Monday, November 10, 2003

It isn't censorship...

When CBS decides not to air a program.

To suggest that it is, is to suggest that individuals and corporations should be forced to buy a product they don't want. (If that link doesn't take you to "A Sad Day for Artistic Freedom", scroll up: The target link in the original document is misnamed. But who expects the author to know HTML?)

But everybody's on this one, so why am I even mentioning it? Because I plan to approach it from another angle.

Noted Constitutional scholar Barbra Streisand continued:
Of course, CBS as a company has the legal right to make decisions about what they do and do not air. However, these important decisions should be based on artistic integrity rather than an attempt to appease a small group of vocal dissidents.

Where did Her Highness get the idea that anything, anything, gets on television based on artistic integrity? It gets on because the broadcaster thinks it'll keep your butt on the sofa long enough to watch the commercials. That's all. The program is only a carrier for the advertisements. If there is any artistic merit to the show at all, it is an accident.

Oh, I don't deny that dramatic excellence is a way to attract attention to your program, but surely it takes no more than a casual glance at the television schedule to see that, far from being the only way, it isn't even the most common tactic.

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