Public Broadcasting, Mass Culture and Class

While exploring the current current programs and archives of NPR and PBS, I was stuck by the similarities between their programs and the programs aired by Turkish public broadcasters when I was a child. Possibly modeled after BBC 2, which provided more “highbrow” programming, TRT 2 and TRT 3 offered alternatives to mainstream programming of TRT 1 and the non-state funded channels that followed. Foreign films and series, classical music concerts and documentaries were among the usual content. The radio counterparts mirrored a similar strategy.

Since public broadcasting services are created to serve without the pressures of profit-making, they provide people with access to certain cultural products, which lack the mass appeal required for commercial purposes. In that way, they contribute to representation of minority tastes. It is interesting to see how these coincide with “highbrow” tastes in the global context. The intricate relationship between class and taste has manifested itself in patronage of arts since the ancient times. J. Paul Getty's decision to open a museum is not that different from the Medici family's support of art during Renaissance. However, public broadcasting is not created to simply serve the highest echelons. It targets a bigger group of people, who share the tastes of the richest yet lack the means to improve circulation and access. This group is different than the masses and public broadcasting provides what profit driven mass media cannot to provide.

It is now impossible to ignore the effects of digitalization on public broadcasting. Digital technologies have enabled users to create and circulate content more easily so people are less dependent on public broadcasting services to access the content neglected by commercial broadcasters. Media companies have also started to explore niche markets more bravely as can be observed via cable TV's transformation in the last fifteen years that showed us “It's not TV, it's HBO!”

Still, popularity is accepted as an impediment for quality by many while mass culture (and popular culture) is associated with consumerism and reproduction of consent. Informing and educating with “thought-provoking” content appears to be the alternative championed by the defenders of high culture. Jeremy's post depicts how that type of content can become an exercise of “othering” via representation.

Nevertheless, reducing public broadcasting to elitism is not fair. All tastes deserve representation and instead of criticizing public broadcasting content for favoring biases of the upper (and upper middle) classes, it is necessary to think about ways to overcome the problems entailed. 180 Days: A Year Inside an American High School I watched on PBS travels at the borders of a similar ethnographic attempt to capture the problems of a Washington D.C. high school with predominantly African-American student body, yet manages to point out to the structural problems rather than merely reproducing stereotypes. Perlman's article on Black Journal underlines this complex nature of the politics of public broadcasting and its potential to create a counterpublic.

However, a counterpublic, by definition, implies participation and engagement. Like a public, a counterpublic is different than “the masses” that lack mobilization skills and activism. Therefore, accusations of elitism directed at the public broadcasting services are further complicated by the theories of democratic participation.