Misperceptions About PBS and the Budget

It is the least important issue in the presidential campaign, the question of Big Bird. In the recent debate, Republican candidate Mitt Romney told host Jim Lehrer "I'm sorry, Jim, I'm going to stop the subsidy to PBS. I'm going to stop other things. I like PBS. I love Big Bird. Actually like you, too. But I'm not going to keep on spending money on things to borrow money from China to pay for [it]." In the following days, it was perhaps the most discussed single topic raised in the debate (not counting Obama's semicomatose performance). It seems crazy to stop the subsidies for educational television, but there it was, he'd do it.

The Lede, a New York Times blog, has a rather wordy and awkwardly-written story about how the international community sees this:

At least some of the confusion among viewers watching the debate from outside the United States centered on the question of how Mr. Romney expected to get votes by pledging to eliminate state support for televised educational programming, and news, which is taken for granted in much of the developed world. Romney’s Threat to Big Bird Sows Confusion Abroad, and Feeds It at Home

It is always strange to travel to foreign countries and be asked to explain certain American quirks. People in other countries cannot understand why we won't take care of our own people, why we don't regulate guns, why we waste so much, why we want to go to war so often -- in Spain I was once asked, "Is it true that after work, Americans go home and watch television?" They are curious about us. And now a candidate for President of the US wants to cut support for educational TV.

But the interesting stuff is further down in this blog, reporting on a survey conducted last year.

As Politico reported, “Most Americans think public broadcasting receives a much larger share of the federal budget than it actually does,” according to a poll conducted for CNN last year. The results of that survey, which asked respondents to estimate what share of the federal budget was spent on certain programs, found that just 27 percent of Americans knew that the money for PBS and NPR was less than 1 percent of government spending. Remarkably, 40 percent guessed that the share was between 1 and 5 percent and 30 percent said it was in excess of 5 percent — including 7 percent who said that more than half of the federal budget was spent on television and radio broadcasts.

Asked if the spending on PBS and NPR should change, 53 percent called for it to be increased or stay the same, while just 16 percent said it should be eliminated entirely.

It might seem strange for anyone who knows that the federal government spends so little on PBS to begin a discussion of necessary cuts there, but perhaps Mr. Romney has calculated that the undecided voters he is chasing might be among the three-quarters of the American population that thinks the subsidy is far larger than it is.

Mother Jones reports that "the Center for Public Broadcasting, which funds PBS, made up .00014 percent of the federal budget last year." A commenter did the math and reported that it costs each American about eighty cents a year. Slightly more than one ten-thousandth of one percent of the budget.

About one person in every fourteen believes that more than half of the federal budget is spent on radio and TV broadcasts. I can only think that people who spend a lot of their time watching television and listening to the radio must think that these media are magnified and somehow more important than things like defense, energy, transportation ...

The NYT blog explains how the system works.

A spokeswoman for PBS, Anne Bentley, told USA Today that the Congressional subsidy does not go to PBS or NPR, but to local stations around the United States that pay fees in exchange for broadcast rights to their programs, which are produced with donations and revenue from other sources. Ms. Bentley added that Congressional support accounts for up to 50 percent of the operating budgets for some local stations in rural areas. “They’re really in jeopardy of going dark if they don’t receive funding,” Ms. Bentley said.

Romney thinks it will help him to say he is going to cut fluffy things like educational television and support for the arts. As long as people are ignorant these statements may attract votes. If he can save fifty percent of the federal budget by firing Big Bird, well, hey yeah, who cares if some liberals whine about it, fire the damn bird!