47):
The uh. The thing about criticizing MPR, though, is you
can go one way. You can say it's a little
left leaning, but if you look on the other side,
you'll find people like no, I'm chom Ski who say
that's you're getting Mayre down in the details. He said,
if you really listen to MPR, where you watch PBS
(33:10):
UM and you listen to this stuff they're saying or
the people they're having on as experts, it's the same
that you're gonna find on cable news. And I think
one MPR former MPR correspondent basically said that MPR runs
press releases for the Pentagon. Noam Chomsky was saying, it
(33:32):
was basically structurally there to support the status quo. Where
if if they're presenting a debate and all all, you know,
both sides of the debate, it's all still very structured
within the status quo. They're not bringing in somebody who's like, well,
all of this is moot point, we need to completely
redo the structure of our economy or something like that.
(33:54):
They don't bring in outside voices like that. They bring
in voices that are exact us within normalcy or whatever.
So there's a whole camp out there, um that that
tend to say, remember that thing that Lyndon Johnson originally did,
the reason why he founded the Corporation for Public Broadcasting
to kind of keep a clamp down and criticism, to
(34:14):
keep things within a reasonable spectrum. Well he succeeded. I
kind of tend to agree with that. Yeah, I don't
I feel like they usually provide counterpoints, right, They definitely
provide counterpoints, but it's all that counterpoint is something that's
still within the bounds of normalcy. There's not somebody coming
in and saying like, forget those either points, like they're
(34:36):
both we just gotta throw everything away and start over again.
That that, I think the point is that it's lacking
really really outside viewpoints, right, you know what I'm saying,
outside the status quo. So this is all come up
in the news more recently because this year when um
(34:59):
uh Trump proposed his his budget proposal for UM, which
is not you know, this is not settled or anything
by any means. In fact, MPR people are like, you know,
let's just settle down, like this isn't this is round one, um.
But the proposal at least called for the eventual complete
abolish meant that a word of public funding, uh, for
(35:23):
for PBS, n NPR or for CPBRIGHT. And again you've
got people on both sides saying, good, great, let's just
get it over with. Yeah, an eventual meaning they wouldn't
just pull it would be gradually over time, which of course,
you know, makes more sense than just like doing it
all at once, tearing the band aid off. Yeah. And
you know, like I said, I'm always been a big
(35:44):
supporter of public broadcasting, but I thought, you know, maybe
just be free from those shackles finally, maybe the public
would step up. Where where you get hurt and apparently
where UM, PBS and NPR are both kind of trying
to voice their most of their concerns is that you know,
of course your big cities are gonna be fine, but
it's the smaller market member stations that rely way more
(36:07):
on the CPB funding UM that are going to be
most hurt. And these are the people that need this
stuff the most. These rural communities UH need public broadcasting.
So it's hard to argue with that point. You know,
it is for sure there's actually UM a historical lesson
in here. You can look to New Zealand for this.
Like back in the late eighties they try to deregulation experiment,
(36:31):
but they had one channel tv n Z in the
whole country and UM the government said, you know what,
you guys are done with the teat of the government,
go sell some ads, and they tried this experiment. T
v n Z actually came out as I believe it
survived UM, but it was worse for the wear as
(36:53):
a result. And ironically UM, this deregulation opened a space
for a true UM nonprofit non commercial television called UM
New Zealand on air Uh, that actually came and thrived
in the wake of this transformation for TVNZ from public
(37:14):
broadcasting to commercially driven. So it's it's it's not necessarily
gonna work out well for the people who listen to
NPR or watch PBS if they go to completely commercially
driven programming. And the whole reason that you have the
corporation of public broadcasting ostensibly is because commercially driven journalism
(37:37):
wasn't getting the job done before, and it certainly is
it now. News rooms being cut um, news that is
on cable being more and more polarized one way or another,
and it's just shouting match after shouting match. If you
really watch the news, the only people, aside from some
of those old died in the world news people on
(37:58):
like um, you know, NBC or CBS is like nightly news.
