Why do the presidential debates matter in the day of the Internet?

[gergroy]

Mr Khan said:

badgenome said:

Mr Khan said:

PBS is 0.012% of the Federal Budget. It's like saying "I need to clean out my hard-drive" and deleting one .txt file

Wasn't particularly clever when Neil DeGrasse Tyson originally said it, and it's even less clever when you regurgitate it for lack of anything better to say. There's nothing you can point to in the federal budget that's worth cutting if that's the standard, including the oil company "subsidies" that Obama loves to bang on about. Ending those would only account for about two or three days worth of deficit spending at the current rate. That doesn't mean that they're not worth ending.

It's perfectly valid, because PBS is a fine institution, if only for what it provides to children, and costs America little. Not like Oil Subsidies which, small as they may be, do nothing but line the pockets of big oil.

So killing PBS would be like getting rid of a good .txt file.

This may be a silly question, but why does the government need to fund PBS?  Can't the programs on the channel be funded like any other channel, through advertisement revenue?