When the way of consuming the medium changes, the message it carries changes as well. The reason public broadcasting is so well loved and "special" is that it was something collective (out of necessity). If I don't like charcircuit, I can find a youtube video declaring charcircuit a dangerous enemy combatant. When you are the only game in town, there was a sense of making it somewhat "casual" and we got things like bob ross and mr. rogers neighbourhood.

Sure, but PBS member stations also function as incubators, in addition to providing a platform. They provide (along with underwriting from 3rd party charitable institutions) artists/intellectuals/entertainers the upfront capital to produce their programming. YouTube isn't going to provide anyone with money upfront to make a show unless they already have a massive following. Mr. Rogers Neighborhood wouldn't exist if WQED hadn't taken a chance on a couple of 20 something's letting them produce Children's Corner in 1958.

It's certainly possible that's less necessary nowadays, given how cheap filming and creating video content is nowadays, but it's worth considering.

Imagine YouTube but publicly funded. No horrible AI targetted ads without any restraint. No monopolistic control over half the worlds viewing devices to control what's installed.

Instead, public good free informational content.

As corporate media demonstrates, depending on ads and therefore, corporations, inevitably leads to compromises in your news coverage. NPR has tried to avoid this.

donations from viewers don't come with strings attached, where as advertisers want content that is conducive to the agendas of the advertisers (which generally is something that enables their bottom line, more or less).

That is why donations are better, even if it makes less direct cash.

It's brand advertising itself, precisely to give the impression of 'being funded by listeners like you.' NPR has navigated trust far better than average for the media. A quick search shows some 54% trust in them, contrasted against 28% for the media at large.

When media runs non-stop pharmaceutical ads you obviously question their motivation when reporting on pharmaceutical adjacent topics, which are almost invariably neutral to positive. Yet when NPR runs non-stop Walmart articles [1], often in a neutral to positive fashion, most are unaware that they've received millions of dollars from the Waltons.

And FWIW those millions the Waltons have given aren't that much relative to their overall funding, but if you saw an equivalent amount of annual advertising from the Waltons on NPR, you'd certainly be looking at those articles from a different perspective than somebody who's unaware of said funding.

[1] - https://www.npr.org/search/?query=walmart&page=1

> “valuable per minute”

What NPR affiliate station you listen to? WNYC runs a quarterly week-long pledge drive. The rest of the time you might hear a “funded by listeners like you” drop, but nothing like the regular cadence of commercial radio. The minute measure is not over the same period.

I work for a local public radio station under NPR. First the funny part: public media stations are adamant that those aren't "ads" but are "sponsorships", as advertising would break their mission of being a non-commercial entity free from commercial influence. They get pretty granular with their rules in this regard. For instance you probably won't hear mention of pricing or subscription models in the messages because that crosses a line.

As a result we don't charge much for sponsorships. We still make money off of them, but it's small compared to what we receive from donors. IOW that flaw is our greatest strength: we aren't answerable to advertisers and only to our listeners.

Getting on my soapbox, when you see deals like ABC and Paramount licking Trump's boots, it's because they are deeply, deeply invested in those commercial interests. Many of those extend beyond advertising to trying to please the state and get merger approvals from the FCC, but in the end, for those guys it all comes down to revenue. That's important to keep in mind when you're looking at what they think is important to show you.

We're not perfect that's for sure, but we at least don't have to pander to advertisers.

Or maybe those stations will simply close, never to be reopened, which in the grand scheme of things seems like a worse outcome.

Those republicans have cheered on their local news being literally mouthpieces for a global company: Sinclair Broadcasting

Those republicans left Fox News when they were forced to admit that they lied, and instead tuned into "media" that kept insisting that the 2020 election was "stolen"

Those same people are cheering on an administration that erases American history because it is uncomfortable and cheer on a President who lies when his mouth is open.

Thinking they will suddenly come to their senses is just delusional.

>all the educational shows their kids watch.

They don't let their kids watch educational shows. They buy documentaries from religious fundamentalist groups and force their children to watch shows about how the scientists lie to them for satan. They take their kids to organizations run by the Discovery Institute, including exhibits about how dinosaurs are a lie perpetrated by science.

These people have been purposely nurturing an anti-science cult for decades. They have an entire "alternative" media infrastructure set up. PragerU is just a minuscule part of it.

Ah, yes, you must be comparing NPR to all of the fair and balanced “clear eyed” right wing media we’ve come to know and love. No extremism or bias there whatsoever… /s

Reality has a well known liberal bias.

> Such is the reason why so many are deserting the left, they’ve drifted way too far left.

As the country rapidly descends into a right wing totalitarian state, it's great that you identified the real culprit: people who complained our country was descending into a right wing totalitarian state.