Stop Hurting America Redux: Free The Daily Show

Posted by on December 16, 2007 at 1:40 pm. 2 Comments :

This is a follow up to my article proposing that the WGA negotiate individually with the production companies of The Daily Show and other comedy talk programs that feature current affairs issues: Stop Hurting America: The WGA And The Daily Show

In that article I made the argument that some of these programs contribute so much to public discourse that their absence was measurably harmful:

“While news programs continue spewing their corporatist, insider views of presidential politics throughout the strike, programs like The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, David Letterman, Saturday Night Live, etc., have become silent. This is not a trivial matter. Many of these programs have assumed a unique role in our culture by highlighting the absurd quirks and contradictions of our politicians and press. The light these programs shine on the political landscape is nowhere countervailed in the dimwitted din of the so-called Mainstream Media.”

“The tenor of our times is too tense to leave to the addle-brained punditry of CNN, Fox, et al. What’s coming round the bend of civic life in America needs to be reviewed and regurgitated by the creative minds that gave us Mess O’Potamia and ClusterF@$k To The White House.”

The day after I posted that article Patric Verrone, the president of the WGA, floated exactly the sort of proposal I was advocating:

“If any of these companies want to come forward and bargain with us individually, we think we can make a deal,”

Well, tomorrow it is going to be made official. The Guild has announced that they intend to invoke a legal right to force producers to bargain with them individually rather than as a group.

“In a letter sent to members on Saturday, negotiators for the Writers Guild of America East and the Writers Guild of America West said: ‘Each signatory employer is required to bargain with us individually if we make a legal demand that it do so. We will make this demand on Monday.'”

“The writers’ move was aimed at breaking what has been, at least in public, a united front by a small number of media conglomerates – General Electric, News Corporation, Sony, Time Warner, The Walt Disney Company, Viacom and CBS – whose entertainment units dominate the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, an industry bargaining group.”

That “small number of media conglomerates” is dominating a lot more than an industry bargaining group. They overwhelm our social consciousness, polluting our sources of entertainment and information with propaganda and commercialism. This tactic by the writers is encouraging on several levels. It hits Big Media at the core of their strength by dismantling the monolithic front that they use to batter down opponents. It empowers responsible production companies that want to fairly compensate their creative personnel and takes them out from under the shadow of their bigger brothers who never had their interests at heart in the first place.

Most importantly, for those of us concerned about keeping a tighter chain on our politicians and press as we get deeper into the campaign season, it provides hope for a return of The Daily Show and its peers. Every day that passes is a missed opportunity to reveal something new and scandalous that will probably be ignored by the Conventional Media.

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A Steady Diet Of Junk News

Posted by on December 15, 2007 at 12:52 pm. NO Comments :

Are you happy with the menu of calorie-free entrees dished up Big Media? Do you find endless stories about drunken heiresses and celebrities satisfying? Is being kept uninformed about major issues that actually have an impact on your life acceptable?

If so, you are probably thrilled with state of modern media. Forty-six years ago Newton Minow, former Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, referred to the media as a “vast wasteland.” Were he here today he might consider the contamination so irreversibly toxic that it would qualify as a Superfund site (bet you didn’t know that the EPA has a program for Contaminated Media).

In the same speech, Minow decried the parade of poor programming that littered the television landscape:

“You will see a procession of game shows, formula comedies about totally unbelievable families, blood and thunder, mayhem, violence, sadism, murder, western bad men, western good men, private eyes, gangsters, more violence, and cartoons. And endlessly commercials — many screaming, cajoling, and offending. And most of all, boredom.”

Aside from the decline of westerns in TV’s civilization, nothing has changed. Some marketers argue that the networks are just giving the people what they want and that the ratings for their low-brow fare are proof of their success. But ratings only measure which of the programs that were provided were watched. They do not measure what might have been watched if something better were provided. What’s more, ratings are not an indicator of quality. If they were, McDonald’s would have to be considered the highest quality food in the country. In fact, this is an area where TV and McDonald’s have something in common. As I wrote in Starve The Beast, they both have…

“…the cheapest crap that is loaded with filler and seasoning to appeal to the largest number of consumers with the least sophisticated taste.”

