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From: hughes@mother.DEC (Gary  if I could walk that way  Hughes - CSSE uVAX Systems)
Newsgroups: net.tv.drwho
Subject: Government funded TV
Message-ID: <156@decwrl.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 8-Jan-85 08:50:49 EST
Article-I.D.: decwrl.156
Posted: Tue Jan  8 08:50:49 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 14-Jan-85 05:02:52 EST
Sender: daemon@decwrl.UUCP
Organization: DEC Engineering Network
Lines: 24

In Australia, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (equivalent to the BBC)
is government funded and is supposed to operate free of government
intervention. For the most part, this works very well. 

However, the ABC is answerable to nobody. Some years ago they announced that
they intended to provide programming that was 'culturally uplifting' and that
they 'would not pay attention to ratings' when choosing material. In the same
announcement they added that they were not going to buy ANY more Dr Who because
'it wasn't rating well enough'. This was in the series that ended with 'Revenge
of the Cybermen'. Of course they used to schedule Dr Who in a dead slot on
Sunday night, change the show time without preannouncing or preempt it for
World Championship Lawn Bowls just to help it along. 

Although I loathe the PBS grovelathons, I prefer the concept of being able
to contribute a relatively small sum of $$$ towards seeing programs that
I want to see rather than have my tax dollars spent on something that a
non-elected Head of Corporation wants to see.

Gary Hughes
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