In the entry below, I tell you about Jeff Ward's entry into the blogosphere with LVNewsBriefs. He has a fascinating series (two parts so far) about what certainly appears to be a mess at PBS39. Though it sits on an $80 million endowment, which invested at 6% would yield $5 million a year. Despite this, it is suffering revenue shortfalls and has reduced staff from 80 to 60. It is, of course, seeking handouts from the federal and state government. It even has its hand in Easton's pocket for $10,000. As Jeff observes, "Easton needs it more than a TV station/news outlet/public radio operation does.
Today's one-liner: "The shortest way to the distinguishing excellence of any writer is through his hostile critics." Richard LeGallienne
Local Government TV
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Tuesday, August 20, 2024
15 comments:
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“As Jeff observes, "Easton needs it more than a TV station/news outlet/public radio operation does.”
ReplyDeleteI’ve got news for you. The FEDERAL government needs it more also.
The federal government is printing money and racking up debt that will have to be repaid by our children and grandchildren. The federal government is literally stealing their futures.
For what? To further pad the endowments of greedy “public” broadcasting stations?
Cut that funding off IMMEDIATELY! If the people watching the station want to pay for it, by all means they can send in their own money. But the rest of us shouldn’t be spending a dime.
I don’t expect my tax dollars to pay for ESPN, the Discovery Channel, the History Channel, the Learning Channel, or any other channel I watch. The government shouldn’t be paying for PBS either.
They have an 80 million dollar endowment. Then why in the hell are we giving them tax dollars when we are 35 trillion in debt? Also, Maybe nobody listens to them because they fell for the Russian collusion story just like you did. Articles like below were posted and it was all fake. Same reason nobody reads the Washington Post and laying off people. They did it to themselves
ReplyDeletehttps://www.washingtonpost.com/style/media/2023/10/10/washington-post-staff-buyouts/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/04/19/npr-pbs-are-government-funded/
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/house-democrats-say-theres-significant-evidence-of-collusion-between-trump-campaign-and-russia-push-back-on-gop-report
PBS and National Public Radio have become shrills for the Democratic Party. The taxpayer money they receive should be going to a non-bias entity, or one that gives equal time to both conservative and liberal points of view if they go into the political world.
ReplyDeleteThis is no longer 1965 when WLVT was founded by Shel Siegel. Today we have hundreds of television channels and also streaming over the internet. There is no reason for the Federal Government to fund public broadcasting with tax dollars. It can sink or swim on its own via subscriber fees or commercial support,
Nothing on PBS that can't be found on commercially viable TV. It's one of the most expensive scams of the cable era. Nice to see this undressing. It's about time. They should never receive a penny of tax money. Our veterans sleep under bridges.
ReplyDeleteit is ridiculous to fund this entity with public dollars. Their newscasters show bias all the time. They would not know responsible journalism if it reared up and bit them in the ass. A shill for the loony lefties.
ReplyDelete“It even has its hand in Easton's pocket for $10,000.” Chicken feed! LehighValleyNews.com, which apparently is run by WLVT, reported that the recent award of $130,000 to a wrongfully fired ASD teacher was a “modest” sum. When you’re feeding at the government teet, you tend to lose sight of the value of a buck.
ReplyDeleteIf you need proof that local journalism is in trouble, the fact that no one else in the area has done this story is incontrovertible proof. They’re burning PUBLIC money in a bonfire at PBS 39 and it should have come to light a long time ago. What was the board doing all this time—-playing parcheesi?!
ReplyDelete$130K wasn't nearly enough. There will be additional suits and this is going to hurt even more, as well it should. If I'm on a jury, ASD will go into receivership. That would be a huge bonus for the children in the worst district in the state, btw. And PBS should send one of their 60 chair fillers to cover the wreckage. 60? That trough shouldn't have more than 20, at best.
ReplyDeleteI think we are not hearing both sides of the story...only the side of someone with connections to commercial broadcasting.
ReplyDeleteJeff Ward: I have no ties to commercial broadcasting now.
DeleteI worked part-time for the old TV2 News in the late 1999s through 1996.
I worked at Bloomberg, which has a TV operation and at WFMZ until last month.
I’m on my own. Also everything reported is from PBS 39’s July meeting, and from minutes of an earlier meeting that are on the station’s website.
You have your axe to grind.
I have numbers.
Are the job losses at PBS included in these numbers/revisions? Dems saying the job numbers are great would lover to hear their spin on this.
ReplyDeletehttps://finance.yahoo.com/news/fed-confronts-million-us-jobs-100000224.html
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-08-20/fed-confronts-up-to-a-million-us-jobs-vanishing-in-revision
So the Treasurer (Mr. Campos) is pushing for funds from his employer (City of Easton)?
ReplyDeleteI do not know whether Campos is pushing for this or not.
ReplyDeleteMy complaint with 39 is that they have capital and they don’t produce anything. They just buy old, cheap, canned shows which make public tv look irrelevant. Look at WVIA out of Scranton. They keep their money moving and actually produce some shows that they can sell. 39 is boring and I’m in the senior demographic and I think it’s boring. I still have cable but most of my Public tv viewing is from WHYY. I realize that they capture all public tv monies for the state of Delaware but their programming is much more interesting than 39. 39 needs some new management.
ReplyDeleteI'm guessing their endowment mainly came from selling their frequencies, which was part of a national transition. That would be a one-time infusion. It appears they then overspent on their local news operation, hiring too many people at one time, and realized the cash drain was unsustainable. They are also duplicating the NPR broadcasting of WDIY, which is located a half mile away from their radio station. A station has to pay substantial subscription fees to carry NPR programing. With two public radio stations in the same neighborhood, I'd rather see them purchasing different public media programing. WHYY carries a large amount of public media programing that WDIY does not broadcast.
ReplyDelete