Kevin Martin, the current Chairman of the FCC isn’t fit to sniff Minow’s shoes (as much as he might like to). He is an unapologetic representative of the mega-corporations that presently dominate the media. He has consistently placed corporate interests above the public interest and now he is trying to rush through a vote on industry-friendly media ownership regulations that are opposed by a majority of the Senate Commerce Committee as well as the public.

Stop Big Media, an affiliate of FreePress, has produced a hilarious and frightening video that illustrates just how low journalistic standards in media have fallen in an era that has been defined by rapid consolidation. If Martin gets his way it will only get worse.

We, the people need to be heard about this – NOW. Martin has made it clear that he doesn’t care what the public wants, so it is now up to our representatives in Congress. FreePress has a simple form you can use to contact your senators. USE IT! And do so quickly because the FCC is voting December 18, which is this coming Tuesday.


It’s Best When Everybody Thinks Alike

Posted by on December 14, 2007 at 3:20 pm. NO Comments :

In this administration, as in the halls of Fox News, it’s best when everybody thinks alike – No matter how much they pretend otherwise.


The White House held it’s annual “Holiday” (that’s right, holiday) Party for the media last night and the guest list was, to no one’s surprise, heavily weighted to the right-wing regurgitators of whom the President is so fond.

This morning Dana Perino, the President’s press secretary, visited with a regurgitator on Fox News and had the following exchange:

Steve Doocy: [H]ow weird is it to have, Dana, people who appear on other channels, who bash the president all the time, and then, one night a year, they come into the White House, they bring their kids, and they say, Hi, how are you, as if they haven’t been bashing the president all year long?

Dana Perino: It’s a little awkward. And it was amazing to me, being in charge of taking the requests for invitations this year, how audacious some people are to call and ask to be invited to the president’s Christmas party.

It was nice of Doocy to so openly reveal that it is the “other channels” who bash the President, and not Fox, the President’s Cheerleading Squad. That sort of honesty has been more in view since Rupert Murdoch admitted that he tried to shape the agenda on Iraq. And Perino’s discomfort with reporters who are critical of the President says something about her lack of professionalism and her immaturity in the role of press secretary.

And speaking of lack of professionalism, another Fox regurgitator, Neil Cavuto, interviewed his boss Rupert Murdoch yesterday. The conversation covered Murdoch’s acquisition of Dow Jones (and the Wall Street Journal) and the launch of the Fox Business Network, for which Cavuto is the Sr. VP. Have they really sunk this low? A senior Fox News executive interviewing his boss on air. That would be like Dana Perino interviewing the President for broadcast (maybe I shouldn’t give them any ideas). What exactly would we expect to learn from that?

I guess we’ll just have to get used to Fox News employees interviewing other Fox News employees. And we’ll have to accept that the White House is no longer the people’s house, but an office for partisan business and gatherings.


Glenn Beck’s Ratings: Headline Snooze

Posted by on December 13, 2007 at 4:44 pm. 43 Comments :

When CNN announced the hiring of radio talk jock Glenn Beck almost two years ago, they used words like “cordial,” “conversational” and “not confrontational” to describe him. What they delivered was the polar opposite of that, as has been well documented by Media Matters. Despite CNN’s laughable depiction of Beck as “Miss Congeniality,” they knew exactly the sort of piffle they were peddling. Their programming strategy stated at the time was to…

“…build Beck into the type of TV personality that could siphon viewers from Bill O’Reilly, Joe Scarborough and other conservative hosts.”

They failed.

Beck’s ratings for November 2007 (25-54 demo) reveal a program on life support. At this point the humane thing to do would be to pull the plug and put Beck (and innocent TV viewers) out of their misery.

As shown here, Beck loses to all of his competitors in cable news. Both his live show and his repeat come in 4th out of four programs. That doesn’t leave much for him to brag about.