The only ones really doing real journalism are the ones
who are working for public broadcasting at the very least,
they're the ones who are trying the hardest. For sure, Yeah,
you could totally make that argument, But at the same time,
we're in a weird limbo state where everybody's ticked off,
(38:19):
right because it's PBS and NPR are not just not
fully publicly funded, and they're not just advertising driven. There
are a combination of the two that that that compromises
them two different ways, which is why both sides are
saying one or the other. I tend to feel like
(38:40):
they should just go completely publicly funded and we should
adopt something like a British model where it's like you're
funded for the next five years, go do the public
some good and you can't have any underwriting whatsoever. Yeah, well,
I mean it's interesting and that, um, most of Europe
and Britain definitely went that other direction, like you mentioned
at the ending, and in that one article you sent
(39:02):
over talking about ways it's done public broadcasting in other
countries as a whole, and they were talking about the
BBC and they said, you know, who is the average
I can't remember who they asked, but who's the average
BBC viewer? And the answer was every British citizen right. Like,
it's a much different deal, you know. And the BBC's
(39:22):
criticized too for being a government mouthpiece in a lot
of ways too, but they're also critical of the government
in ways that other people aren't. And they'll also put
news on at a time when everybody is home to
watch it. That kind of stuff. So the future of
broadcasting public broadcasting UM isn't as simple as like are
(39:43):
they going to be publicly funded or not? UM, it's
whether or not they're still viable, uh in um. The
median audience age was fifty four years old, and in
twenty years BEFO for that it was forty five. It's
a pretty pretty big age. At least it wasn't like
(40:08):
I stayed exactly the same, the same people just got
twenty years older. So they are getting some younger listeners.
But it's the way that especially people under thirty five
years old consumed media is radically different than their parents. Yeah,
and there's plenty of people out there who are younger
who qualify as quote unquote millennials who are like listening
(40:32):
to stuff that MPR puts out there, listening to the huge,
huge slate of MPR podcasts. Right, there's a ton of
podcasts the MPR puts out. A lot of their radio
programs are repurposed into podcasts, and so there's a lot
of younger people who are listening to it. The problem
is that poses a conundrum to the public broadcasting model
(40:55):
as it stands in the US though, right, well, yeah,
I looked at the top twenty today on the iTunes
just to kind of see an NPR had eight of
the top twenty shows as stiff competition for US Hidden Brain,
This American Life, Planet Money, um I guess Stown and
Serial both they would qualify because they come out of
This American Life stable and that's where it got its start.
(41:18):
Their highest rank show today was Ted Radio Hour at
number five. Incidentally, we were number four. Good but um, yeah,
I mean eight shows in the top twenty. But it
does pose an interesting conundrum for them. I know when
they were started to dip their toe into podcasts, and
then once podcast started generating revenue via ads, they weren't
(41:40):
quite sure how to handle all that stuff. No, and
part of the part of the problem is is if
you're a small local affiliate, you've paid a lot of
money to get fresh air on your airwaves. You don't
want some twenty year old going and listening to it
on the new whiz Bang MPR app that the city
slickers came up with. You want them listening to your
station so that you can get their donations. Um So,
(42:02):
for a while MPR had uh an embargo and even
mentioning the fact that there were podcasts out there on air. Yeah, um,
right now. I think they say that it's okay to
mention that an announcer hosts a podcast, but they don't
say like, hey, go download the podcast, go to iTunes
or Apple. Right, they say that they hosted buck Well,
(42:29):
it's a legit concern. But my whole thing is you can't, like,
you can't fight on demand listening or viewing. You just
can't fight it. You can't tell a twenty six year
old no, you need to turn tune in from seven
to nine a m. To listen to us. They're like,
(42:49):
what is this tune in? What is seven to nine? Yeah? No,
it's true. And if if you're fighting against it, you're
you're going to lose. Yeah, because that's the beauty of podcasts.
What's said is, looking at it from the outside, it
looks like MPR and PBS get this because MPR has
its own apps, PBS has an on demand video app
(43:09):
as well. They it looks like the larger institutions get this.
But I don't see what anyone's doing to save the
local affiliates, the small town ones that are really going
to be the first to suffer, or if they're just
being sacrifices canaries in the coal mine, um, in which
case that's just the way it's gonna roll, because those
(43:31):
kids in those small towns are still going to listen
to MPR, they're just not listening to it on the
radio any longer. Well, but then people, you know there
there's a segment of people that would say, well, you
know what, them's the breaks, and if your little member
station goes out of business, then that's called changing times. Okay,
but let's take this back to you. Remember my example
where Corporation Next was poisoning the water in your small town.
(43:54):
No one outside of the town knew about it. Incorporation
Next advertised on the networks, the local news, so the
local news weren't going to take them on. That's why
you need that small, tiny affiliate who not have to
worry about funding and advertising so that they can do
good journalism and expose that corporation to the rest of
the town. Well, if that's small radio station and that
small PBS affiliate drives up because of the MPR app
(44:17):
Corporation Next gets away with poisoning the whole town. Nobody
knows town Dies gets blown over by dust and it's
like it was never there. I wonder, and certainly there
are people in NPR corporate that are way more knowledgeable
and trying to solve this, Peter falken Flick than me.
But I wonder if they could, like on the podcast
(44:38):
Peter Overbee David folken Flick, I combined the two into
one super host. It should one super correspond to supergroup.
They're like Damn Yankees Um. I was on a plane
flight with him one time, by the way, where they rowdy.
