Welcome to The World's Most Dangerous Beauty Salon, Inc.
My name is Susan DuQuesnay Bankston. I live in Richmond, Texas, in the heart of Tom DeLay's old district. It's nuttier than squirrel poop here.
I am honored and privileged to know Miss Juanita Jean Herownself, hairdresser extraordinary and political maven. Since she does not have time to fiddle with this internet stuff, I type her website for her and you can read it if you want to. If you don't, she truly does not give a big bear's butt.
A lot of what I post here has to do with local politics, but you probably have the same folks in your local government.
This ain't a blog. Blogs are way too trendy for me. This is a professional political organization.
That would explain why so many people have been giving up TV in general and cable TV in particular.
1That tweet says it all about Public Broadcasting and privatization.
2Gee, I remember when I was in middle (grammar) school and the meme was that drugs would be the downfall of the U.S. China and Russia had some nefarious involvement with that as I recall. As an adult, I’ve always felt that some television would be the downfall and by golly, here it is! Don’t kid yourself, there is a concerted effort to dumb down the masses.
I don’t have cable, I get enough of television with my analog converted, albeit the bad reception and none for various channels at times. I read, voraciously and in true self defense of the nattering nonsense on most TV shows. (Lawd, I do sound old don’t I?) I watch dramas and comedies as much as possible.
3This nation has lost all ability and inclination to LEARN anything.
4That’s why we still have the Republican Party…….
The Onion wrote about a story about the Science Channel that could apply to TLC as well:
5“Science Channel has maintained a balance of 5 percent science content and 95 percent mind-numbing drivel over the past few years, and that this was as far as they were willing to go.”
http://www.theonion.com/articles/science-channel-refuses-to-dumb-down-science-any-f,2897/
I just watched the South Park episode with a cartoon version of Honey Boo Boo. I had not heard of her before and though they were making this stuff up.
My god. What have we been reduced to?
6Really did you expect anything else from this country.
7And you thought I was joking about watching reruns of CSI:Frostbite Falls instead of the debates which aren’t going to affect my point of view nohow. I would rather see Rocky and Bullwinkle (or better yet Crusader Rabbit and Rags the Tiger) than most of the current crop of anything. I’m fortunate that during baseball season I get most of the Pirates games, many of the Cubs/White Sox games, Philadephia and NY Yankee games, and whatever is on ESPN or ESPN2 which is a lot of baseball and hardly a night without at least one to keep me from watching Toddlers and Tiaras.
Most of the time, I like The News Hour on PBS but during election years they spend too much time talking about polls, focus groups, trends, horse races, and anything else that keeps them from actually evaluating the veracity of what various candidates are spouting. And there’s always The Weather Channel and Turner Classic Movies to keep me away from Dancing With Sarah’s Dumbed-down Daughter, Survivor, or other crap that passes for broadcast TV. If I could just get the PBS stations to show those Sherlock Holmes episodes on a Central Time schedule so it isn’t way past my bedtime when they get over. These 0500 risings make staying up late a real drag.
8And on History Channel (always in the top 5 cable networks) you get Angels & Demons Decoded and Monsterquest while Discovery gives us American Choppers and Ghosthunters. Disney sucks, NASA is on a downhill slide, CNN and HLN stink enough to draw flies (Nancy Grace anyone?) and Fox remains in the sewer where it was born. Seems like the only cable (for profit) channel remaining even close to the early promise is National Geographic. How long before that one dips into the swill?
Turn off cable and tell the GOP to keep their dad gum hands off of PBS.
9Yes, I’ve given up on cable and anything I can’t get with my rabbit ears. The only channel I care about is PBS. Mostly, when I watch tv which isn’t too often, I watch British Tv through Netflix. Inspector Jack Frost, and Inspector George Gently have kept me warm on many an evening. I like British tv because everyone on the show is pretty regular looking. They don’t all look like over surgeried manequins.
10Discovery and History Channel used to be part of my must see t.v. Now? I’ll pass thank you very much. My sister said most of these channels are owned by conglomerates that are Conservative groups(she looked it up,and followed the clues). Guess “their” mission really is to publicize drivel to help ensure the dumbing down of Americas citizens.Thank goodness I have Tunnelbear-with that,I can watch as much BBC and ITV as I want.(And,I get to see the new season of Downton Abbey way before it hits the U.S. shores on PBS). Best $4.99 a month I’ve spent in ages:)
11But, but, but . . . George Will sez that we don’t NEED Public Television because there are all those cool cable stations like the History Channel and Discovery and what not. I wouldn’t know, because I have never had cable TV. I actually get 7 (count em, SEVEN) PBS stations between Maryland, Virginia and DC. OK, OK a couple of those are for the kiddies and one of them is entirely in Spanish. Still. And something else I get for free over-the-air are 6 stations covering foreign news. You can’t beat Al Jazeera for the real news about the goings-on in the Middle East. And, if I’m really interested in the Chinese spin on things there are now two of those.
