WNED Sucks.

Several times a year, the local PBS station decides to stop it's regular programming in order to agonize and harangue Viewers Like Me into shelling even more dollars into the black hole known as the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. They start by airing mediocre concert performances, trotting out a never ending stream of flops from the 60s that I didn't care about the first time I heard them as a kid. Instead of tuning in to find Poirot or New Tricks , there's an assortment of blatherers, waxing nostalgic over Jon "Bowzer" Bauman or Ronnie Spector. 

Taxpayers regularly donate to PBS, albeit involuntarily :

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting(CPB) is a non-profit corporation created by an act of the United States Congress, funded by the United States’ federal government to promote public broadcasting. Historically, 15~20% of the aggregate revenues of all public broadcasting stations have been funded from federal sources, principally through the CPB.

More from Wiki:

The CPB’s annual budget is composed almost entirely of an annual appropriation from Congress plus interest on those funds For fiscal year 2010, its appropriation was US $422 million (including $2 million in interest earned). The distribution of these funds was as follows:

•         $21.0 million (a maximum of 5% of the total budget) for CPB administrative costs

•          $25.2 million (a maximum of 6% of the total budget) for funds to support the Public Broadcasting Service generally, as opposed to specific stations.

•          $281.85 million (66.8% of the total budget) for public television, distributed as:         

~$210.26 million as grants to individual public television stations         

~$71.59 million for public television programming        

• $93.94 million (22.3% of total budget) for public radio, distributed as:        

~$65.41 million as grants to individual public radio stations         

~$21.74 million as grants for radio programming acquisition         

~$6.79 million for public radio programming

Ever notice the sponsor credits that roll at the end of PBS programs? Here are but a few:

•  Dept of Education
•  Dept of Transportation
•  National Science Foundation
•  National Endowment for the Arts
•  US Army 

So go ahead, watch As Time Goes By or MI-5 without guilt, you have paid for much of this programming already.

After you've gotten reacquainted with Sha Na Na.

Funding for this blog is provided by public television viewers with additional support from contributors to The CryBreaffa! Trust, created to help ensure the blog's future.