Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from how Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and Jerry, which means it is time for stuff you should know about public broadcasting. How are you feeling good full of beans today? That's the last thing I wanted to hear. And you're stuck in here with me for a couple of hours, buddy, dear, that's the musical fruit. Yeah, that's what I hear. That's what I've been here since I was six years old. Is it musical fruit? I thought it was magical fruit. Uh music, probably regional Huh, like soda and coke and pop in all that musical magical, don't talk about it at all, one of them. Actually I grew up. It wasn't even musical. I just grew up with beans, beans, good for your heart. Oh well, that that's pretty that's real. Yeah. So that's the That's how I rolled in the a t l um. So you're feeling uh, you're feeling pretty good. Yeah. I think it's a very wonderfully disrespectful way to open up a show about one of our finest institutions. I really feel on edge because you know that every single MPR personality is going to hear this one. You think every single one guy ros right now is sitting there like these two idiots. Terry Gross already thinks for idiots. She is my hero, buddy. I don't think that there's ever been a finer radio program than Fresh Air. Yeah. I mean, she's the best. She's a legend, she's awesome. Uh have you ever heard an interview with her? Uh? No, there, I recommend it. She's a pretty sharp tack. So I'm sure they're pretty fun. In fact, you know what perfect time to shout out our buddy. Jesse Thorne of Bull's Eye with Jesse Thorn has a short run series called The Turnaround where he interviewers legendary He interviews legendary interviewers. Okay, Ira Glass, Harrol Morris. What I think Terry Gross is in there? I'm not sure, you gotta be. I don't think hers is out yet. I'm not gonna promise that because I'm not positive. Okay, but I can hold my breath all right. But it's a really cool show. Very Uh, it's really interesting to hear because I think Jesse's a great interviewer, and then to hear him interview the great interviewers about interviewing, it makes your head just turn a hundred navy degrees. It's really cool. Alright, Chuck. Yes, so we're talking public broadcasting, which depending on how you Okay, you're a big fan. Sure, so it probably doesn't sound a dull to you talking about public broadcasting. But I've shows people out there who just walked right past this one, and hopefully some of them said, you know what, I'm gonna give the dude's a chance. I'm gonna listen. Those people will be richly rewarded by this episode, because it turns out the public broadcasting, it's history, it's present, its future hopefully all very interesting. Yeah, and if you are not a fan of it, then, um, well you're in the minority technically. Yeah, they've got some big numbers, bigger than I realized. Yeah, more than half of the US population tunes into public TV or radio or online. So we're talking PBS and NPR generally, that's a hundred and seventy million Americans, and um they it says here that PBS gets has more viewers than our dearly beloved Discovery Channel, even HDTV and A and E, which are all thought of as well. They are very big networks, juggernauts. Yeah, but I think people hear PBS you get a certain like. I think some people think it's the treasure that it is. Some people might be a little bored by it without realizing. Oh but wait a minute, I saw Monty Python and Benny Hill on PBS. I'm so glad you when I was a kid to think of Benny Hill or I sure loved Dowton Abbey and oh wait a minute, that was PBS two our Antiques road foe. I mean some Mr Rogers, some some of the more legendary shows in American history. Right, And it's not like all things considered in Morning Edition and Fresh Air and wait, wait, don't tell me, are like are any slouches at all? You know? Like this? This are like if you step back and put the rosters of MPR and PBS together, it bakes up a pretty big swath of the American fabric. Totally agreed. Yeah, well, thank you. I agree with myself on that one as well. So I didn't realize how new they were, though, did you. Yeah? I thought I think I thought it was seventies. Oh well, you were dead on. It started in Actually it goes back a little further than that to the public Um Public Broadcasting Act, and actually we should go back even slightly further than that to set this whole thing up. Right, So radio comes up, it starts to become a mass medium, right, and the UK and Europe, in America at the time, we're basically faced with this thing, like, we've got this huge new technology. Up to this point, it's been newspapers and dudes on horseback running through towns. That's how we got the word out. Now everybody's starting to get radio. So we've got this this really powerful thing. What do we do with it? And over in Europe and the UK, they said, this is a public good and we need to treat it as such. We need to we need to take it seriously. We need to make sure that public affairs programming gets onto the air and they don't have to worry about competing for ad dollars or anything like that. We're gonna fund it pub lookally, in the US we released two acts. There was the Radio Act of and the Communications Act of four and both of them set up the current competitive capitalist market that we have for broadcasting in the country, right, and it worked, there's from what I've seen. One of the reasons why it worked was because there was also this kind of tacit understanding among journalists who were part of these broadcast networks that they had a responsibility to inform the public. And they were also only three of them at the time. Sure, but um over time, broadcasting in the United States went more and more and more toward entertainment because that could get more people, and that's that meant you could get more advertising money. So we got further and further away from public affairs programming and news and got more and more into entertainment. And by the fifties it became evident to some people that we needed something in addition to or to replace, the commercial model that we had in the US. Yeah, and this was even