Seriously, without PBS, I wouldn’t be watching TV at all. Except “Dancing with the Stars” which is my guilty pleasure. I’m praying that Bristol Palin gets bounced tomorrow–I’ve had all I can take of that no-talent, clutzy, whining piece of work.
I really don’t know why people bother paying all that money every month when there is so much available for free.
12We need PBS because Bill Moyers is on it every weekend speaking to our current political mayhem. His is a voice of reason
13in a world gone completely and dangerously
nuts.
12 years ago, TLC ran an engineering competition show that started in the UK. In its native land, it was actually a stealth science show for tweens and teens. In the UK it went by the name “Scrapheap Challenge”. This wasn’t edgy enough for TLC, they re-titled it “Junkyard Wars”.
Now this was not a BBC show, it ran on one of the UK’s commercial networks. It really was education and aimed at the 9-15 crowd. The commercial networks over there are required to run stuff like this as a condition of their license. (they even have to run it at times kids can watch it)
For those that haven’t seen the show, the idea was two teams were given a problem to build a machine to solve, identical workshops, a common couple of acres of scrap metal to build their solution from, and a one day time limit for building.
The stealth ed came from little 10-15 second animated chalkboard style lecture snippets, that explain how the thing that team b was building worked. This was slipped into footage of maniacal builders making precision adjustments with sledge hammers. On the next day there was a competition between the two solutions, best machine earned its builders a chance to do another one. (and the problems were substantial – things like convert a car to run on coal fired steam, an airplane large enough to fly one of the team, demolish a brick building (or put out a burning one), catapult a small car, (or retrieve one from the bottom of a lake) etc…)
Like I said this ran on UK commercial TV. An hour for them is 50 minutes of content, and 10 they get to sell. TLC ran them, but for TLC, an hour is 44 minutes. Guess where most of the time for extra commercials came from? Yup, the lectures.
How do I know all this? Well I was one of the sledge wielding maniacs – I formed the first US team to appear on the show. The production company sent all of us courtesy copies of the UK and US cuts of the shows we were in.
We even did some promotional stuff for them – showing up to appear at sneak previews, getting radio DJ’s calling at ungodly early hours, talking to print reporters, etc.
The TLC publicist assigned to the show gave us a bunch of TLC branded tchotchkes, including a very well made messenger bag (US made, the sort that actual messengers buy), that I used to use for my laptop.
It seems that they discovered that they could emphasize the competition, leave out most of the education, and show it at 9 pm on a school night. They would get a whole lot of males 18-54, which is a much more profitable set of eyeballs to peddle to advertisers. In later seasons (when they did their own all-US-teamed remake) they even added things like a “confession cam”. They killed it in 3 seasons.
By comparison, the UK version kept going for another 7 (for a total of 10 years). It still had good ratings, but cost more than the ca: 2008 downturn’s ad prices could afford.
A couple of years ago, I noticed that the tivo had no show subscriptions on that network. So I looked at what they were offering then – I saw demeaning fashion advice and a series that celebrated a “Quiverfull” family… When they gave caribou Barbie a show, I moved the laptop to a new bag. (their logo was embroidered into the flap, and not easily removed). When the DVR got replaced last year, I didn’t even bother to include the network in the channel display.
So in 5 years I went from doing appearances for them, to not wanting them cluttering up my channel list.
14I get 20+ channels with my rabbit ears and my new flat screen HDTV, everything from news to recipes, movies to music and educational lectures from my ROKU box (mostly free) and DVD movies on my DVD player. The only items I pay for are Netflix and Amazon Prime (cost-$14 a month) For those who don’t know, the ROKU box wirelessly connects your computer to your TV for streaming movies, videos etc.There are hundreds of applications, most of them free or at very low cost.
15The case for PBS
I am going to apologize in advance for the lengthy nature of this email but I am feeling somewhat compelled to respond to the recent comment by Mitt Romney that he was OK with firing Big Bird to stop borrowing from China. Truth in advertising here, I am a fan of PBS. While I am too old to have been raised on Sesame Street, I am not too old to appreciate the genius that is Jim Henson and Company nor have I forgotten my childhood in rural Kansas and Missouri when PBS was often the only station we received.
It all comes down to perspective.
