In the controversy over whether we ought to defund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, NPR and PBS have tended to be lumped together under "public broadcasting." But as Mark Oppenheimer argues, the two entities are in dramatically different situations, mostly because radio and television are such different animals today:
Why the diverging fortunes? First, to a great extent, their competitors have set the terms. In the past 30 years, cable television got extremely good, while private radio got extremely bad. Today, if you want to do creative television, chances are you would take a job at HBO, AMC, or Showtime; it is unclear why, given the greater freedom (and money) those cable stations offer, you would work for PBS. Meanwhile, the radio situation is reversed: it is unclear what kind of self-loathing idiot wants to work on programming at a Clear Channel radio station...No, for someone serious about radio, NPR is the golden land.