pre cable TV, like these are just the net the big three pre Fox, even this is ABC, CBS and NBC. Uh starting to show things like the Honeymooners and realizing people who are way more into the Honeymooners than Walter Cronkite, Well maybe not they were, people were into the news back then. Yeah, But even if even if you do have people who are into the news. There are some certain things that have to do with the commercial model when put up against the public broadcasting model, that inherently make public broadcasting more appealing if you're trying to get public affairs programming across. And one of the big ones, Chuck, is if you're a program director for NBC and it's prime time, when you know everybody's home, are you going to put on one of your big money makers like the Honeymooners that can charge top dollar from advertisers for or you're gonna put on the McNeil lair News Report where you're where you're not gonna get as many people. But there's some really in depth investigative journal journalism because they don't have to worry about attracting advertisers ideally, um they can just focus on the journalism. Which one are you gonna do? Well, you're gonna do both, but it's a matter of when you do both, you know, right, So are you gonna do one like at five thirty? Right? Are you gonna do a prime time and at five thirty not everybody's home from work yet, So overall you have a less informed citizenry just from when you choose to put news on. I haven't watched. I don't watch the news any more at all, not even cable news. But I can't remember the last time I watched like local news or a news program on a network. I don't even know. I guess when I lived in l A. I didn't have cable. I would watch the news sometimes because I don't think I had the Internet yet. I had like an antenna. My my news Chunky Dumb has come and gone, like over time, waxed and wayne. It feels pretty gone this time. Yeah, just getting used up by cable news used Yeah, just being done with. It's pretty freeing, isn't it. Yeah, even networks I like, you know, I just I don't want to hear it anymore. Um And the way people in just news these days is just so different, you know. Yeah. I get most of my news honestly from Twitter. Yeah, social media, that's how it's done these days. But I was going back to l A. I was. I used to sit around and watch local news in l A. Was pretty great. I have to admit, there's a lot of Yeah, it was just weird and the personalities were kind of interesting. But yeah, I mean I think it was like started at like four thirty and ran all the way up to whatever. The big nightly news programs were, what like seven yeah, yeah, hours and hours of weird Southland news. Yeah, was told to you by a man wearing a cape. Maybe yeah, it was that weird yeah, or I don't know, it was strange. But then I kind of missed the old Atlanta News because I grew up watching that's pretty stayed with giant helmet hair. That's a land in local news. Yeah, And I think most cities have these stalwarts that have been around forever. You know Monica Kaufman, Yeah, who is married now she's not even Monica Kaufman anymore? What is what's her name? Now? I don't know because I want the news in twenty years, but I think someone told me, you know, she has a married name. Now, I was like, what, huh, that's Monica Kaufman or that you know, you would see one of them. I've worked at the Laser Show and I would see like Ken Burns, the weather man at the Laser Show, and it's like a legit celebrity signing. Oh yeah, he gives you like the wink, and everyone's crowding around getting his autographs. It's the anchorman thing, you know. It's like the salad days, Yeah, which are now gone because of cable news in the Internet. Well, yeah, the salad days for them. Sure, Now it's our salad days. It's time. Yeah, that's true too, And that applies not just to local news. It applies to news in general, um, including MPR and including PBS that there's this huge shift. I don't know if you've heard this, but there's a big shift to the Internet now. That's true. People are starting to consume, like you said, news in different ways, and public broadcasting is having to keep up just as much as anybody. But it's occupies this weird niche that we'll get into. But you want to take a break first and regroup. Yeah, we'll come back here and talk about Linda Johnson. I can't wait. Alright, Chuck d J. Yes, lb J. Did you know that he owns some I think TV stations back in Texas when he was a senator. I don't think I knew that he was, So he was real in favor of public broadcasting. Well that kind of makes sense. Yeah, so in nineteen sixty seven, Uh, well, I mean in nineteen sixty seven, he signed the Public Broadcasting Act into law. But previous to this UH, there was something called the n ET UH National Entertainment Times WACA WACA. What was it, I'm sure it was National Education Television, Yes, National Education Television. They were the precursor to UH what would eventually become CPB Corporation for Public Broadcasting. But at the time n e T would UH. They would run things that could be critical of the government and its foreign policy. And some say, I don't think it was entirely due to that, but some say that that did play a part, and the government eventually funding via the Public Broadcasting Act public television, so maybe they could get a little bit more favorable coverage. It's pretty North Korean and mentality if you think about it, you know, and if you step back and look at it, the idea of public broadcasting, government funded public broadcasting should terrify everybody. But the way that it's always been right, right, But the way that it's always been pitched and and um and sold is no, it's taxpayer funded, so it belongs to the people, and that the government. It's supposed to be insulated. It's a different estate. It's the fourth estate. It's not the government, it's its own thing. It's supposed to be kept separate. So I was surprised to see that, but it makes total sense, the idea, oh yeah, we'll bring you into the fold, will fund you, but you owe us big time. Yeah. I mean I wonder what kind of like real talks were had over that, if any, or if it was just