But that’s not the end of his problems. While Beck is unable to challenge his competition, he is also the weakest link on his own network.

On this chart you can see that the two lowest rated hours on Headline News belong to Beck. He is a TV anchor who is performing like a ship’s anchor and weighing down the network’s line-up.

This is not a case of Headline News being a less widely distributed network. Both Nancy Grace and Showbiz Tonight would either beat or play competitively against MSNBC’s schedule. Grace would even threaten CNN’s Lou Dobbs were she in the time slot.

These numbers demonstrate an inherent weakness that is specific to Beck. This is confirmed by looking at his year-to-year performance which is virtually flat. Beck’s audience in the demo for November 2006 was 148K (live) and 142K (repeat). That is essentially unchanged for 2007. For the same time period Grace’s numbers improved 20% (live), and 15% (repeat). Showbiz Tonight added 34% over their 2006 showing. So Beck is not only the poorest performer against his competition, he cannot even keep up with the growth on his own network.

It is also notable that Beck’s unpopularity seems to be confined to his television persona. In other media he is still a figure to be reckoned with. He is a top five talk radio host (last month he re-signed with Premiere Networks for $50 million) and he currently has a book on the New York Times Bestseller list. He certainly has fans who are able to find and consume his products elsewhere. So the fact that Beck can’t parlay his other media successes into something better than a washout on TV illustrates just how deeply unappealing he is as a television personality.

Glenn Beck WeakFor more evidence of this you just need to look back at the week Beck filled in for Paula Zahn last July. Despite moving up to CNN from Headline News, Beck barely scraped up the viewers he routinely got at his less-watched network home, Headline News. And he underperformed Zahn, who was canceled for poor ratings, by a whopping 23%

Clearly Beck has not lived up to the expectations CNN expressed when they hired him. And his performance over time suggests that there is not much reason to believe that he will improve. A responsible programmer would be seeking to cut their losses. And it’s not as if they don’t have a broad variety of AAA players that could be called up: Ed Schultz, Randi Rhodes, Thom Hartmann, Rachel Maddow, Stephanie Miller, Sam Seder, Taylor Marsh, Jim Hightower, Laura Flanders, Harry Shearer, or any other of the many distinguished progressive commentators. They could even draft their own Jack Cafferty who has developed a cult following on The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer.

You would think that the programming honchos at the network would be furiously grooming Beck’s replacement. Why wouldn’t they? They can’t blame Beck’s subterranean ratings on a generalized lack of interest because Beck excels in other media markets. They can’t be holding out for a sudden audience surge because there’s been no evidence of him connecting on that level in the past. They can’t believe that a racist, uninformed, arrogant host with a juvenile sense of humor is the next big thing in broadcasting because Fox News already has that market cornered and their ratings are sinking like a stone. And somebody at CNN must surely have noticed the soaring ascendancy of Keith Olbermann’s Countdown on MSNBC. It’s also worth noting that Dan Abrams’ new program, retooled to take a more aggressively honest approach to the news, is kicking Beck’s butt even though it is only a few weeks old.

So what is CNN waiting for? Are they masochistic gluttons for punishment who get pleasure from losing? Are they married to the repulsive and repudiated ideology spewed by Beck? Are they frightened, ineffectual, corporate bootlickers who couldn’t make a proper programming decision without a sackful of surveys and permission from their supervisor? It is just this simple: There is no business case for keeping Beck on the air. His program is a money pit and it’s fiscally harmful to the programs adjacent to it and, therefore, the network as a whole.

The only reason to give Beck a stay of execution would be fealty to the brand of caveman conservatism that he espouses. If CNN doesn’t cancel this stinker they will have settled, once and for all, the speculation as to whether they are a compromised media lapdog with an agenda aimed at placating the powerful and debasing journalism.

