"Mike" wrote...

The beginning of the end was a long time ago when Newt Gingrich
sucessfully got spending on these things cut back during his tenure in
congress. If you recall the republicans at that time were decrying a
liberal imbalance in funded arts programs and citing such works as
Maplethorpe? for being vulgar and having no real value.

After those cutbacks public broadcasting, both TV and radio suddenly
started have corporate tag lines before and after programs. They
essentially ammount to commercials and they have gotten more and more
like the traditional broadcast commercials. Obviously this is because
they are courting money from big corporations.

I hate to be the one to break the news, but NPR and PBS have had those
corporate tag lines (they're called "underwriting" in the trade) since they
began broadcasting. For a while, PBS was known as the "Petroleum
Broadcasting System" because of the prevalence of oil company underwriting
(e.g., Gulf's underwriting of Masterpiece Theatre, which they no longer do).
Annoying and troubling? Yes. But not new.

Peace,
Paul