Paul:

I agree with your first two points, but aren't you being a little dogmatic on the third? Are you also opposed to public libraries, national museums and national and city parks? I doubt most of those would exist or survive for long if left entirely to charity or the market.

Of course government control over news and information is noxious, but what about its educative role or the ensuring of access to art, music, etc. The BBC has always done fantastic stuff in drama, music, local interest and history, etc. that would simply not be available if it was all left to the market. Are we to do without much of the sublime in life for ideological reasons?

The market does not ensure good taste, but conservatives tend to believe there is such a thing and that it should be promoted and democracy be damned. Up here, I would dance on the grave of CBC TV, but CBC radio is great and lets me listen to great classical music and jazz all day. My children, strict free-marketers all, insist on the private stuff, which irritaes, angers or depresses me and raises my blood pressure.

There is a long, honourable tradition of royal patronage of the arts and culture and we are lucky there was. Can't we loosen the limits of the creed a bit to ensure a little undemocratic, freely accessible beauty in life?

Peter - A government monopoly is hardly necessary to produce quality programming. If the British government wants to assure quality programming and is competent to do so, it can levy the $180 per TV tax and disburse the proceeds to private firms in exchange for airing content that meets government quality standards. Likewise with the $300 million we give to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, or the amount the Canadian government gives to the CBC. This technique would produce the same benefits, probably with greater efficiency, and without the problems with lack of accountability and corruption that socialist-style monopolies are prone to.

Now I don't know whether it's the government's quality standards, or the subsidies, that lead to whatever advantages you see in the CBC, but I don't believe it's the monopoly.

Paul

I'm not sure what you mean by monopoly here. The BBC has lots of competitors, but they are protected from losing the ratings wars or going bankrupt. Do you simply mean it is government ownership that is objectionable per se?

I understand your alternative but would it be better in practice? You would have ongoing bureaucratic surveillance and diktat on issues of taste, quality, etc, which could be a nightmare and actually lead to more hands-on, ever-changing and short-term political interference. The fact is that the BBC is removed from direct government control despite its ownership and privileges. Just ask Tony Blair.

Here's the deal, Peter. Them that has, gits.

That's why there are municipal tennis courts but not municipal bowling alleys.

Whether BBC programming is high quality is definitely in the mind of the hearer and viewer.

As for government's influence on the content of broadcasting, I offer you NBC, which had Toscanini and an entire symphony on the payroll until the gummmint made it shed the Blue network.

Peter - You're right, I should have distinguished government ownership from monopoly. I oppose both, but if the BBC is no longer a monopoly, then it's the ownership I'm objecting to.

As for wanting government-imposed quality with "independence," this certainly does not require government ownership (or monopoly). The board that sets standards for private recipients of funding could be just as independent of politicians as the board of directors of the BBC is now.

The fact is the government would face no greater problems managing private firms receiving tax money than they face managing government employees & a government-owned firm receiving tax money. So you can't come up with any objections to it that don't apply with equal force to the BBC or CBC.

Public libraries started out as private societies, where people paid dues to be allowed to check books out.
Although not widespread, every major city in colonial America had several.

Peter;

The very fact that you think government subsidies are required to support these activites shows that they're not popular enough to deserve government subsidies.

Moreover, we expect a government to purchase quality goods and services with our tax money. If the government is buying "art" that presumes that it is qualified to judge the quality of that art. That, I submit to you, is quite a troublesome corrolary.

AOG

I don't disagree in general. I'm just asking for a little loosening of the ideological boundaries here in the name of quality elitism.

Unfortunately for me, my argument gets dicey when we look at exactly how most government money for the arts and culture, etc. gets spent these days. It ain't Bach and Rembrandt, is it?

Harry:

If you were right, there would be lots of municipal steeplechase tracks and symphony orchestra stands, but few swings, baseball diamonds or basketball courts.

I think the government support corrupts the artists. When people spend their own money, they judge quality far more discerningly than government officials spending others' money. Artists who live off the government tend to challenge themselves less artistically and to become as skilled at political brown-nosers as at their art. Maybe government support is the reason we don't have Bachs and Rembrandts.

There are lots of symphony orchestra stands (and the symphonies to stand in them), and about 99% exist because of tax subsidies, and there are about 100 times more of them now than when Toscanini condicted the NBC Symphony of the Air.

Whereas there is not even one municipal bowling alley.

Which attracts more custom -- Beethoven or bowling?

Bowling by about 100:1.

Orrin laments the disappearance of roller derby.
It disappeared when the advertisers finally figured out that the people who watched had essentially zero disposable income.

The BBC isn't spending government money, it is spending taxpayer money, at about $125/year/TV.

TV detector vans cruise the countryside to back this up.