Waste of the Day: Throwback Thursday – Million-Dollar Soap Opera

Topline: The nonprofit One Economy Corporation received a $28.3 million federal grant in 2011 to improve internet access for low-income families, but the nonprofit used some of it to create entirely new internet content.

And what is that internet content? A soap opera

One Economy spent $937,000 — or $1.3 million in today’s money — to produce Diary of a Single Mom, a web-based TV show co-starring Billy Dee Williams of Star Wars fame.

That’s according to the “Wastebook” reporting published by the late U.S. Senator Dr. Tom Coburn. For years, these reports shined a white-hot spotlight on federal frauds and taxpayer abuses. 

Coburn, the legendary U.S. Senator from Oklahoma, earned the nickname “Dr. No” by stopping thousands of pork-barrel projects using the Senate rules. Projects that he couldn’t stop, Coburn included in his oversight reports.   

Coburn’s Wastebook 2011 included 100 examples of outrageous spending worth nearly $7 billion, including the money for online soap operas.

Key facts: The Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration awarded the grant.

Robert Townsend, the owner of One Economy, told the Washington Times that “Diary of a Single Mom” was inspired by a Pew Research Center poll showing that some people don’t use the internet because they don’t find content relatable to their lives.

“It’s about maximizing the incentives to go online,” he said. Apparently, there would be no reason for American families to use the internet if not for these actors.

Who approved this project?

One Economy President Ryan Saunier explained that he “went through a long due-diligence process with” the Department of Commerce to decide how to use the grant money. The Commerce Department, when asked why a federally funded TV show was approved, told The Washington Times, “As responsible stewards of taxpayer dollars, we are constantly working with each of our grantees to ensure their project expenses are reasonable, necessary and allowable under the grant.”

Diary of a Single Mom produced 26 episodes spanning three seasons.

Search all federal, state and local salaries and vendor spending with the world’s largest government spending database at OpenTheBooks.com.

Background: Federally-funded internet content didn’t end in 2011.

OpenTheBooks previously found $324 million spent on projects that created a podcast between 2020 and 2023. Topics included how “Satanists play an important role in American religious and political life” and an episode about an “AI chatbot experiment trained on erotic literature, feminist and queer theory.”

Summary: A TV show about struggling single mothers might not be so “relatable” if the government allowed taxpayers to keep their money in their wallets instead of billing them for soap operas and other wasteful projects.

The #WasteOfTheDay is brought to you by the forensic auditors at OpenTheBooks.com.

This article was originally published by RealClearInvestigations and made available via RealClearWire.