We know this, because public stations do exist where commercial stations don't. If we reduce listeners enough, to bpub, even the public station can't make it and there's no classical station at all. This is interesting because the public station relies on generosity, while the commercial station relies on self-interest. Well we know that public stations can sometimes earn more, as argued above. I don't see any obvious reason commercial revenues should rise faster than public.
Public stations get much funding from the government.
But suppose all government funding was removed. Surely public stations would still sometimes exist. If so, it is still true that public stations at least sometimes can earn more in donations than private stations can in ad revenue. Return to main Notes page. This page maintained by Steven Blatt .