Anti-Climacus

QUOTE: Terry Teachout makes some sense on why NPR shouldn't get government money to essentially repeat what for-profit stations produce:

"The difference between us—as I understand it, and I may be misinterpreting Greg—is that I don’t start from the assumption that National Public Radio has an a priori obligation to exist, and thus should ensure its survival by any means necessary, even if that means scrapping musical and other cultural programming in favor of Car Talk. NPR is not a profit-making corporation. It is, or claims to be, a "public" entity, and it is subsidized in part by public monies and in-kind equivalents. Public entities exist to serve the public—but not in the same way as commercial corporations. The whole point of subsidizing a radio network is to ensure that it will do things that commercial broadcasters won’t do. In fact, there’s no other point to NPR.

Sir John Reith, the man who for all intents and purposes started the BBC, used to say that its job was to give the public "something a bit better than what it thinks it wants." (I’m quoting from memory, but that’s fairly close to what he said.) In the case of the BBC—and, once upon a not-so-distant time, NPR and PBS—that meant a significant presence for the fine arts. Now it doesn’t. But in the absence of such programming, how can NPR and PBS justify their public subsidies? I like Car Talk, but in what possible way can it be said to constitute a kind of programming not otherwise available through non-subsidized broadcast outlets?"