Re: Digital TV Conversion

[Brian Vita <brian_vita@cssinc.com>]

At 01:15 PM 10/10/99 -0400, Bill O'Neill wrote:
>Big Bird, I'd miss...er, I mean, my kids would miss.  But that Elmo?
>Through the uprights with that pipsqueak!

Its the new PBS character - Extort Me Elmo.  I think that this is Public 
Broadcastings answer to the National Lampoon cover a few years ago that 
said "Buy this issue or we kill the dog" with a picture of a pooch with a 
gun to its head.  The difference is that the folks at PBS would pull the 
trigger to make their point.

I say cut off all public funding and let the arts community fund them.  A 
lot of their original function, to bring education and arts to the unwashed 
masses, is being done better and cheaper by some of the new channels such 
as "Discover", "A&E", "TLC", "The History Channel".  The best part is that 
they don't beg us to death while they already have their hands in our pockets.

I seem to remember a few years ago that there was some convtroversy about 
how PBS was being run in general.  IIRC, they were *aggressively* hounding 
the private sector for underwriting spots that looked amazingly like 
commercials and even had a commercial looking rate card to go with 
them.  Some of the commercial stations were complaining about the 
subsidized competition.

The Boston Globe, usually a notepad for the liberal leaning left, did a 
scathing series about a year or two ago about the machine that WGBH has become.

Brian
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