It’s time to pull the plug. Let CNN/Headline News know that Glenn Beck has to go. Let them know that you’re on to them and that keeping a loser like Beck reveals their biases. Let them know that you’re more interested in news and honest commentary than shallow contrarianism. Let them know that, although CNN has an obligation to provide diverse viewpoints, they have never had a program hosted by a progressive. And let them know that you have alternatives now (i.e. MSNBC, radio, the Internet, etc.) and you will not continue to watch CNN as long as it fails to provide programming that is honest, ethical and relevant to you, your community and your country.

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Somebody Alert Bill O’Reilly And Fox Security

Posted by on December 13, 2007 at 1:33 pm. NO Comments :

From The White House:

MRS. BUSH: Barney and Beazley, I’m so proud that you all wanted to become National Park Junior Rangers. Our national parks are so important. And in fact, the lawn where you play is part of our national parks.

President Bush and I wish everyone a very happy holiday.

What? No Merry Christmas? Is this evidence that The First Lady is offering aid and comfort to the Secular-Progressive enemies in the War on Christmas? Has the President cut and run? Have the terrorists won?

No need to fear – T-Warrior is here. Have no doubt that before you can slide down the MoonBat-pole, Bill O’Reilly will step forward and denounce this insult to America’s favorite religion: Christmasism. Never mind that only a couple of days ago O’Reilly declared victory in the War on Christmas, crediting himself with the glory he feels he so richly deserves. We have already seen those “Mission Accomplished” banners that didn’t really mean that any mission had been accomplished. So now, as always, the goal is to stay the course. Because surrender to the far-left, gay, flag-burning, pot smokers who murdered our savior, is not an option.


AMPTP Gets Punked

Posted by on December 11, 2007 at 8:36 pm. NO Comments :

A website satirizing the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers has been launched – no doubt by some enterprising and idle writers. They commandeered the domain AMPTP.com and produced a near copy of the producers site. It is absolutely hilarious. Some excerpts:

“While we’re not going to point fingers or assign blame, we do feel justified in saying that they [the writers] are entirely at fault.”

“It is now absolutely clear that the WGA’s organazis are determined to advance their own personal ideologies, political agendas, sexual preferences, barbaric tribal customs, canine wardrobe choices, religious beliefs and blood rituals upon working writers…”

“…we’ve got enough reality shows to choke a horse. Literally – one of the shows is “Can You Choke This Horse?” And for the fall, we’re already working on “Can You Choke This Horse With the Stars?”

I hope I never have to fight these guys. They are brutal.

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Chris Wallace Is A Damn Fool

Posted by on December 11, 2007 at 1:52 pm. 2 Comments :

Chris Wallace, host of Fox News Sunday, is still smarting from the Democrats’ refusal to submit themselves to the abuse that passes for debate on the Fox News Channel. Back in February, the Democratic Party pulled out of a debate that was scheduled to be broadcast by Fox News. It was a rare show of courage to deny the Republican network another opportunity to disparage the Democrats running for president. They should expand on that example and refuse all appearances on Fox. (see Starve The Beast). Rupert Murdoch and his media megaphone is openly hostile to their agenda and representatives. Fox will only use such appearances to distort their message and derail their mission. But Wallace is holding a grudge and recently told Politico:

“I think the Democrats are damn fools [for] not coming on Fox News. And my guess is that once you get a nominee, they probably will come on, because they know that we get a lot of voters they are going to need if they are going to win the election.”

And why wouldn’t they come on? Why wouldn’t they be consumed with giddy anticipation at the mere thought of appearing on a network whose hosts refer to them as “damn fools?” You’ll probably have to hire extra security to keep them from rushing the doors.

Certainly they are aware of how desperately they need you and how truly concerned you are about their prospects for winning the election. They know full well how many Democratic voters are devoted viewers of Fox News. Never mind the fact that…

“…research revealed that Fox viewers supported George Bush over John Kerry by 88% to 7%. Only Republicans were more united in supporting Bush. Conservatives, white evangelical Christians, gun owners, and supporters of the Iraq war all gave Bush fewer votes than did regular Fox News viewers.”

