How come CPB and PBS do not go private? Can't Bloomberg buy them or something?

[Wanderlust988]

Why is our side just letting them wither on the vine? We have plenty of big donors that could just buy them outright. They can't be THAT expensive. It's not like buying ABC or something.

[Ocelot II]

1. Because they were created and organized as *public* entities that by definition

don't have to depend on advertising and therefore can present programming that doesn't have to pander to commerce-driven popular culture. Programs like Masterpiece Theater and Frontline won't survive if it they have to depend on selling ads to survive.

[elleng]

2. They ARE largely private, most of funds anyway.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) is a private, nonprofit corporation created by the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967.
It serves as a steward of the federal government's investment in public broadcasting, acting as a buffer between partisan politics and public media, and providing funding for programming, stations, and technology.

The corporation doesn't produce programming and it doesn't own, operate or control any public broadcasting stations. The corporation, PBS, NPR are independent of each other as are local public television and radio stations.

[lostincalifornia]

3. They depend on a substantial amount of funding from CPBS.

and then distributed to the local PBS stations.

Each local station will now be on their own for funding, and some markets are just not going to survive.

[usonian]

4. I would like to see a list of ways to support public broadcasting, both national and local.

Local stations might be a long list.

If you go to pbs.org, they automatically geolocate you, so the donation option is only for your nearest outlet, or at a location you give the web server.

So, to support them all, I need to change locations tens or hundreds of times? Not really.

No GoFundMe for the national operation.
Open to suggestions.

[Scrivener7]

5. Going private is how TLC went from being The Learning Channel and giving us things like Cronkite's

amazing Great Books series to being the home of the Duggars.

Going private will make them just another cable station at the whim of their advertisers.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

6. It is a private corporation. Why do you think that having a billionaire make up the lost funds wouldn't change the

organization's mission?