sort of like understood, like, hey, here's who's right in your checks now. Well, I think it was also a convergence of different interests, right, So the government wanting to get rid of criticism or clamped down on criticism coincided with people who wanted more public affairs broadcasting, and then you had some endowments that were well healed, well moneyed, and they all kind of came together to create this Corporation for Public Broadcasting that came out of the Public Broadcasting Act. Yeah. So this, uh, like you said, you set it up nicely with radio, but um radio started to decline with the advent of television, and so in order, I mean, one of the main reasons they signed the Public Broadcasting Out was trying to get the this non commercial radio going in a legit way. So they signed Johnson signs the act. The federal government creates uh CPB, like we mentioned, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and they are not They don't produce TV. They basically dole out money. Uh. They're the they're the gatekeepers. Yeah, in here yourself a nice little radio transmitter with this. But now that's what they do. Yeah, they do a lot of money. They cover licensing fees, are copyright fees, they cover a lot of the technical infrastructure, um. And they give a lot of money directly to smaller market MPR or PBS stations. Yeah, I mean they created the cb uh I say that the whole time CPB created uh MPR in nineteen seventy and before that PBS and sixty nine. They basically said, we need a TV wing and a radio wing going to create these and we're gonna doll out money uh this year actually and then projected or at least asked for for twenty nineteen. They have requested the same amount of money. But you don't even see that very often where they're not asking for a raise or whatever or increased funding of four hundred and forty five million dollars, which amounts to point zero one zero one of the federal budget. Yeah, and there's a lot of debate that will get into when we talk about some of the controversies and criticisms of public broadcasting, and believe me, we're talking about those. But UM, a lot of people say, that's pretty disingenuous to point out what a minuscule amount of the budget that is, because it's still four d forty five million dollars and still half a billion dollars. And then on the other side, which we'll hear a little bit more about two Um, a lot of people who are on the public broadcasting side say, just forget, just get rid of that, just we don't need that money. Let's go without. If there's so many strings attached to that four five million dollars, it makes up such a small portion of say like MPR itself operating budget, that we just don't even need. It's not even worth the trouble. Big debate, which is weird because some some people on the UM public radio side and some are critics of public or public broadcasting, UM government funding for public broadcasting. Yeah, it's a little weird. I mean, trust me, I've I've found myself reading some of this thinking maybe you should just be free from those shackles, because sometimes the public will step up and you might get more funding. Yeah, you know, when something is threatened, right, yeah, yeah, at least first the question is whether that could be sustained for the long term, you know. Yeah, well, we'll get into all that you mentioned. Uh MPR they actually get UM less than one percent of that for their operating budget. So the million, it's not like they say, all right, MPR you get two d and twenty something million, and PBS you get the rest. Uh MPR gets less than one percent, And they actually have a mandate CPB of their spending UM has to be on local public media station's content development, community services, and then what they they call other related needs toilet paper, I guess, and stuff like that keep the A C on. So chuck, here's how here's how the whole thing works. You're ready, yep, You and I pay taxes, goes. Some of it goes to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in the form of about four million dollars a year. Yeah, and in the form of about like four dollars per textpayer. I saw, I saw between saw one one group found a dollar thirty five a person and for every person. I don't think for every tax paying person. Oh I see, okay, well, then for every tax paying person it's about four bucks um. So taxas go to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and then um, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting spends like that on the small local stations, right okay, Well, and you know the other stuff of content development okay. And then you've got the small local stations subscribing to MPR and PBS who have shows that they create, produce mprs very famously all things considered in Morning edition right started in nineteen seventy one and the Morning Edition in nineteen seventy nine running. So all that money goes taxes Corporation to Public Broadcasting, smaller affiliates, and then it goes back up. So it goes down from the top to the smaller affiliates and then back up to MPR and PBS, ok for the for the programs that they're developing. So rather than the taxes going directly to MPR or to PBS, it goes to the Corporation Republic Broadcasting. But even still, rather than going directly to MPR PBS, it goes to the smaller affiliates who then give it to MPR and PPS. And by give it you mean they licensing fees to play those shows on their right exactly. Yeah, like they I think they subscribe and they paid like a yearly fee to carry that show. Yeah. And when it first started NPR, and we'll cover NPR first largely and then get into PBS. But is when MPR started and at the time there are only ninety member stations and now they are close to a thousand member stations all over the country licensing these legendary shows. Right. And then for the smaller local affiliates, if you have all things considered on, you're going to attract a percentage of your town's listeners. The more listeners you have for that, the more pledges you'll get during your pledge drive, right. And then you also, the more listeners you have, the more UM contributions you can get through underwriting too. Yeah, but