If there is anything that Wallace cares about it’s fairness. Well, that and balance, but let’s leave his mental state out of this. In further remarks to Politico, Wallace wonders…

“Just imagine if the Republicans, under pressure from right-to-life groups, refused to appear on CNN or MSNBC. I think there would be holy unshirted hell. I think there would be such talk about these people being captives of the extreme right wing and why are they afraid to answer questions. And I think the absence of that is very telling. At this point, it has become kind of a loyalty test inside the Democratic Party, … pandering to the far-left-wing. And we live with it.”

It turns out that we don’t have to use our imagination. Anyone who has watched any of the Republican debates can see that they are captives of the extreme right wing. Plus (keep your shirts on, hell or otherwise), Republicans have already implemented a boycott of MSNBC:

“We don’t mind skipping MSNBC. No one watches that channel anyway,” says a high-placed Republican consultant […] Word is, a growing number of GOP lawmakers have become mysteriously “unavailable” when asked to appear on MSNBC.

Wallace’s comments are proof of a threat issued earlier this year by the AP’s David Bauder when he warned that…

“A feud against Fox might not be the best long-term plan, either. People there have been known to hold a grudge.”

Holding grudges against news subjects is not exactly the sort of behavior engaged in by reputable journalists. Neither is calling them “damn fools” because they won’t help you increase your advertising revenue by sharing the stage with known enemies pretending to be reporters. Therefore, I suppose we can forgive Fox because they have never aspired to being reputable journalists in the first place. And Wallace might want to think twice about how he sweet talks politicians and other newsmakers to appear on his 4th ranked Sunday blatherfest. For the entire four years that Wallace has hosted Fox News Sunday, it has consistently lost the ratings battle to ABC’s “This Week,” CBS’s “Face the Nation” and NBC’s “Meet the Press.” Who needs who, Chris?

In the end, Wallace is just trying to keep his sense of humor:

“I used to laugh and dismiss this talk about how we were – that there was a liberal bias in the mainstream media. But I have to say in the four years I’ve been at Fox, I’ve come to believe that there is a bias.“

In that case, the four years he’s spent at Fox have taught him something – Fox is biased. Sure, it’s something everybody else has known all along, but Chris Wallace is a damn fool. We’re lucky he’s learned anything.


Bush League Justice Under Investigation At MSNBC

Posted by on December 10, 2007 at 6:02 pm. NO Comments :

Dan Abrams will be hosting a series of programs this week focusing on the abuses of the Bush Administration, particularly with regard to the Department of Justice. This is an important subject that gets far too little play in the press, but impacts everything from civil rights to political corruption to First Amendment freedoms of speech and religion, and so much more. The article announcing the program, penned by Abrams, covers all of these issues with the indignation of someone who loves the law and the fair administration of justice. Here are some selected excerpts:

“‘Bush League Justice’ is a series (airing Monday-Thursday at 9 pm on MSNBC) that stems from my increasing frustration and outrage over how the Bush Administration has politicized the usually apolitical Justice Department.”

“…this President has flipped the goals and mission of the [Civil Rights] Division and allowed it to become a tool of the radical right […] almost half of the new hires in that department who had ‘civil rights experience’ had ‘experience’ only in defending employers or -fighting- affirmative action.”

“The President has effectively declared the right to disobey more than 750 laws. From the interrogation of prisoners to torture to investigations by U.S. officials in Iraq, President Bush has added a caveat that says, ‘I will only enforce this if.’ So he is effectively telling Congress thanks for your advice on this law, but I reserve the right to ignore this law.”

“Maybe the most obvious betrayal of the public trust has been politically motivated prosecutions. A University of Minnesota study conducted this year shows that for every elected Republican investigated during this President’s tenure, there were seven elected Democrats investigated.”

“This series is long overdue. The scandal with the firings of the U.S. Attorneys under Attorney General Alberto Gonzales exposed the underbelly of this administration’s penchant for putting politics over objectivity and qualifications.”

