Covering the current decline of public broadcasting in the United States, this study looks at what is required for a genuinely democratic broadcasting service, a network that serves its audience rather than its sponsors. US spending on public broadcasting, at just $1 per citizen each year, compared with over $30 in Japan and nearly $40 in Great Britain, is already meagre. But now the Republic majorities in Congress are aiming to end the government subsidy altogether. Denounced for its liberal bias and elitism, public television and radio have become the latest whipping boy in the Right's drive to leave the market as gate-keeper of the nation's opinions. Yet, as this history reveals, the radicalism which permeated both the vision and the practice of public television in its early has long since withered. Gone are the heady days of the early 1970s when the adventurous New York-based NET (funded, ironically, by the heirs of Henry Ford) could broadcast sympathetic interviews with Kathleen Cleaver and Louis Farrakhan or highly critical documentaries of US foreign policy, such as "Inside North Vietnam". Obsessive harrassment by the Nixon and the Reagan administrations saw public television's management repeatedly compromise their editorial freedom in a forlorn attempt to maintain funding. Politically safe children's shows, such as "Sesame Street", elbowed aside controversial documentaries and dramas. But the funding cuts could not be stalled and the public broadcasters turned more and more to private sponsorship for their programmes, to the point, Ledbetter caustically reports, where they are now as much in the pocket of US corporations as their commercial rivals.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
In Made Possible By..., Village Voice columnist James Ledbetter considers the current state of public broadcasting and finds it decidedly lacking. During its early heyday, NET (National Educational Television, a forerunner of PBS) regularly aired innovative and provocative public-affairs shows; soon, however, public-television managers began toning down controversial content in a desperate--and doomed--attempt to secure government funding. When even these efforts failed, public television increasingly turned to corporate sponsors to fill the gap, resulting in a movement away from adventurous programming in favor of politically inoffensive, "safe" shows such as Sesame Street, Masterpiece Theatre, even Ken Burns's The Civil War. Today, Ledbetter writes, corporate influence rules in public broadcasting, much as it does in commercial television. A savage indictment of corporate underwriting and bureaucratic inefficiency, Made Possible By... is also an eloquent defense of public television's possibilities; Ledbetter envisions public broadcasting as a truly democratic arena--and perhaps the only area of American public life not determined by market forces.
Review
A sharp, persuasive analysis of public broadcasting's decline and fall. -- David Futrelle, Newsday
A smart read. -- Publisher's Weekly
A timely book that sends an important warning. [Ledbetter's] tone is measured, never shrill, but he is pointed and direct when need be. -- Carl Sessions Step, American Journalism Review
As important as it is troubling. -- Kathleen Rizzo Young, Buffalo News
It is not an exaggeration to say that James Ledbetter would destroy public broadcasting in order to save it. While making a forceful case for public broadcasting as a national forum accessible to all, protected against direct political interference and free of commercial imperatives, he also delivers a blistering critique of the existing system's many failures. -- The New York Times Book Review, Martha Bayles
There's a lot more to Made Possible By... than your average book of the moment about this or that public-policy issue. Though it's crammed with newsy incidents and amazing quotes, it also comes equipped with a large, helpful bibliography. It will surely serve as a valuable source book for years to come. -- The Boston Globe, Richard Buell
A smart read. -- Publisher's Weekly
A timely book that sends an important warning. [Ledbetter's] tone is measured, never shrill, but he is pointed and direct when need be. -- Carl Sessions Step, American Journalism Review
As important as it is troubling. -- Kathleen Rizzo Young, Buffalo News
It is not an exaggeration to say that James Ledbetter would destroy public broadcasting in order to save it. While making a forceful case for public broadcasting as a national forum accessible to all, protected against direct political interference and free of commercial imperatives, he also delivers a blistering critique of the existing system's many failures. -- The New York Times Book Review, Martha Bayles
There's a lot more to Made Possible By... than your average book of the moment about this or that public-policy issue. Though it's crammed with newsy incidents and amazing quotes, it also comes equipped with a large, helpful bibliography. It will surely serve as a valuable source book for years to come. -- The Boston Globe, Richard Buell
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Interesting, important PBS critique from a left perspective.,
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This review is from: Made Possible By...: The Death of Public Broadcasting in the United States (Hardcover)
James Ledbetter's concerns are those of a man of the left, and his book reveals a sense of betrayal. He shows how PBS and its insiders used an original left constituency in pursuit of political power and financial gain. Dropped once PBS became an established institution were the unions, performers and artists, educators and other nonconformists to whom the promise of a refuge for individualism and dissidence had been made by what turned out to be -- not surprisingly to libertarian critics -- another self-serving government bureaucracy motivated by the aggrandizement of power and wealth. I.F. Stone said "all governments are liars" and Ledbetter seems to include PBS in that judgement. He reveals why some of those who once believed in PBS no longer are able to offer it unconditional support. While non-leftists may not share his vision of a subsidized agitprop network to replace the present system, many of his criticisms of existing problems within PBS are on the mark.
0 of 29 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
terrible writer,, terrible book,
By A Customer
This review is from: Made Possible by: The Death of Public Broadcasting in the United States (Paperback)
I hope this guy has a day job.
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