SO SPECIAL
posted by James Reel
We interrupt this lazy stretch of non-blogging to link to a commentary by Eric Williams, who echoes a complaint I’ve had for 20 years:
It's an amazing bait-and-switch. Every few months, your local PBS station begs you - and Viewers Like You - to support their programming for the rest of the year, yet they do this by cramming their schedule with shows which they ONLY air when they're pleading for dough. We get Eagles: Hell Freezes Over and Pink Floyd: Pulse and tributes to doo-wop and the British Invasion. We get Suze Orman and Dr. Wayne Dyer and some guy who'll teach you how to play the piano in an afternoon. …This afternoon, I’ll scoot down to Membership Central to do some fundraising for our sister station KUAZ-FM, where, I’m happy to report, the regular programming is deemed enough of a draw for a membership drive. No Opie and Anthony today.
At least NPR sticks to its guns during pledge drives. They don't yank This American Life to air The Best of Opie and Anthony. They don't replace Terry Gross with Larry The Cable Guy. They don't dump the Car Talk guys because...well, because they couldn't find anything lower-common-denominator if they tried. All I'm saying is, if PBS has to tart itself up as something it's not in order to attract donors, isn't that a de facto admission that their regular schedule isn't enough of a draw to justify their existence?