also you'll have to pay more money to license these shows too write the more listeners you have, Yeah, Like, Um, well, I guess we should go over where they get their funding largely, and then how they charged the member stations. Uh and um says was from fees and dues from member stations, the close corporate sponsorship which has risen over the years. I think I think that was kind of a controversial thing for a while, whether or not they wanted to take on any of that. I think, is it like how much they're beholden to that, Yeah, that makes sense, grants and contributions and then um, like you mentioned foundations, endowments, colleges and universities, stuff like that will pitch in some dough what's the big one that it's always the Katherine T. John d and Katherine Tee MacArthur found exactly. It's like drilled into your head after all these years. And the Chubb group for PBS, oh yeah, and members like you, um Morning Edition and all things considered, they are UM stations are charged based on the volume of their listeners plus a multiplier, and then things like fresh air apparently are priced in proportion to that station's revenue, So smaller stations don't have to pay as much as bigger stations, which is great because again the whole idea between behind public broadcasting is that you have stuff that's supposed to be, like you said, not beholden to advertisers. So if company X is, you know, screwing over this town's water supply then, but they advertise with all of the broadcast networks that are commercially driven, those those networks. News might not mention it, but public public broadcasting will probably do that story and we'll let everybody know. Yeah, that's the idea. So it's important for everybody to have public broadcasting. And that's why the the smaller ones are supported by the larger ones. Exactly. Yeah, um, PBS. On the other side, we mentioned Mr Rogers, Nova Man Growing Up. That was a good one. Wasn't Cosmos on PBS? I think so? I think it was. Originally it seems like a very PBSC show. Sure, that turtleneck masterpiece theater. Of course, this old house, the frugal gourmet. Who was that? Was that? Julia Child or Jack papan Oh? Immediately thought Julia Child. But now you have me wondering. We'll find out, Okay, I'll get to the bottom of this child. You mentioned McNeil Lair Report Evening at the Pops Uh Sesame Street. Probably the most legendary not probably definitely the most legendary kids show of all time, and PBS gets about two hundred million viewers annually, representing eight t two of US television households. So they're they're big, you know, they're not like I mean, I know you think of PBS is like the sweet little like publicly funded thing. But that's that's big stuff. Like if they took in ads, they probably wouldn't have to sweat it at all. No, you know, but that's a double edged sword because then they lose their their public value if they start taking an ad allegedly, which again is why some people haven't really stuck in their craw that they have underwriting at all. Yeah, it's Jeff Smith. By the way, I never heard of him. Frugal Gourmet. Yeah, well not in the seventies, it wasn't. Yeah, it said. He released a book in nineteen eighty four called The Frugal Gourmet. He's the only person associated with it, Jeff Smith. It sounds like an alias to me. It really doesn't. Maybe it's Jacques Popin is French for Jeff Smith. Yeah, it says Jeff Smith. Four Jeff the chef. Chef Jeff, he was the Frugal Gore Mate. He was, according to the Seattle Post Intelligencer, TV's original celebrity chefs he wasn't that big of a celebrity apparently about that so, um, PBS has three hundred and fifty member stations as of now, and um they are in all fifty states plus Guam, Puerto Rico, US Virgin Islands and American Samoa. Yeah. I got their own member stations pretty neat. And they, for the record, get about seven percent of their funding from CPB. Right. But just like with the NPR model, local affiliates, Yeah, pay to carry Antiques road Show as they should. Man, if you want to get some viewers, just have an antiques road show marathon. Do you watch it? Have you ever seen it? Um? Yeah, I have seen it. Uh so good. It's just it's like how it's made you just get stuck in it lulls you into its trap. Well that's like I mean this our own article at house stuff works as a little sidebar about the sound of NPR. How was parodied with Delicious Dish on Saturday Night Live so famously. But that's the thing, you know, you I'd used to listen to public radio on the radio during my commutes before I even really knew what I was listening to, because I didn't want to wake up to a lot of noise. Oh yeah, it's just so soothing. It just kind of eased you into the day. Yeah, absolutely, and it still does. I still listened to it four News, but largely because I want to hear the voices. Yeah, man, are you in the a MSR? The Second Cup? Oh is that still around? Writes us? Oh? God, bless her second Cup concert. Uh have you ever looked at pictures of these people? I know people freak out about us, but yeah, it happens. But you should see these people. I looked at Lowis, writes us, and I think I expected her to be like four years old. Yeah she's not. Nope, I've no I guess I've never seen and reem is thirty. Yeah, they'd like to hang on to folks. You know Herery Gross, she's been doing that show for since the eighties. Amazing. We should be so lucky, right, Hey, your lips the God's ear? Okay, okay, so chuck, um, there's there's a couple of things going on here. Okay, there are Um, we're getting into the sides. Yeah, there's so. One of the things that Congress likes to do every about five years is say, you know that public broadcasting that left leaning COMI drivel. Why are we playing for that? Yeah? Why? And so I was reading this dude named David Boaz or bows Boas, take your pick. He's one of the higher ups that the Cato Institute libertarian think tank. He hates public broadcasting in America. Most libertarians do. Like it is. It really gets to this guy, and he makes a couple of pretty decent points right like he his to him, it's a transfer of wealth from the average taxpayer up to produce entertainment that that