Can you think of a worse public television station than PBS-affiliate Channel 39? It's really embarrassing. It's the last place any of us would look for local news. Its light news program - Tempo - is very much like reading one of the puff blogs telling us everything is wonderful. The last time I watched, host Amy Burkett was actually wearing one of her plastic smiles as she quizzes her audience about how many women will die from ovarian cancer this year.I've seen better. Much better. Last year, while Amy Burkett shoveled spaghetti down the throats of congressional candidates, PBS-affiliate WPSU-TV developed a website featuring video, audio and interactive quizzes to help provide easy to use information about 80 state and U.S. congressional candidates from 27 counties.
Our "public" television stopped conducting debates for local office long ago, sending the public the subliminal message that these races are insignificant. True, in 2006, Burkett did conduct rushed interviews with state house and senate candidates, but barely gave them time to say anything besides their name. "Where does the time go?" "We must move along."
Channel 69's Business Matters, a production of the Greater Lehigh Valley Chamber of Commerce, is a bigger public service than anything produced by those public parasites. And Tony Iannelli gets no state grants to defray the costs of his entertaining program.
In addition to its refusal to cover elections, Channel 39 converted to digital from analog before the required date, leaving many of its viewers watching snow. While for-profit stations like Channel 69 held off until the last possible minute, Channel 39 had no trouble suffered no pangs of conscience over the viewers who lacked either the time or money to get a converter box. To hell with them.
Now, according to LVPoliblog, the state has cut Channel 39's funding by 90%. That's been confirmed by a news release from el Presidente Pat Simon, who is at Channel 39's tiller. Simon acknowledges that "PBS39 will halt all new production on our original Tempo!, a production that has been a community asset for ten years. At this time we are able to continue with Tempo InDepth and Tempo PublicSquare."
Those shows are even worse than the original.
Simon even whines about the $5 million state grant, undisturbed, for a new building because it "is restricted to building a new building and cannot be used for operating purposes."
I have a suggestion. Let the state keep that money, too.
I supposed they'll be fundraising on television 52 weeks per year, begging us for money.
Listen! Do you hear that sound? Shhh! It's the world's smallest violin.
Update: LVCI has chimed in on Channel 39,too. "I would be well satisfied just having a repeater transmitter situated on top of South Mountain. No need for a local studio."
