Reply #7: They've been getting worse and worse [View All]

[Tactical Progressive]

over the past three years.

It started out as voice-overs of 'This program brought to you by ...', then proceeded to a couple-few ten or fifteen second shortened commercials.

Now they have multiple, full-length thirty-second commercials between programs. It's really not much different than regular commercial programming now.

Pisses me off too. Last night before 'NewsHour' I noticed that I kind of dislike the PBS commercials more than even those on regular commercial television. They are mostly pure corporate propaganda now - how this oil company or that chemical company or this commercial bank is so very altruistic and such do-gooders for the benefit of the common man. It's really much more sickening than the typical product promotion on regular TV.

The only good aspect to this turn is that it really cheapens the credibility of public broadcast. Since shows like NewsHour have whored themselves out to right-wing ideological acceptance and for all practical purposes, promotion, the increasing taint of corporate marketing inherently conveys that diminished credibility. Jim Lehrer, Gwen Ifill, Margaret Warner and the rest, along with Charlie Rose, have lost alot of my respect over the past four years with first their cowardice and then their fully-internalized, banal shift from the center to the right. It is appropriate that their medium looks more and more compromised. That reflects the reality of their work.