you know, the upper middle class typically consumes, even though it's intended for everybody. Um. And so, from like a taxpayer standpoint, I can kind of understand where if you didn't agree with if you thought that this was leaning against you ideologically and taking your taxpayer money, I could see how something like that would drive you bonkers. Um to me, though, I think everybody kind of assumes that public broadcasting in the US leans a certain way, typically left ward, but supposedly, study after study find that they may be slightly left leaning, but they're typically a lot close sort of neutral than then, um, they're they're given credit for. Yeah, there've been overall, Yeah, there's been some things that have happened over the years. Uh. Notably, in two thousand eleven, MPR president at the time and CEO, Vivian Schiller had to resign UM or did resign at least when there was a video undercover video in a meeting where one of the executives called Tea party members seriously racist, racist people, right, there was a big deal. In fact, most of the stuff when you look up MPR controversies is all dated at two thousand eleven. For that reason, it was a big stink. Well, when they got rid of Vivian Schiller, they specifically said that under her watch some controversies had really gotten out of control and they just no longer thought she could lead any longer. Yeah, And so there was a study. Researchers at Duke University did a study of a Twitter of the Twitter network of MPR and like basically did all this Duke University style math that I won't bore you with, but to analyze whether or not MPR was left leaning or not. Um And it wasn't just NPR. They did this with a lot of news outlets and I think they never actually posted The New York Times, didn't UM there was a blog about all this, never posted where MPR fell, but they were asked and um, one of the researchers said, Um, MPR resides somewhat to the left of center, but further to the right than Katie Kuric the Washington Post, the l A Times, or Brian Williams, and that was using their algorithm. And then MPR kind of um hit back and said, in fact, Steve Williams Stevensky wrote it, wrote a article for The Wall Street Journal and said, in all these surveys, most listeners consistently identify themselves as the middle of the road or conservative. So a lot of people are like, oh, wait a minute, like that can't be true, And so they did. Um, they got the actual numbers from those surveys, and twenty percent of nprs audience said that they were conservative or very conservative, middle of the road and thirty seven percent liberal or very liberal SOT or middle of the road or conservative or middle of the road or liberals. So it's not as heavy and this isn't their programming. This is their audience, right, but it's not as heavy left as some might heavy believe. Yeah, and and just because that's their audience. I mean that kind of suggests that it is a little more left leaning because people tend to go seek out stuff that supports their own beliefs rather than challenges. It probably hats off to the middle of the road conservative ones that listen, Yeah, you want to take another break before we get back to it. So the I think it's almost really just kind of more a matter of perception. We were talking about whether MPR is left leaning or not, or public broadcasting in general. I think it's probably a little bit left leaning, but it's not how you know, it's not like the info wars of the left right, you mean CNN, UM. The uh. The thing about criticizing MPR, though, is you can go one way. You can say it's a little left leaning, but if you look on the other side, you'll find people like no, I'm chom Ski who say that's you're getting Mayre down in the details. He said, if you really listen to MPR, where you watch PBS UM and you listen to this stuff they're saying or the people they're having on as experts, it's the same that you're gonna find on cable news. And I think one MPR former MPR correspondent basically said that MPR runs press releases for the Pentagon. Noam Chomsky was saying, it was basically structurally there to support the status quo. Where if if they're presenting a debate and all all, you know, both sides of the debate, it's all still very structured within the status quo. They're not bringing in somebody who's like, well, all of this is moot point, we need to completely redo the structure of our economy or something like that. They don't bring in outside voices like that. They bring in voices that are exact us within normalcy or whatever. So there's a whole camp out there, um that that tend to say, remember that thing that Lyndon Johnson originally did, the reason why he founded the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to kind of keep a clamp down and criticism, to keep things within a reasonable spectrum. Well he succeeded. I kind of tend to agree with that. Yeah, I don't I feel like they usually provide counterpoints, right, They definitely provide counterpoints, but it's all that counterpoint is something that's still within the bounds of normalcy. There's not somebody coming in and saying like, forget those either points, like they're both we just gotta throw everything away and start over again. That that, I think the point is that it's lacking really really outside viewpoints, right, you know what I'm saying, outside the status quo. So this is all come up in the news more recently because this year when um uh Trump proposed his his budget proposal for UM, which is not you know, this is not settled or anything by any means. In fact, MPR people are like, you know, let's just settle down, like this isn't this is round one, um. But the proposal at least called for the eventual complete abolish meant that a word of public funding, uh, for for PBS, n NPR or for CPBRIGHT. And again you've got people on both sides saying, good, great, let's just get it over with. Yeah, an eventual meaning they wouldn't just pull it would be gradually over time, which of course, you know, makes more sense than just like doing it all at once, tearing the band aid off. Yeah. And you know, like I said, I'm always been a big supporter of public