They weren't in first class, but I remember being like,
however old I was when that came out fifteen or
(45:00):
sixteen seventeen something like that, were you really and like
Jack Blade was sitting on one side of me, Ted
Nugent was in front of me, Tommy Shaw was behind me,
and it was like I was part of the band.
I was sitting in the middle of these that's really
cool music legends, and I thought, man, I love Night
Ranger and I love Sticks. But he's reading I remember specifically,
(45:22):
I'm reading a hunting magazine. Yeah, I can believe that
just fantasized. Yeah, I'd rather be hunting. Well, I can
tell you Ted Nugent is not listening to this particular episode,
certainly not. Uh So my idea was, maybe, like I
wonder if they could encourage via the podcast, say, hey,
we know you enjoy us on your podcast, but why
don't you donate money to your local members affiliate even
(45:46):
though you don't consume it through the there to keep
the calls alive, you know, yeah, I mean that's just
my dumb outsider's opinion. Well, what if you turn local
affiliates from broadcast bay, Like, you know, you've got to
spend a lot of money on a transmitter and up
links and all that kind of stuff. What if you
(46:06):
just turned them into news bureaus like they were for
investigative journalism and recording for local and then that local
stuff could be kicked up the line, you knoww some
local reporting appears on the national edition of Morning Edition
or whatever. What if you just turned them all into
into news bureaus instead, and then they just went completely
(46:28):
online consumption. What if like the head of MPR just
like swerved off the road. It was like, oh my god,
these guys figuring it out so uh getting back to
their new models that the the mp mp R one
is the app and about of their users or under
thirty five that coveted demo and um, but here's the thing.
(46:51):
They did some surveys and they said a third of
those users seldom listen to traditional radio, but said they
because of the app, we're starting to listen to more
terrestrial radio, which I'm not sure I get how that works,
but well, I could see just being like, oh, I
didn't know this was here. Wait a minute, there's like
a whole radio station that has this. I'm gonna go
(47:12):
check that out. And I can see that. Uh. And
then there is Passport, which you mentioned was I don't
think by name, but that's the PBS video on demand
service that you get if you donate to your local station.
I think five dollars a month donation will get you
access to Passport. And that's if you wanted to binge doubt,
(47:34):
n Abby, you could have done that via Passport. Did
you watch that? I saw an episode or two. I
just never tickled my gizzard. Okay, I love it, big fan. Yeah,
I know a lot of people did. And I didn't
hate it or anything. And shoot the TV when it
came on. Yeah, you didn't go shoot my passport app
(47:55):
uh and then the other big shake up in recent years.
Um last year in Sesame Street made the big jump
over to HBO after forty six years on PBS, and
there were a lot of mixed feelings about this, some
people saying, oh man, what a what a drag. You're
now on a pay station and these uh, these kids
(48:19):
and that can't afford cable TV and HBO maybe that
really need Sesame Street can't watch it anymore? Or these
new episodes of the Big Birds said t S, I
got some money, Big Bird said, you want Sesame Street
to stay on the air, and this is the only
way it's gonna happen. And you can watch these episodes
nine months after they air on HBO. So to me,
(48:40):
it's kind of a win win. I thought that was
cool that Big Bird win in negotiated that that PBS
still got episodes after a certain time. Yeah, good for you,
Big Bird and elm So. So to me, Chuck, this
is my thing. I think public broadcasting should be public. Originally,
IDA was when you bought a television set, there was
(49:02):
a tax on it that went specifically to fund public broadcasting,
so it got looped into the appropriations process. Which so
they have to go beg for the money every year. Um,
if it were publicly funded through some sort of tax
that was designated just for it, and um there was
(49:23):
also this is a really big point to this is
how it was originally supposed to be. They were shielded
from government meddling by a nonpartisan board of directors whose
entire job it was was to keep the government out
of public broadcasts and they could just focus on good,
unfettered journalism. That would be the ideal, And I don't
(49:46):
think it's too late to go to that model. I
think commercial commercial broadcasting shows that there's a huge need
for it, but that in the US it's in this
weird limbo state. Is it commercial, is it publicly funded?
You know what's the There's so many easily fixed problems
with it. But you have to go all one way
or all the other. To me, do you know? It
(50:08):
would be great and also a disaster, now that I
thought about it for half a second. Is if you could, like,
when you go to pay your taxes, you could select
a box that say I would like a portion of
my taxes to go to funding public broadcasting or to
funding schools. That wouldn't work. Well, if that was just
what they relied on, it might not work, but why
(50:29):
not added on there could do it as well in
addition to let's public broadcasting. I got a few little
facts here, though, we got some more public broadcasting. Um,
I just looked up MPR's own like interesting facts about
NPR all things consider. Their very first episode was covering
the m twenty thousand person protests of the Vietnam War.
