PUBLIC TV STATIONS IN UTAH ENGAGE IN ANOTHER FUND DRIVE

Oh no! Another round of fund raising from the two "Public" TV stations broadcasting to Salt Lake City and environs. This seems to be the trend: public stations are not content with two fund drives per year. Now they add a third and in some cases a fourth.

I speak about KUED-TV, owned and operated by the University of Utah, and KBYU-TV, owned and operated by Brigham Young University.

Of course during the fund drives that seem to last upwards of two weeks, all regular programming is disrupted. Instead, views get "specials," like the Irish Dancers or Wayne Dyer or the Four tenors. Stop this madness, I say.

Stop all fund raising on local "public" stations. There has to be a better way.

If the cutting off of funds to PBS and NPR would have an effect of forcing local public stations to consolidate and coalesce, that might be a good thing. Instead of each community supporting its own local "public" station, I suggest a national broadcaster like BBC, Al Jazeera or France 24. Then public broadcasters would have less overhead, less staff, less local programming. This would mean an end to those pesky ever-present fund drives.

I say to KUED and KBYU, stop the seeking of funds over the air and give viewers a break. Find some other source of funding or get off the air.