If You Think You’d Miss Big Bird, How About Downton Abbey, Mystery!, Antiques Roadshow and The Nutcracker? NPR? PRI?

“I’m sorry Jim. I’m gonna stop the subsidy to PBS. I’m gonna stop other things,” Romney said. “I like PBS, I like Big Bird, I actually like you too.”

It’s easy enough to identify the Public Broadcasting Company as an elimination for government funding, but those monies represent 15% of  their entire funding, enough to cripple the organization’s ability to not only produce new award-winning programs but to purchase others from producers and networks here and abroad.

PBS programs won nine News & Documentary Emmy Awards – the most earned by any organization – at the 33rd Annual News & Documentary Emmy Awards on October 1st. Multiple Award winner, POV, received a honor for their film “Armadillo.” 

PBS has become a whipping boy for those ambitious politicians who may have disagreed with their arts policies in the past, but for those who cannot afford cable costs — and that increasingly, has become an option for many seniors’ own budget cutting — PBS, NPR and PRI  are  bright spots on a landscape of less appealing,  increasingly violent and inane television shows on other networks.

 Frontline is soon to present … 

Come Nov. 6, voters are going to have two very different candidates to choose from in Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. You’ve heard about their politics, and their plans for the country. But what about who they are — and how they became the people and politicians they are today? Continue

“I worked with Big Bird. I served with Big Bird. You, sir, are no Big Bird,” The Lance Arthur, @thelancearthur, of San Francisco tweeted.

 — T. G.