Good on Jeff for noticing the strange American allergy to government involvement. It is not difficult to create a government funded broadcasting system which is pretty able to resist government interference. There are ways to create a depoliticised board (though our current government has abandoned this principle pretty thoroughly), and governments in theory can be persuaded through the ballot box to fund broadcasters properly.

Ironically, one of the problems in this is that the private owners of commercial media will use their power to influence the electorate to keep the government media broke. Even here, where we have had ten years of a malign government influence on our two public broadcasters, the behaviour in the private media is still much more biased, and destructive.

The problem with advertising, as we are discovering now, is that it corrupts institutions. You start with a few ads between programs, and discover you can make more money by putting them inside the programs, and then you offer coherent publicity campaigns that combine radio, TV and the internet, and then you are telling program makers to think of programs which are attractive to the demographic the advertiser wants, and keeps them happy for the commercials.

Our second national broadcaster, SBS, has just decided to put ads into shows. The commissioning editors are telling program makers about placement – I have seen them do it. It is not a big step to run a car program because the advertisers want it..

Advertising is corrupt. It is about influencing viewers to spend money. Program making, at its best, is about sharing a complex artistic experience. They don’t coexist. Its like telling a child you will be good to them, but every ten minutes, as payment, you are allowed to treat them badly.

I see nothing wrong with a publicly funded broadcast outlet. With proper controls the influence of whoever was in office could be minimized. This includes things like a fee-based structure as in the UK. In addition the governing board and/or CEO could be picked in some way that political influence was minimized. Did we ever get to vote on Murdoch owning so much of the US media? Having a public service would not preclude as many private services as the market could support.

I’m not sure what Andy Freeman’s point is, but…

Private, non-profits get their funding from charities and/or revenue from their operations. Since they don’t have to make a profit they can afford to do things that private firms can’t or won’t.

The economics of public projects are well understood which is why many projects are set up this way. Good examples include the NY Thruway Authority or the MTA. Notice that Jeff is himself now employed by a non-profit, government-sponsored institution (The City University of New York). This doesn’t prevent private college from existing. When it was established it provided a free college education. This is something that a private institution could not do, except on a very small scale. There is, to my knowledge, only one such school in the country doing this: Cooper Union. The enrollment is very small.

There has been a shift in the belief is in public instiutions as the country as fallen into a pattern of what Jared Bernstein calls the YOYO society (you’re on your own). The pendulum has swung too far, localities are now selling off their highways to private firms. Notice the public paid for building them, but the private firms get the profit from running them.

I think this proves my point.

Are you really claiming that not having to pay expenses isn’t an advantage?

It’s not “showing up” when you’re playing by different rules.

If you’re going to demand my money, I’m going to demand control.

Do you really think that government run media would be politically independent? Or that the public sector is more efficient is more innovative than the private sector? To me, government can can often get bogged down in bureaucracy more so that private companies.

The usual claim is that the public institution has an unfair advantage, but perhaps it’s just that the privates don’t like being shown up. The truth is that most non-profits and government institutions are more efficient. They don’t pay high salaries, don’t have to flaunt their status in gaudy edifices (and yes they don’t have to pay taxes). If they weren’t efficient they wouldn’t be the object of take over efforts. The fate of Blue Cross and non-profit hospitals is a perfect example.

What’s wrong with a government financed (but politically independent) media to compete with the commercial outlets?

Except, of course, such a plan is being discussed by the CBC mystery blogger, A. Ouimet, who proposes to charge for-profit broadcasters for their licences.

It’s not easy to get my American mind around this because I am so allergic to government involvement in and thus interference in and control of media and speech.

Editorsweblog says that the Economist says (paywalls, all is paywalls) ‘that by some counts “70% of the French press is in the hands of defence firms.’ (See http://qurl.com/d346p). I can appreciate a reticence about the government getting involved in media, but it appears that in France at least there are worse people already controlling the majority of the press.