The tone set by Abrams is both surprising and promising. He does not have the reputation of a firebrand activist, but he is clearly expressing something heartfelt in these comments. He was trained as a lawyer and his father, Floyd Abrams, is one of the most respected First Amendment attorneys of the 20th century. So perhaps Dan’s genetics are kicking in.

These issues are desperately in need of a champion, someone who can do for justice what Lou Dobbs does for immigration. And the protection and preservation of our Constitutional liberties is far more important than the racist scapegoating that demagogues like Dobbs engage in.

We’ll see, as the series unfolds, if Abrams’ passion for the law results in a broadcast that forthrightly exposes Bush’s contempt for fairness and equality in the administration of justice. There is a cornucopia of criminal misconduct to explore produced by both intent and incompetence. The scandals of the Alberto Gonzales era at DoJ have fallen from the media radar, but they are just as toxic to our nation’s future as ever. The political firings of department attorneys, the distortion of the mission of civil and voting rights prosecutions, the hiring of more than 150 lawyers from Pat Robertsons Regent University, the justification for torture, the disrespect for Congress and the doctrine of equal powers, the debasement of the Supreme Court – all of these matters need to be remembered and acted upon if our democracy is to endure.

An honest presentation of the record is indeed long overdue. An honest presentation should put to rest the question of whether impeachment ought to be on the table. I hope that these programs will finally provide what has been sorely lacking from a somnolent media for the past seven years: an honest presentation.


Rachel Maddow Poised To Replace Tucker?

Posted by on December 10, 2007 at 12:27 am. 7 Comments :

TVNewser is passing on reports (that are not much more than rumors at this time) that MSNBC has taped a pilot for a new program featuring Rachel Maddow and Bill Wolff.

Maddow currently has a talk radio program on Air America and she guests frequently with Keith Olbermann on Countdown. She is an attractive, articulate, razor-sharp political observer and analyst. Her courageous progressivism, honesty and insight would propel her instantly to the top of the pundit pack on cable news.

Wolff is presently VP of Prime-Time Programming for MSNBC. He also appears on Tucker as a fill-in for Willie Geist where he mostly cracks jokes about entertainers and pop culture. He is married to another MSNBC personality, Alison Stewart.

As a programming exec, Wolff has good reason to be testing new talent. His schedule is currently being dragged down by Tucker Carlson, on whose show Wolff was once the executive producer. While it is long past time to cut their losses on Tucker, there is no evidence that this pilot, if it exists, is intended as a replacement for him. If it is, Maddow would be an inspired choice who would bring intelligence and charm to the line-up – in other words, exactly the opposite of what Tucker brings.

Wolff himself seems to have a pretty good sense of humor, but I’m not really sure what he would add to a show with the substance for which Maddow is well known. Also, I can’t say that I particularly like this trend at MSNBC where their management casts themselves in roles on the network. Previously General Manager Dan Abrams gave himself a show following Olbermann’s Countdown. But if this is what it takes to get Maddow on the air, and Tucker off, I’m all for it.


Hypocritical Standards Practiced At NBC

Posted by on December 9, 2007 at 1:34 pm. NO Comments :

A few days ago NBC rejected an ad from Freedom’s Watch, a pro-war conservative front group for Republican interests. This was the second time that FW submitted an ad that exceeded the standards for broadcast due to its overt political content. In the previous ad they asked viewers to call their representatives and voice their support for the President and the war, but the phone number went to an operator who asks if you agree with the ad. If you do, your call is patched through. If you do not, they hang up on you.

Now NBC has reversed itself and approved the new ad for broadcast. I don’t particularly have a problem with that since I have long been troubled by the way networks make judgments regarding political content. But I do wonder why NBC caved in to the former White House operatives at FW when they never did so with ads from progressive groups. For instance, in November of 2004, NBC rejected an ad from the United Church of Christ simply because they expressed an inclusive philosophy that welcomed all people, including gays. In October of 2006, they refused to air an ad for the Dixie Chicks documentary, “Shut Up & Sing,” because it was disparaging to the President.

Hypocrisy in the media is rampant, and this is just more evidence of it.