Lawrence Grossman, a former president of PBS, has proposed that public television stations air programs containing commercials two nights a week. If that proposal weren't shocking enough, it's backed by top executives at major public TV stations in Chicago, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Miami, and Minneapolis-St. Reporting this electric bit of news, New York Times reporter Lawrie Mifflin added that eight public stations experimented with commercials in the early 1980s. The experiment was discontinued - but not because it failed. We wish it had been made permanent.
Liberals think there's nothing ghastlier than a commercial and killed the concept.
Now they're at it again. Sharon Percy Rockefeller of Washington behemoth WETA-TV, which throws millions around on new buildings in the nation's capital, is appalled by the new proposal. This solution would change the philosophical basis of public broadcasting. Either we are a noncommercial educational system or we're not. These supposed anti-commercial purists ought to either ban the nonprofiteering, or let the public pay for public TV voluntarily and not through forced taxation.