I don't FOX audiences "getting" the Python type of humor. Maybe the Comedy Channel, but defintely not the big networks.

One must be educated and elite, dear boy, to properly appreciate anglophile wit. Because Spam spam spam spam. Lovely spam! Wonderful spam! flies above the intelligence level of anyone who would go to a Ben Stiller movie or who would watch unwashed lowbrow humour like the Drew Carey Show on network television.

one can not help but wonder why we need taxpayer subsidies for this sort of thing.

The article doesn't indicate the funding source for this show. PBS is a private, non-profit broadcaster which receives most of its money from private sources and royalites. Most government money comes in the form of grants geared toward particular programming.

Anyone concerned with subsidizing the broadcast industry should listen to Reupblican Representative Chris Cox who has been critical of the $100 billion in digital spectrum subsidies given to private broadcasters over the past few years. This far outstrips the indirect money going to PBS.

Anyone concerned with subsidizing the broadcast industry should listen to Reupblican Representative Chris Cox who has been critical of the $100 billion in digital spectrum subsidies given to private broadcasters over the past few years. This far outstrips the indirect money going to PBS.

I don't see how criticizing the subsidy that PBS receives is equivalent to defending any other subsidy -- and I don't see how pointing out those other subsidies justifies the one to PBS.

I don’t see how criticizing the subsidy that PBS receives is equivalent to defending any other subsidy—and I don’t see how pointing out those other subsidies justifies the one to PBS.

I am not justifying subsidies to anyone. James expressed concern about why "taxpayer subsidies" were going to prop up a show with commercial appeal and wondered why a "commercial or cable network [would] not produce this show."

My point in bringing up Cox's critiuqe is that if a commercial network was producing the show they would be receiving subsidies as well.

In discussions of PBS and NPR there is a tendency to set them up in distinction to commercial broadcasters who operate by "market" principles. The important thing to realize is that the latter are highly subsidized and that the notion that a "free market" dominates the economy of commercial broadcast media is a myth.

Spam spam spam spam. Lovely spam! Wonderful spam!

Yes, absolutely. The brilliance in these skits is utterly astounding.

(eyes rolling)

Don't go after the Beeb too much, guys.
Python re-runs are their cash cow, these days... and are getting more in terms of raw viewership than anything they're turning out currently.

Which oughta tell you something of the quality of what they're turning out currently.

Let's put it this way; if it wasn't govenment owned and run it'd have been out of biz a long time gone.

lets see how religiously conservative the right wing nuts can force monty python to become-

The subsidy is not free you see, we all have to pay for it by watching what the religionists want us to watch.

Look at the converse and see which rings more true:

lets see how liberally deviant the left wing nuts can force monty python to become-

The subsidy is not free you see, we will all have to pay for it by watching new characters, one of every skin color, living in a "non-traditional" "family".