GOP Civil War will soon be televised

Talking Points Memo: Fox’s monopoly on conservative cable news may soon come to an end.

A Bloomberg Businessweek profile published Thursday revealed Newsmax.com founder and CEO Christopher Ruddy’s plans to expand beyond his highly-trafficked website and influential magazine into television with a 24-hour cable news channel called NewsmaxTV — described as a “kinder, gentler Fox” — launching as early as June.

“Our goal is to be a little more boomer-oriented, more information-based rather than being vituperative and polarizing,” Ruddy told the magazine.

Business-wise, this doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. Demographic trends show that Republicanism — kinder and gentler or not — isn’t exactly a growth industry. Why you’d want to compete with Fox for an ever-shrinking piece of the pie is a bit of a mystery. Maybe a show on Fox or a syndicated Sunday morning yack show, ala “Meet the Press,” but 24 hours of “Gee, but aren’t Republicans swell”? Yeah, I’m not seeing the genius behind this particular business model.

Still, if conservatives want to start whacking away at Fox News, I can’t say I’m against the idea. But Fox is aimed straight at the brainless ‘bagger base, while it sounds like NewsmaxTV would be aimed more at the people that National Review used to try to attract — i.e., conservatives who take a moment to think about things — before they too decided that the gullible and easily riled dummies were easier to milk. That audience that Ruddy seems to want to appeal to may have passed on with Reagan — that is, the real Reagan, not the cartoonish Reagan ‘bagger’s worship now. That audience would be the Reagan/Dole/Kemp conservatives. Or as Tea Partiers call them these days, “RiNOs.”

The GOP Civil War might take to the upper channels of cable, but you’ve got to wonder how long it’ll last.

Duck Dy-Nasty

David Horsey, Los Angeles Times.

'Duck Dynasty' story is just another symptom of conservative demographic doom

The common thread among defenses of Duck Dynasty’s Phil Robertson’s bigotry — beside completely ignoring the racist aspect of it — is that A&E is buckling under pressure for special interests interested in “political correctness.”

This is, of course, wrong. What’s going on can be demonstrated by looking at polling data. In July, Gallup asked voters whether they’d vote for a referendum to legalize same-sex marriage in every state. The result of the study showed that such a referendum would win with 52% of the vote. And when we break it down by demographics, we see that the strongest support came from: #1. liberals; #2. those with no religion; #3. Democrats; and #4. 18-34 year-olds.

And that’s where conservatives misunderstand A&E’s reaction. They think it’s all about demos #1, #2, and #3. The truth is that it’s about #4. The 18-34 demo is the TV goldmine — young adults, mostly without children, who spend money more freely than any other demo. It’s not political pressure that has A&E spooked, it’s the market. Concern for the market — which conservatives claim to love — is at its heart undemocratic (which is why conservatives generally prefer it). 18-34s are a minority of Americans, but their spending habits give them outsized influence.

Firing Robertson has nothing to do with “political correctness” on A&E’s part. It’s about who brings the bread and butter.

Conservatives do not.

Million Puppet March in DC to support continued funding of PBS

Agence France-Presse:

Puppets urged politicians Saturday to keep up federal funding for US public broadcasting after Republican presidential challenger Mitt Romney threatened to pull the plug on Big Bird and friends.

Organizers of the Million Puppet March on Capitol Hill in support of Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) television and National Public Radio (NPR) put the turnout at around 1,000 people, three days before the US presidential vote.

Characters from the children’s show “Sesame Street” — a PBS staple since the network’s founding in 1970 — figured prominently, including two Big Birds, many Kermits and Elmos, and a Miss Piggy grooving to “Dancing in the Streets.”

But the family-friendly rally on a chilly and cloudy day also attracted a frisky marionette of President Barack Obama and a blue-suited protester in a Mitt Romney mask jammed into a trash can with Big Bird on his back.

There was no shortage of sometimes witty placards, like “Keep your Mitts off Big Bird,” “puppets for peace” and, on the arm of a middle-aged gentleman with a skunk puppet, “Romney smells funny.”

“We’re just making it clear that public media matters and it’s something that we want to see supported and we still want to see federal funding of,” said co-organizer Michael Bellavia, a Los Angeles animation producer.

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News Roundup for 2/3/12

Can't keep his story straight

-Headline of the Day-
"Soledad O'Brien Questions Mitt Romney Claim He 'Misspoke' On 'Very Poor' Comments."

CNN's Soledad O'Brien has what I think of as a "name of the future." In the coming years, when we're all just one big diverse jumble of cultures, names like Soledad O'Brien will be common. Or Yukio Garabaldi. Or Ludmilla Walking Bear. It's gonna be awesome.

That's got nothing to do with anything though. I just thought I'd bring it up. What's got something to do with something is Mitt Romney and his assertion that he doesn't give a hot squat about the poor. Or, rather, his previous assertion. It's not his assertion any more.

Now everything's all different. Mittens says he didn't mean to say what he said and it's all a big misunderstanding. He meant to say something entirely different. Although, what it was he meant to say remains a mystery, because he hasn't told anyone. This raises suspicions among people who use their brains.

Anyway, Soledad were talking on the TV -- just letting her mind wander or something -- and suddenly it hit her.

"That was after he repeated his stance twice actually on our show," she said. That's right, Mitt had originally gone on an explanation binge, before he decided that wasn't working. Now he says didn't really say it.

Who knows what he'll say tomorrow? (Huffington Post, with video)


-History comes alive-




Why does the name Ozymandias pop into my head? (McClatchy)


-Bonus HotD-
"Mitt Romney: We Are The Only People Who Put Their Hand Over Our Hearts During The National Anthem."

Yeah, that's about as wrong as it's possible to be.

Mittens is really turning out to be a gaffe machine, isn't he? (Buzzfeed, with video)

FOX's Gretchen Carlson Seems to Believe She's on a Real News Show

Need your daily dose of irony? Here's FOX's Gretchen Carlson expressing her discomfort with the fact that people consider The Daily Show "real news," courtesy of Media Matters:

Do I need to point out that Gretchen's little dog and pony show is such ridiculous bullshit that you wish there were a stronger word for bullshit? Here's a blast from the past:

That Brian Kilmeade, what a wacky Nazi that guy is, huh? But at least people don't think Fox & Friends is real news...

Do they?

Of course, TDS doesn't pretend they're a "real" news show. Maybe Fox & Friends should follow Stewart's lead, because it is most definitely not "real" news. I don't have a lot of use for happy-clappy morning TV news shows in the best of circumstances, but Fox & Friends is easily the worst of a bad, bad lot. It ought to come with a Surgeon General's warning label telling you the contents may make you stupid.