broadcasting, but I thought, you know, maybe just be free from those shackles finally, maybe the public would step up. Where where you get hurt and apparently where UM, PBS and NPR are both kind of trying to voice their most of their concerns is that you know, of course your big cities are gonna be fine, but it's the smaller market member stations that rely way more on the CPB funding UM that are going to be most hurt. And these are the people that need this stuff the most. These rural communities UH need public broadcasting. So it's hard to argue with that point. You know, it is for sure there's actually UM a historical lesson in here. You can look to New Zealand for this. Like back in the late eighties they try to deregulation experiment, but they had one channel tv n Z in the whole country and UM the government said, you know what, you guys are done with the teat of the government, go sell some ads, and they tried this experiment. T v n Z actually came out as I believe it survived UM, but it was worse for the wear as a result. And ironically UM, this deregulation opened a space for a true UM nonprofit non commercial television called UM New Zealand on air Uh, that actually came and thrived in the wake of this transformation for TVNZ from public broadcasting to commercially driven. So it's it's it's not necessarily gonna work out well for the people who listen to NPR or watch PBS if they go to completely commercially driven programming. And the whole reason that you have the corporation of public broadcasting ostensibly is because commercially driven journalism wasn't getting the job done before, and it certainly is it now. News rooms being cut um, news that is on cable being more and more polarized one way or another, and it's just shouting match after shouting match. If you really watch the news, the only people, aside from some of those old died in the world news people on like um, you know, NBC or CBS is like nightly news. The only ones really doing real journalism are the ones who are working for public broadcasting at the very least, they're the ones who are trying the hardest. For sure, Yeah, you could totally make that argument, But at the same time, we're in a weird limbo state where everybody's ticked off, right because it's PBS and NPR are not just not fully publicly funded, and they're not just advertising driven. There are a combination of the two that that that compromises them two different ways, which is why both sides are saying one or the other. I tend to feel like they should just go completely publicly funded and we should adopt something like a British model where it's like you're funded for the next five years, go do the public some good and you can't have any underwriting whatsoever. Yeah, well, I mean it's interesting and that, um, most of Europe and Britain definitely went that other direction, like you mentioned at the ending, and in that one article you sent over talking about ways it's done public broadcasting in other countries as a whole, and they were talking about the BBC and they said, you know, who is the average I can't remember who they asked, but who's the average BBC viewer? And the answer was every British citizen right. Like, it's a much different deal, you know. And the BBC's criticized too for being a government mouthpiece in a lot of ways too, but they're also critical of the government in ways that other people aren't. And they'll also put news on at a time when everybody is home to watch it. That kind of stuff. So the future of broadcasting public broadcasting UM isn't as simple as like are they going to be publicly funded or not? UM, it's whether or not they're still viable, uh in um. The median audience age was fifty four years old, and in twenty years BEFO for that it was forty five. It's a pretty pretty big age. At least it wasn't like I stayed exactly the same, the same people just got twenty years older. So they are getting some younger listeners. But it's the way that especially people under thirty five years old consumed media is radically different than their parents. Yeah, and there's plenty of people out there who are younger who qualify as quote unquote millennials who are like listening to stuff that MPR puts out there, listening to the huge, huge slate of MPR podcasts. Right, there's a ton of podcasts the MPR puts out. A lot of their radio programs are repurposed into podcasts, and so there's a lot of younger people who are listening to it. The problem is that poses a conundrum to the public broadcasting model as it stands in the US though, right, well, yeah, I looked at the top twenty today on the iTunes just to kind of see an NPR had eight of the top twenty shows as stiff competition for US Hidden Brain, This American Life, Planet Money, um I guess Stown and Serial both they would qualify because they come out of This American Life stable and that's where it got its start. Their highest rank show today was Ted Radio Hour at number five. Incidentally, we were number four. Good but um, yeah, I mean eight shows in the top twenty. But it does pose an interesting conundrum for them. I know when they were started to dip their toe into podcasts, and then once podcast started generating revenue via ads, they weren't quite sure how to handle all that stuff. No, and part of the part of the problem is is if you're a small local affiliate, you've paid a lot of money to get fresh air on your airwaves. You don't want some twenty year old going and listening to it on the new whiz Bang MPR app that the city slickers came up with. You want them listening to your station so that you can get their donations. Um So, for a while MPR had uh an embargo and even mentioning the fact that there were podcasts out there on air. Yeah, um, right now. I think they say that it's okay to mention that an announcer hosts a podcast, but they don't say like, hey, go download the podcast, go to iTunes or Apple. Right, they say that they hosted buck Well, it's a legit concern. But my whole thing is you can't, like, you can't fight on demand listening or viewing. You just can't fight it. You can't tell a twenty six year old no, you need to turn tune in from seven to nine a