TV shows starting crowd funding sites -- What THE hell?!!!

[NotHardUp1]

PBS & NPR were bad enough. Inferior production and broadcasting quality except in the wealthier stations and markets, all the while, donning the cloak of virtue for supposedly not having advertizements.

Now, Mystery Science Theater 3000 just ran a commercial announcing a crowd funding campaign for its 14th season. REALLY? Nothing screams failure more than insufficient sponsors to stay on the air.

PBS does its perennial Beg-a-thons so terribly, why would anyone follow them down that road?

 

[me203]

I just hope this won't include a GoFundMe campaign. GoFundMe should be reserved for people who need medical treatment they can't afford, due to crappy medical insurance coverage/no insurance!

 

[Araucaria]

It does get annoying when you're watching PBS or listening to NPR, and it seems that all they do is beg for money. I get tired of tuning in to see a program, and you have to sit through 20 minutes of one or two announcers talking, with a phone bank behind them and their numbers on the screen, before they even actually get to the program you wanted to watch. And then they interrupt the program three times to beg, and you get the feeling you're not going to see any more of the program until they're satisfied that they got enough in pledges to move on.

Believe it or not, there was a local NPR affiliate in Palm Beach County that failed. I find it hard to fathom how that's even possible here, since the area is swimming with wealthy donors and foundations. The only thing I can figure out is that they must have gotten so insular that they cut themselves off from the local donor pool, and certainly from the needs and interests of the community at large. It seems they thought they could coast on just playing classical music all the time, without bothering to engage and find out what the public really wanted. So they folded, and supposedly sold the station to a Christian radio outfit, as if we really need any more of those on the airwaves.

 

[fabulouslyghetto]

Shocking news: news media doesn't get the same robust funding as pro sports and teen dramas barely hiding the sex.

 

[Peloso]

Crowd funding has taken some of the undue strain off those poor health insurance companies, why not media too?

 

[Dargelos]

The best way to fund public interest broadcasting is the BBC way. Nobody will agree with me, the licence fee system is highly unpopular, the right wing press ie almost all the press, has worked for decades to turn public opinion against the licence. They do this for their own commercial reasons. Doing it the BBC way gives the radio and tv audience incredible value for money though they refuse to believe it.
And then there's the wonderful World Service which is free for everyone.

 

[unloadonme]

The best way to fund public interest broadcasting is the BBC way. Nobody will agree with me, the licence fee system is highly unpopular, the right wing press ie almost all the press, has worked for decades to turn public opinion against the licence. They do this for their own commercial reasons. Doing it the BBC way gives the radio and tv audience incredible value for money though they refuse to believe it.

I don't particularly believe that. I object to being forced to pay for something increasingly downmarket and tedious which I watch increasingly rarely. I also object to my licence fee being used to pay obscenely inflated salaries to people like Gary Lineker, a complete moron who receives £1.35 million per annum of the public's money for talking bollocks about football. If the BBC ran an optional subscription service similar to Netflix, I wouldn't dream of signing up.

And then there's the wonderful World Service which is free for everyone.

The World Service is dreadful. The only good thing I can say about it is that whenever I have difficulty sleeping, I tune into the World Service and it bores me back to sleep in minutes.

 

[Dargelos]

World Service is such good value, it's paid for itself by saving you the cost of even a single sleeping tablet.
Gary Lineker is an example of why taxes should be higher for the overpaid.

 

[gsdx]

My biggest problem with PBS is that the only time they really show anything worth watching is during pledge weeks.

Years ago, PBS Buffalo used to have tons of Britcoms, especially at weekends: Are You Being Served?, On the Buses, The Two Ronnies, et al. Not any more.

I wonder if they still take Canadian donations at par?

I'm a monthly sponsor of TVOntario. They have childrens' programmes during the day and grown-up programmes at night.

 

[fredroy]

My biggest problem with PBS is that the only time they really show anything worth watching is during pledge weeks.

^^ This. Sure you might stumble upon a nature show on the weekends but otherwise, my use for PBS is to tune the aim of my TV antenna because it has the weakest signal.