The government spends $450 million per year on the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, or roughly, what the Pentagon spends in 6 hours. To claim that cutting funding for Big Bird and his friends is somehow going to eliminate our deficit is not just disingenuous it is ludicrous. It is like saying you will eliminate one 1/100th of a grape from your plate in order to cut calories so you can lose weight.
The fact is that funding for PBS accounts for less than .01% of the budget. So, instead of picking on a broadcasting organization that actually still serves the public by providing:
• Cultural programs (American Experience, American Masters, An Evening With, Austin City Limits, etc)
• Unbiased Comprehensive News Coverage (The News Hour, Nightly Business Report, Washington Week in Review, etc.) According to Public Policy Polling (11/18/2012), “More voters trust PBS than any other news source.”
• In-depth Special Reports (Frontline, Nova, Nature, etc.)
• Quality Entertainment (Masterpiece Theater, This Old House, On Stage At Kennedy Center, etc.)
• Educational programs (Sesame Street is one example but PBS Kids offers 6 literacy series and 11 series devoted to teaching kids about science, technology, engineering and math.)
Targeted as being unnecessary, nothing could be further from the truth. In a recent study, The words on the street are nature and science: An evaluation of Sesame Street’s curriculum; Brooks, M.K., Kotler, J.A., Gartner, T., & Truglio, R.T. (2012, May) determined that, after viewing episodes from Sesame Street’s recent STEM season (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math), children increased their ability to articulate scientific concepts – such as hypothesis and investigation – by 100%. No wonder, PBS is the number one source of media content for Preschool teachers. This is one of the reasons that 88% of American’s regard PBS as a “Trusted and safe place for children to watch TV and visit online as opposed to 36% for broadcast television or 34% for cable. (Harris Interactive 2/2012) Something else people may not realize is that 79% of all kids between the ages of 2 -11 watch PBS. (Neilsen NPower).
It is also useful to know that many rural areas across the US have no television service other than PBS. What politicians, in their quest for a whipping boy do not mention is that a large swath of America does not choose (often because the choice is unaffordable or unavailable), to purchase cable or satellite TV. To them, PBS can be in a very real way, a lifeline. According to ABC News, “Stations in rural parts of the country, where their parts of the federal funding is 40, 50, 60 percent, those stations will go off the air,” PBS chief executive Paula Kerger told CNN this morning. “The reach of our work is so extensive and so deeply rooted in education … the fact that we are in this debate at all is just incomprehensible.” [ABC News, 10/4/12]
So what happens if we take it away? Stations use CPB funding for local operations and to produce and acquire programming, which allows them to raise additional operational funds from corporations, foundations, state and local governments and from individual contributions, which are the largest source of non-CPB funding for public media. On average, every federal dollar invested in CPB is leveraged by stations to raise six dollars locally. This successful public-private partnership is uniquely entrepreneurial and uniquely American. Though models vary, funding for other countries’ public broadcasting systems comes almost exclusively from their governments, from licensing fees or from dedicated taxes. At $1.39 per American, the cost of our country’s service is proportionally small compared to other developed nations. [Corporation for Public Broadcasting, accessed 10/4/12]
Yep, it all comes down to perspective. 236 million Americans watch PBS annually. In a month Americans stream 145 million videos on PBS’ Web and mobile platforms. (Google Analytics) All of this comes at a price of about $1.35 per person per year. Honey Boo Boo or Sesame Street? There is a reason to give people the Big Bird…..
Media matters did a good story on Fox’s take on this:
16http://mediamatters.org/mobile/research/2012/10/05/why-foxs-stuart-varney-is-wrong-about-firing-bi/190411
The thing I hate most about satellite pay TeeVee (no cable out here in cow country Vermont where I live) is you have to pay for channels you would NEVER watch. The thing I like most about it is Internet streaming, Netflix, Amazon Prime, just surfing for great shows and movies. I hope that, eventually, the cable/satellite companies will get wise and let us pick our channels. Or not. The cat is out of the bag, I think.
17i cancelled cable 5 yrs ago and haven’t looked back. i stream netflix and hulu for a grand total of $15/month. i can watch survivor the day after it is broadcast so i have something to discuss with my sister. i could stream any for profit channel but it isn’t interesting any more. it is just people yelling at each other.
PBS provides virtually all their fare in streaming mode so i can get masterpiece to history detectives and when i want, not when they want.
broadcast television is crap (don’t look, JJ mamma). at least with streaming you don’t have to watch the commercials.
18I would love to unplug our high-$ basic cable, but a certain man of the house is so opposed to change of any kind that he still stops at a newsstand every day to buy another city’s newspaper for $1.75.
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