Saturday, March 5, 2011

Saturday Blues

SC ETV is a South Carolina state-owned agency that provides public television and radio programming.

The overwhelming Republican majorities in the SC legislature refuse to either follow their betters in DC and vote to defund it; privatize it so it can flourish under the private sector model before which they claim to worship (as in most other states, where public broadcasting actually does things well); or give it the funding it needs to produce the Peabody Award winning programming it produce thirty years ago.

Governor Haley just wants to kill it off. So did Governor Sanford but the legislature vetoed his veto last year, giving it just enough money to keep limping along, tragedy and farce intermingles.

The latest local programming they are peddling is "Legacy of Opera", a program of 19th century warhorse non-opera music following the Metropolitan Opera season and leading up to Weekend Edition on NPR.

In keeping with SC ETV Radio's devotion to local microprogramming, today, "Legacy of Opera" lasted twelve minutes.

Granted, they can't control when the Met broadcast ends, but when they know it's gonna- regularly- be little more than a lick and a promise, with a host who stumbles over the script- they just ought not to act like they've some up with something of any caloric value whatever. Hell, just some some Rudy Mancke snake-handling stories from 1971.
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