 

[NotHardUp1]

I've lived in very different PBS markets: the Deep South, Albuquerque, Anchorage (AK), and Connecticut. The demographics were widely different.

The Beg-a-thons have varied widely too. They began decades ago offering some excellent specials during the drives, but over time, seemed to havve become Ebeneezer Scrooge. Increasingly, regular programming would be suspended and crap programming like self-affirmation guru talks, or financial advisors, or reruns of OLD nature episodes of documentaries, etc.

Regular viewers often can feel like decent programs have been held hostage, which become less and less cherished as drives preach guilt trips to suggest that their inability to get adequate commercial sponsors somehow inherently indebts the viewers.

Tnen there is the preening about being objective and unbiased. Both the actual news coverage AND the political discussion shows are heavily weighted to the left, with only the rarest inclusion of some random Republican who may as well be a eunuch for how weak they are in defending their side of the issues.

PBS and perhaps NPR was much stronger 30 years ago.

In my current market, BOTH are also constantly experiencing technical outages, off the air for hours, days, weeks, depending on the causes. Just sad.

 

[Alistair]

I've lived in very different PBS markets: the Deep South, Albuquerque, Anchorage (AK), and Connecticut. The demographics were widely different.

The Beg-a-thons have varied widely too. They began decades ago offering some excellent specials during the drives, but over time, seemed to havve become Ebeneezer Scrooge. Increasingly, regular programming would be suspended and crap programming like self-affirmation guru talks, or financial advisors, or reruns of OLD nature episodes of documentaries, etc.

Regular viewers often can feel like decent programs have been held hostage, which become less and less cherished as drives preach guilt trips to suggest that their inability to get adequate commercial sponsors somehow inherently indebts the viewers.

That’s what I’ve noticed. I’d rather rewatch a Ken Burns documentary than Susie Orman any day.

 

[EddMarkStarr]

I'm too much a fan of the "free range" entertainment provided by the online world.

For example, I'm watching content about the Earth's ring system from the distant past.

 

[NotHardUp1]

I'm too much a fan of the "free range"

On a more serious note, I also enjoyed rewatching some of the later The Planets reruns where they focused on Saturn. They said that the rings were not a permanent feature and would be gone after a time.

As often as planets collide in nascent solar systems, rings must be a common feature of planetary life cycles.

It was super cool to learn of Neptune's rings. It's pretty dark out there, so understandable that they had missed detection for so long.

 

[me203]

^I sort of assumed that ring around Saturn was because Saturn wasn't washed with a good detergent last time.

 

[gsdx]

It was super cool to learn of Neptune's rings. It's pretty dark out there, so understandable that they had missed detection for so long.

All 4 gas giants have rings, but since the are composed of minerals (Saturn's rings are made of ice, probably created by Saturn 'eating' one of its ice moons), they are difficult to see. Also, since Uranus literally rolls around the sun its orbit, Uranus can appear as a bull's eye.

 

[Alistair]

All 4 gas giants have rings, but since the are composed of minerals (Saturn's rings are made of ice, probably created by Saturn 'eating' one of its ice moons), they are difficult to see. Also, since Uranus literally rolls around the sun its orbit, Uranus can appear as a bull's eye.

Insert a fifth grade Uranus joke here

 

[unloadonme]

All 4 gas giants have rings, but since the are composed of minerals (Saturn's rings are made of ice, probably created by Saturn 'eating' one of its ice moons), they are difficult to see. Also, since Uranus literally rolls around the sun its orbit, Uranus can appear as a bull's eye.

I was once playing Trivial Pursuit with my parents and a couple of their friends. I had to ask my mother "Are there rings around Uranus?".

 

[NotHardUp1]

I was once playing Trivial Pursuit with my parents and a couple of their friends. I had to ask my mother "Are there rings around Uranus?".

I remember that card specifically from a game I was playing back in the '80's. We laughed like children.

 

[me203]

I was once playing Trivial Pursuit with my parents and a couple of their friends. I had to ask my mother "Are there rings around Uranus?".

I'm now imagining this possible response: "How DARE you EVEN THINK about asking...oh...are you asking about the planet?"