A message from a viewer…
I got this email from a concerned (presumably) Canadian viewer today, regarding my company’s television station:
To Whom It May Concern:
I am writing you tonight to advise you that I will never pledge one cent to your station or your network.
The only time you have any decent program is when you show the British comedies or when you have big pledge productions. And those pledge productions are typically made up of 20 percent programming and 80 percent begging.
I know you Americans think you have nothing to learn from anyone else in the world but, believe me, you have plenty to learn.
For example, about public broadcasting. Instead of constantly begging and giving excessive glory/publicity to giant corporations making minuscule donations so they can come across as “good corporate citizens”, why don’t you all get up on your hind legs and demand that your ultra right-wing federal government provide government funding for a real public broadcasting network?
You need to take a good long look at Canada’s CBC or the U.K.’s BBC. Where is the investigative reporting and hard-hitting public affairs that are the mainstays of most “public” (as in public interest) broadcasting.
95 percent of your programming consists of pure crap such as “Night Business REport”, “Antiques Roadshow” and “Lawrence Welk.”
You’ll never get any support from me until you start acting like a public-interest broadcaster. And that means hard-hitting journalism and exposes of your rotten political-military-industrial system. Under George W. Bush and your ultra-right-wing congress, America has become not only the most corrupt and greediest nation in the world, but an unchecked superpower incapable of making any contribution to the world other than waging war on poor, innocent peoples who can’t defend themselves in order to make the super-rich pigs who control the U.S. energy industry even richer.
PBS and WQLN have become the laughing-stock of the world, just like you piece-of-shit president.
Yours truly,
Henry B.J. McRandall
P.S. – I challenge you to come up with an intelligent and honest response.
How I wish I was allowed to field these questions. I’m pretty certain that I could come up with an honest answer, and one that’s at least as intelligent as his email.