By George Will
Saturday, June 03, 2017
As changing technologies and preferences make
government-funded broadcasting increasingly preposterous, such broadcasting
actually becomes useful by illustrating two dismal facts. One is the
immortality of entitlements that especially benefit those among society’s
articulate upper reaches who feel entitled. The other fact is how impervious
government programs are to evidence incompatible with their premises.
Fifty years and about 500 channels ago, the Corporation
for Public Broadcasting was created to nudge Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society —
it aimed to make America great for the first time — the final inches toward
perfection. Today, the CPB, which has received about $12 billion over the
years, disperses the government’s 15 percent of public television’s budget and
10 percent of public radio’s. Originally, public television increased many
viewers’ choices by 33 percent — from three (CBS, NBC, ABC) to four.
Twenty-five years ago, Senator Al Gore, defending another
appropriation increase for the CPB, asked what he considered a dispositive question:
“How many senators here have children who have watched Sesame Street and Mister
Rogers’ Neighborhood? . . . This is one thing that works in this country.”
So, senators, mostly affluent, should compel taxpayers, mostly much less
affluent, to subsidize the senators’ children’s viewing because it “works,” as
measured by means that Gore neglected to reveal.
Eighteen years ago, some public-broadcasting officials,
who understood the importance of being earnest — and imaginative — testified to
Congress that public television’s educational effects on the work force give
the economy a $12 billion boost. Fifteen years ago, however, the then-president
of public television said, “We are dangerously close in our overall prime-time
numbers to falling below the relevance quotient.” Relevance? To what?
Today, Mick Mulvaney, director of the Office of
Management and Budget, thinks we can risk terminating the CPB. This would
reduce viewers’ approximately 500 choices to approximately 499. Listeners to
public radio might have to make do with America’s 4,666 AM and 6,754 FM
commercial stations, 437 satellite-radio channels, perhaps 70,000 podcasts, and
other Internet and streaming services.
America, which is entertaining itself to inanition, has
never experienced a scarcity of entertainment. Or a need for
government-subsidized journalism that reports on the government. Before
newspaper editorial writers inveigh against Mulvaney and in support of
government subsidies for television and radio, they should answer this
question: Should there be a CPN — a Corporation for Public Newspapers?
The CPB was created “to encourage public
telecommunications services which will be responsive to the interests of
people.” Of course: people’s interests, not people’s desires. The market
efficiently responds to the latter. Public broadcasting began as a response to
what progressives nowadays call “market failure.” This usually means the
market’s failure to supply what the public has not demanded but surely would
demand if it understood its real “interest.”
One reason many Americans are becoming “cord cutters,”
abandoning cable and satellite television, is that they want an à la carte
world. One reason ESPN has lost 12 million subscribers in six years is that it
is an expensive component of cable and satellite packages and many of those
paying for the packages rarely watch ESPN.
Compelling taxpayers to finance government-subsidized
broadcasting is discordant with today’s à la carte impulse and raises a
question: If it has a loyal constituency, those viewers and listeners, who are
disproportionately financially upscale, can afford voluntary contributions to
replace the government money. And advertisers would pay handsomely to address
this constituency.
Often the last, and sometimes the first, recourse of
constituencies whose subsidies are in jeopardy is: “It’s for the children.” Big
Bird, however, is more a corporate conglomerate than an endangered species. If Sesame Street programming were put up
for auction, the danger would be of getting trampled by the stampede of
potential bidders.
The argument for government-subsidized broadcasting is
perversely circular: If the public were enlightened, there would be no need for
government subsidies. But, by definition, an enlightened public would
understand the inherent merits of subsidies by which the government picks more
deserving winners than the market does.
However, since government-subsidized broadcasting exists,
any argument for it would be superfluous, given what governmental inertia
usually accomplishes for government enterprises. Long ago — in January — there
was bold Republican talk about Congress restoring “regular order”: There would
be twelve appropriations bills and they would be enacted before the 2018 fiscal
year begins October 1. Instead, there probably will be another “swallow this or
shutter the government” omnibus bill in which almost everything survives by
sparing almost everyone the torture of choices. This is, of course, a choice.
No comments:
Post a Comment