“The result of public broadcasting’s failure to reinvent itself has been a steady drop in ratings that PBS President Pat Mitchell said in an address to the annual PBS meeting in 2002 threatened to reduce public broadcasting to “irrelevance” in the television universe. Loss of ratings has led in turn to increased time allotted to corporate sponsorship segments and laxer standards concerning their content, making PBS stations less distinguishable from commercial television. It has also forced local stations to rely more heavily on endless “pledge” drives with their pablum programming of mediocre motivational speakers and Lawrence Welk re-runs.”