(50:53):
Featured a twenty four minutes sound portrait of the protests,
the very first thing they ever did. Yeah, it's pretty ballsy,
we say balls. I don't know. We'll find out how
much I heard Terry Gross. She was on a Mark
Mayrin episode and she talked about not kind of a
bit of a desire to be free from the shackles
(51:16):
of her the restrictions of being on MPR. Oh yeah, yeah. Mainly,
she said, when they do like readings from an author
and they have to really go in ahead of time
and say, hey, you can't say this word from your
reading on the air and stuff like that, she doesn't
want to get up there and just Phil Flor and
Phil foul that's not Terry Gross style. No, But she
(51:38):
also doesn't want to be like, by the way, you
can't say the B word. Yeah, exactly. Um. MPR had
a lot of first one of them, Susan Standberg All
Things Considered host in nineteen seventy two, was the very
first woman to be an anchor for a national news broadcast,
The Simpsons, A special love for them. Terry Gross, Bob Boylan,
(51:59):
Robert Siegel, and Carl Cassell have all been Carl Castle.
What say Cassell? You're thinking of? Howard Cosell was Carl Castle.
They were all on The Simpsons and then Morning It
had some other names before they settled on that morning air.
First things first, it's not bad, very MPR. And then
(52:22):
this sounds so MPR. It's probably why they didn't do it.
Tweet Jack starting line, Yeah, that's sound too bad. I
think Morning Edition is good. I think it's the best. Uh.
And then finally, Bob Boylan's great, great show Tiny Desk Concerts. Steward,
listen to those, No, but I'm familiar with them. Man,
(52:43):
it's just the best. Uh. He had a band called
Tiny Desk Unit, and that was why he named the
show Tiny Desk Concerts. Thank you Music Shows for clearing
that up. I had no idea. Why well, I mean
it's named that because they performed in the his MPR office, Right,
(53:04):
That's what I thought, But it's still Yeah, it is
his desk, like miniature. I've got one more for you,
all right. So there was this two thousand eleven study
um that found that of fourteen Western democracies, the United
States was the only one to rely almost entirely on
commercial broadcasting to inform at citizenry. That's precarious. Interesting, and
(53:25):
that the same article you sent did a lot of
studies that found that those countries, those other countries are
generally much more well informed about news events. Yes, traffic accident,
everybody knows. Uh. If you want to know more about
public broadcasting, go listen to MPR, watch PBS, and decide
(53:48):
for yourself what you think about them. Uh. And in
the meantime, you can also type those words in the
search bar how stiff first dot com Since I said
search parts time for listener mail. Uh. This is from
a Ron in Miami, A R O N. I think
(54:08):
it's just I don't know a Ron the great key
and peels kit. Uh. Hey, guys, just got into podcast
a couple of months ago, and I'm a Catchup fan.
We did a Remember That Ketchup podcast, good one. I'm
a firm believer it belongs in the pantry, not the refrigerator.
That many debates about this, mostly while intoxicated, But that's
(54:30):
beside the point. Many things work well in contrast, like
a frosty beverage with buffalo wings or crunchy potato chip
alongside a softer sandwich. But who wants to dip a
hot French fry into cold ketchup? H I gotta agree
with this guy. Yeah, uh, he said. To be clear,
my claim is based solely on memory. However, I recall
(54:51):
Heinz introducing their fridge Fit Catchup bottle in two thousand six.
During a debate about pantry versus refrigerated, someone on the
other side pointed out it was not either to refrigerate
after opening for best results, refrigerate after opening. It was like,
not either or I'm not sure what he's saying there, confusing.
I was completely for it. I've never seen such verbiage
(55:11):
on a Hines bottle before. Uh. And then it dawned
on me. Hines had just hit uh and released the
fridge fit bottle. Of course, they will direct you to
keep this in the fridge. It's part of the marketing strategy.
Has nothing to do with the best way to enjoy
the ketchupy goodness, this guy was wasted when he wrote
this is becoming clear. It's a little confusing in the
middle there, but he said that. Thanks for the information, entertainment,
(55:35):
and remember say no to refrigeration of ketchup the a
A Ron, thank thanks for that. Read the sentence. Maybe
it's me no, no, I heard you say it, and
it it sounded like you were reading it correctly. Okay, well,
thanks A Roan. We hope you feel better in the morning.
(55:58):
If you want to get in touch with us, like
A Ran did, you can tweet to us at s
y s K podcast. You can join us on Facebook
dot com slash stuff you Should Know. You can send
an email to stuff podcast at how stuff works dot com.
Has always joined us at her home on the web
Stuff you Should Know dot com for more on this
(56:19):
and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff Works
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