Monday July 07, 2003

TV EYE. Boy, I enjoyed that vacation. No, not mine -- Edroso the Wrath of God does not take vacations (neither can he afford them) -- I mean Instapundit's. Even in a web world crammed to bursting with irritants, the temporary absence of the Ole Perfesser was a palpable relief. I felt like an immunocompromised patient who had suddenly found himself with one less opportunistic infection.

Alas, the Perfesser has resurfaced, and is dishing out nonsense like it was going out of style (whereas, of course, the contrary is true). Here he is on the BBC:

How about ending the public subsidy and letting the private sector take over? The likelihood that a major, state-subsidized entity with considerable political clout can actually be objective and fair over the long term is so small that it would seem better to drop the pretense, and to quit subsidizing the political views of the New Class under a threadbare cloak of public service that no longer fools anyone but the gullible.

There is, of course, not one media outlet in Christendom, subsidized or not, that could reasonably be called "objective and fair" (or for that matter, "fair and balanced") -- though some might serve as small counterweights to the larger media interests that piledrive their agenda into the public consciousness.

In the Brits' case the larger media interests more or less consist of Rupert Murdoch, or as he is known to lapsed Catholics such as myself, the Father of Lies. Since Murdoch's Sun broke ranks with the Tories to back Blair for his first term ("It's the Sun Wot Won It!" cried the tabloid's post-electoral headline), the PM has been most helpful to the SkyNews King's multifarious interests. The end of the BBC's subsidy would of course be a great boon to Murdoch, eliminating a great deal of his commercial and ideological competition. (Just in case you thought this was a principled argument we were dealing with.)

I'm not surprised that Blair is leaning this way. Nor am I surprised that the Perfesser would shout encouragement from his kudzu-covered ivory tower. But I am a little surprised at Rocky Top's last crack: "...a threadbare cloak of public service that no longer fools anyone but the gullible."

Whom does he believe is being fooled? The BBC, like PBS over here, is a known quantity, availed by those who enjoy it and ignored by those who don't. There seems to be a real niche, albeit a small one, for both the British and American state-run networks. We can argue as to whether the state should run a network at all (or a bank, or a Federal Trade Commission, or an interstate highway system, etcetera ad nauseum).

But what's inarguable is that a lot of people enjoy the BBC and PBS. Even crabby rightwing Americans have to admit that, when they visit the U.K. and turn on the tube back at the hotel, the BBC stuff beats holy hell out of our own network crap. And quality-starved Yanks aren't the only ones who notice. Last year the Beeb beat its main commercial rival, ITV, in ratings for the first time since 1954.

Ditto for PBS. Even midwestern housewives watch Bill Moyers, not because Big Brother has commanded it, but because he's an appealing presenter with an interesting viewpoint -- one that, no one needs to be reminded, is increasingly hard to find on the SCLM stations anymore.

Let's face it. State-run TV networks are magnets for culturally astute people, who usually think very differently from the corporate scumbags, giant-foam-fingered booster-boobs, hack artists, and mentally microcellular organisms that keep the Nets going. This difference is used as an excuse for getting rid of them -- they represent the "New Class," boo hiss -- but it's actually a pretty good reason to keep them. In heatwaves, the cops let the kids tap the hydrants so they can play in the water -- can't we have similar relief in the airwaves?