Nelson Au
Senior HTF Member
- Joined
- Mar 16, 1999
- Messages
- 19,040
Not sure I should post this in the TV section, but it's a topic that's been on my mind a while.
I guess funding for public television has taken a really deep dive recently. Not sure about other parts of the country, but the largest PBS station in my area is KQED. It's a San Francisco based station that's been around for a very long time. They in recent years bought out a competing PBS station based in San Jose and have taken over the entire San Francisco Bay Area with two main stations, channel 9.1 and 54.1 with additional 9.2 and 9.3 and 54.2 up to 54.4 channels of programming aimed at cooking and home improvement and children's and science and so on.
But of late, they are doing more and more pledge breaks. The last few years you'd see a couple a year and they last two weeks. But this past year it seems like even more. They just did one that lasted the whole of June. Then the first 2 weeks of July was back to normal and this weekend it's back to pledge programming again!
Certainly running two stations is a major financial burden! I'm sure with the bad economy, people simply don't have extra money to pledge with and the funding from other sources are limited as well.
Makes me wonder if the pledge drives are like this all over the US.
I guess funding for public television has taken a really deep dive recently. Not sure about other parts of the country, but the largest PBS station in my area is KQED. It's a San Francisco based station that's been around for a very long time. They in recent years bought out a competing PBS station based in San Jose and have taken over the entire San Francisco Bay Area with two main stations, channel 9.1 and 54.1 with additional 9.2 and 9.3 and 54.2 up to 54.4 channels of programming aimed at cooking and home improvement and children's and science and so on.
But of late, they are doing more and more pledge breaks. The last few years you'd see a couple a year and they last two weeks. But this past year it seems like even more. They just did one that lasted the whole of June. Then the first 2 weeks of July was back to normal and this weekend it's back to pledge programming again!
Certainly running two stations is a major financial burden! I'm sure with the bad economy, people simply don't have extra money to pledge with and the funding from other sources are limited as well.
Makes me wonder if the pledge drives are like this all over the US.