>continues to support the very medium that brought his joy and creativity into American homes
The message is more important than the medium. With the advent of the internet and platforms like YouTube it's easier than ever to get your video, your message, into the homes of America.
Sure, but PBS member stations also function as incubators, in addition to providing a platform. They provide (along with underwriting from 3rd party charitable institutions) artists/intellectuals/entertainers the upfront capital to produce their programming. YouTube isn't going to provide anyone with money upfront to make a show unless they already have a massive following. Mr. Rogers Neighborhood wouldn't exist if WQED hadn't taken a chance on a couple of 20 something's letting them produce Children's Corner in 1958.
It's certainly possible that's less necessary nowadays, given how cheap filming and creating video content is nowadays, but it's worth considering.
Youtube has incubated many multiples the number of creators than PBS member stations despite not providing upfront funding. Most creators don't start out from corporations or business loans.
Let’s compare MrBeast with Mr Rogers…
We got Ms Rachel from YouTube, who is genuinely fantastic.
exactly. would veritasium, 3brown1blue, action lab, nile blue/red, up and atom, simone, etc. even exist via the PBS funding model?
The "PBS spacetime" channel exists, so they're doing something right.
If it was properly funded? Quite possibly. If it had the same funding as Youtube's ad revenue then I think you'd have all those, but maybe a lot less of PewPewDie and Dude Perfect.
which channel is simone? the name is too generic, a search only turns up uninteresting stuff.
Pretty good chance they meant Simone Giertz, who is fantastic:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3KEoMzNz8eYnwBC34RaKCQ
She got her start by being "Shitty robot queen" on reddit, not youtube.
Imagine YouTube but publicly funded. No horrible AI targetted ads without any restraint. No monopolistic control over half the worlds viewing devices to control what's installed.
Instead, public good free informational content.
Now Imagine it costs 100x what it costs google to run, but it has 1/100th the features and is down often.
If everything was geared towards efficiency, there wouldn't be any investigative journalism or open source software.
Everyone would be shooting for their own gain and we would all be worse of as a result.
Why 100x the cost? What features are so important besides functional URLs to videos?
Sharing videos publicly online is hard and Youtube is fake democratization for market capture.
As long as I'm imagining, I'd also like a pony.
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When the way of consuming the medium changes, the message it carries changes as well. The reason public broadcasting is so well loved and "special" is that it was something collective (out of necessity). If I don't like charcircuit, I can find a youtube video declaring charcircuit a dangerous enemy combatant. When you are the only game in town, there was a sense of making it somewhat "casual" and we got things like bob ross and mr. rogers neighbourhood.