m. To listen to us. They're like, what is this tune in? What is seven to nine? Yeah? No, it's true. And if if you're fighting against it, you're you're going to lose. Yeah, because that's the beauty of podcasts. What's said is, looking at it from the outside, it looks like MPR and PBS get this because MPR has its own apps, PBS has an on demand video app as well. They it looks like the larger institutions get this. But I don't see what anyone's doing to save the local affiliates, the small town ones that are really going to be the first to suffer, or if they're just being sacrifices canaries in the coal mine, um, in which case that's just the way it's gonna roll, because those kids in those small towns are still going to listen to MPR, they're just not listening to it on the radio any longer. Well, but then people, you know there there's a segment of people that would say, well, you know what, them's the breaks, and if your little member station goes out of business, then that's called changing times. Okay, but let's take this back to you. Remember my example where Corporation Next was poisoning the water in your small town. No one outside of the town knew about it. Incorporation Next advertised on the networks, the local news, so the local news weren't going to take them on. That's why you need that small, tiny affiliate who not have to worry about funding and advertising so that they can do good journalism and expose that corporation to the rest of the town. Well, if that's small radio station and that small PBS affiliate drives up because of the MPR app Corporation Next gets away with poisoning the whole town. Nobody knows town Dies gets blown over by dust and it's like it was never there. I wonder, and certainly there are people in NPR corporate that are way more knowledgeable and trying to solve this, Peter falken Flick than me. But I wonder if they could, like on the podcast Peter Overbee David folken Flick, I combined the two into one super host. It should one super correspond to supergroup. They're like Damn Yankees Um. I was on a plane flight with him one time, by the way, where they rowdy. They weren't in first class, but I remember being like, however old I was when that came out fifteen or sixteen seventeen something like that, were you really and like Jack Blade was sitting on one side of me, Ted Nugent was in front of me, Tommy Shaw was behind me, and it was like I was part of the band. I was sitting in the middle of these that's really cool music legends, and I thought, man, I love Night Ranger and I love Sticks. But he's reading I remember specifically, I'm reading a hunting magazine. Yeah, I can believe that just fantasized. Yeah, I'd rather be hunting. Well, I can tell you Ted Nugent is not listening to this particular episode, certainly not. Uh So my idea was, maybe, like I wonder if they could encourage via the podcast, say, hey, we know you enjoy us on your podcast, but why don't you donate money to your local members affiliate even though you don't consume it through the there to keep the calls alive, you know, yeah, I mean that's just my dumb outsider's opinion. Well, what if you turn local affiliates from broadcast bay, Like, you know, you've got to spend a lot of money on a transmitter and up links and all that kind of stuff. What if you just turned them into news bureaus like they were for investigative journalism and recording for local and then that local stuff could be kicked up the line, you knoww some local reporting appears on the national edition of Morning Edition or whatever. What if you just turned them all into into news bureaus instead, and then they just went completely online consumption. What if like the head of MPR just like swerved off the road. It was like, oh my god, these guys figuring it out so uh getting back to their new models that the the mp mp R one is the app and about of their users or under thirty five that coveted demo and um, but here's the thing. They did some surveys and they said a third of those users seldom listen to traditional radio, but said they because of the app, we're starting to listen to more terrestrial radio, which I'm not sure I get how that works, but well, I could see just being like, oh, I didn't know this was here. Wait a minute, there's like a whole radio station that has this. I'm gonna go check that out. And I can see that. Uh. And then there is Passport, which you mentioned was I don't think by name, but that's the PBS video on demand service that you get if you donate to your local station. I think five dollars a month donation will get you access to Passport. And that's if you wanted to binge doubt, n Abby, you could have done that via Passport. Did you watch that? I saw an episode or two. I just never tickled my gizzard. Okay, I love it, big fan. Yeah, I know a lot of people did. And I didn't hate it or anything. And shoot the TV when it came on. Yeah, you didn't go shoot my passport app uh and then the other big shake up in recent years. Um last year in Sesame Street made the big jump over to HBO after forty six years on PBS, and there were a lot of mixed feelings about this, some people saying, oh man, what a what a drag. You're now on a pay station and these uh, these kids and that can't afford cable TV and HBO maybe that really need Sesame Street can't watch it anymore? Or these new episodes of the Big Birds said t S, I got some money, Big Bird said, you want Sesame Street to stay on the air, and this is the only way it's gonna happen. And you can watch these episodes nine months after they air on HBO. So to me, it's kind of a win win. I thought that was cool that Big Bird win in negotiated that that PBS still got episodes after a certain time. Yeah, good for you, Big Bird and elm So. So to me, Chuck, this is my thing. I think public broadcasting should be public. Originally, IDA was when you bought a television set, there was a tax on it that went specifically to fund public broadcasting, so it got looped into the appropriations process. Which so they have to go beg for the money every year. Um, if it were publicly funded through some sort of tax that was designated just for it, and um there was also this is