In Los Angeles later this month, I’ll be participating in a panel discussion of public television. The topic: “Finding the Future of Public Television.” I am now figuring out what to say.

Which brings me to this bleg.

When I was studying at Oxford a quarter of a century ago, one of my tutors, John Gray, of Jesus College, made an arresting point about the great economist and libertarian theoretician, Friedrich Hayek. Gray pointed out that Hayek was a fervent proponent of state subsidies to the Vienna State Opera. It was not Hayek’s position, Gray argued, that the state should refrain from providing subsidies of any kind to artistic endeavors, but only that the state should refrain from achieving a monopoly position in any such endeavor.

Does any reader of this happy Corner happen to know where Hayek wrote about this? In which of his many books–and, for that matter, in which chapter and on which page? (The correct person to ask, obviously, is my old tutor, John Gray. But according to my Googling after he moved from Jesus College, Oxford to the London School of Economics he simply evaporated.)

The discussion, by the way, is being sponsored by PBS/CPB and produced by the good souls of the American Cinema Foundation. Time and place: October 14 at 8.00PM, the Mark Goodson Screening Room at the American Film Institute, 2021 N. Western Avenue, Los Angeles.