Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2002/09/30
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Barney, I don't think either Mark or I said anything negative about NPR. If you made such a contribution, I owe you, along with the other NPR pioneers, a great debt of gratitude. (I'd like to know more about what you did there.) It was the excitement, range, boldness and passion of NPR that inspired me to go into the business. A group of visionaries were given (barely) enough money and an enlightened mandate, and they made a brilliant contribution to the nation. I still have tapes of programs from that era - amazing stuff. It is not really like that now! Not that it's bad, not at all. It's just not as deep or as wide or as smart or as fun. It's dangerously careful, humongously narrow. On the local level, it ranges from better to far worse. In general, between the eyes on the bottom line and the looks over the shoulder at the political interests that keep stations and networks in deep self-censorship, many voices and ideas and much music that was available 30 years ago are unthinkable now. Marc, I went round and round in my own head regarding elitism and being on a dole. I was in the business, at a local station, at that time, those halcyon days of the great "zero out." I was sadly aware of the lack of professionalism behind the scenes of the organization I was in. It was a 'service' run like a charity, with most of the energy focused on fund raising rather than on broadcasting. (Corporate life wasn't much different, as I found out later.) It had always been on a shoestring, even in the good days. The struggle for survival made things worse. Some mythical market discipline did not make for a better service - how could it? We lost our best people, spent our best energy in desperation. Eventually, after being away from that world for a while, I've come to this: the tax support to public broadcasting, even at it's height, was peanuts and insufficient to create a consistent product nationwide. If the richest nation can't see the value in properly supporting a good, *independent*, elite educational service of the sort every other civilized nation (more or less) does - then we don't deserve one. That "elitist" argument is just another part of the good old American selfishness and anti-intellectualism that will be our liberty's downfall. Anyway, no offense was (is) meant to anyone, just a little idle exchange between Mark and me, and 1000 subscribers eavesdropped. I'd rather we didn't discuss this on the list - it's way off topic. If you like NPR, and your local programming, fantastic - support it and the people who bring it to you. We'd be poorer without them. You could help to turn a decline into a renaissance with support at the ballot box. It could be so much more than it is, but so could all broadcasting in the US. It was all pretty much doomed to mediocrity early on. For further info, get these out of the library: Sex and Broadcasting by Lorenzo Milam, and History of Broadcasting in the US Vol. 1 by Erik Barnouw. Carl - -- To unsubscribe, see http://mejac.palo-alto.ca.us/leica-users/unsub.html