a really big point to this is how it was originally supposed to be. They were shielded from government meddling by a nonpartisan board of directors whose entire job it was was to keep the government out of public broadcasts and they could just focus on good, unfettered journalism. That would be the ideal, And I don't think it's too late to go to that model. I think commercial commercial broadcasting shows that there's a huge need for it, but that in the US it's in this weird limbo state. Is it commercial, is it publicly funded? You know what's the There's so many easily fixed problems with it. But you have to go all one way or all the other. To me, do you know? It would be great and also a disaster, now that I thought about it for half a second. Is if you could, like, when you go to pay your taxes, you could select a box that say I would like a portion of my taxes to go to funding public broadcasting or to funding schools. That wouldn't work. Well, if that was just what they relied on, it might not work, but why not added on there could do it as well in addition to let's public broadcasting. I got a few little facts here, though, we got some more public broadcasting. Um, I just looked up MPR's own like interesting facts about NPR all things consider. Their very first episode was covering the m twenty thousand person protests of the Vietnam War. Featured a twenty four minutes sound portrait of the protests, the very first thing they ever did. Yeah, it's pretty ballsy, we say balls. I don't know. We'll find out how much I heard Terry Gross. She was on a Mark Mayrin episode and she talked about not kind of a bit of a desire to be free from the shackles of her the restrictions of being on MPR. Oh yeah, yeah. Mainly, she said, when they do like readings from an author and they have to really go in ahead of time and say, hey, you can't say this word from your reading on the air and stuff like that, she doesn't want to get up there and just Phil Flor and Phil foul that's not Terry Gross style. No, But she also doesn't want to be like, by the way, you can't say the B word. Yeah, exactly. Um. MPR had a lot of first one of them, Susan Standberg All Things Considered host in nineteen seventy two, was the very first woman to be an anchor for a national news broadcast, The Simpsons, A special love for them. Terry Gross, Bob Boylan, Robert Siegel, and Carl Cassell have all been Carl Castle. What say Cassell? You're thinking of? Howard Cosell was Carl Castle. They were all on The Simpsons and then Morning It had some other names before they settled on that morning air. First things first, it's not bad, very MPR. And then this sounds so MPR. It's probably why they didn't do it. Tweet Jack starting line, Yeah, that's sound too bad. I think Morning Edition is good. I think it's the best. Uh. And then finally, Bob Boylan's great, great show Tiny Desk Concerts. Steward, listen to those, No, but I'm familiar with them. Man, it's just the best. Uh. He had a band called Tiny Desk Unit, and that was why he named the show Tiny Desk Concerts. Thank you Music Shows for clearing that up. I had no idea. Why well, I mean it's named that because they performed in the his MPR office, Right, That's what I thought, But it's still Yeah, it is his desk, like miniature. I've got one more for you, all right. So there was this two thousand eleven study um that found that of fourteen Western democracies, the United States was the only one to rely almost entirely on commercial broadcasting to inform at citizenry. That's precarious. Interesting, and that the same article you sent did a lot of studies that found that those countries, those other countries are generally much more well informed about news events. Yes, traffic accident, everybody knows. Uh. If you want to know more about public broadcasting, go listen to MPR, watch PBS, and decide for yourself what you think about them. Uh. And in the meantime, you can also type those words in the search bar how stiff first dot com Since I said search parts time for listener mail. Uh. This is from a Ron in Miami, A R O N. I think it's just I don't know a Ron the great key and peels kit. Uh. Hey, guys, just got into podcast a couple of months ago, and I'm a Catchup fan. We did a Remember That Ketchup podcast, good one. I'm a firm believer it belongs in the pantry, not the refrigerator. That many debates about this, mostly while intoxicated, But that's beside the point. Many things work well in contrast, like a frosty beverage with buffalo wings or crunchy potato chip alongside a softer sandwich. But who wants to dip a hot French fry into cold ketchup? H I gotta agree with this guy. Yeah, uh, he said. To be clear, my claim is based solely on memory. However, I recall Heinz introducing their fridge Fit Catchup bottle in two thousand six. During a debate about pantry versus refrigerated, someone on the other side pointed out it was not either to refrigerate after opening for best results, refrigerate after opening. It was like, not either or I'm not sure what he's saying there, confusing. I was completely for it. I've never seen such verbiage on a Hines bottle before. Uh. And then it dawned on me. Hines had just hit uh and released the fridge fit bottle. Of course, they will direct you to keep this in the fridge. It's part of the marketing strategy. Has nothing to do with the best way to enjoy the ketchupy goodness, this guy was wasted when he wrote this is becoming clear. It's a little confusing in the middle there, but he said that. Thanks for the information, entertainment, and remember say no to refrigeration of ketchup the a A Ron, thank thanks for that. Read the sentence. Maybe it's me no, no, I heard you say it, and it it sounded like you were reading it correctly. Okay, well, thanks A Roan. We hope you feel better in the morning. If you want to get in touch with us, like A Ran did, you can tweet to us at s y s K podcast. You can join us on Facebook dot com slash stuff you Should Know. You can send an email to stuff podcast at how stuff works dot com. Has always joined us at her home on the web Stuff you Should Know dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff Works dot com