I'm not familiar with the PSO process, but if it's anything like the similar processes I do know, the PSO contract will have strict criteria to judge the applicants - and only those criteria can be considered, whether or not they are what the travelling public want.
It's quite amusing, sometimes, the way the modern world works, never mind what the traveling public might actually want, never mind perhaps putting it to a public vote, "let's have a bunch of overpaid eggheads sitting in a back room someplace deciding how much public money we can waste this time".
The more I hear the more I know I made the right decision to get out of it and semi-retire to an island in the middle of nowhere.