Random thoughts, dubious rants, curiosities and worthy citations on the media, politics, marketing, music, inanity, and animals, among other things. Words and pictures and stuff, mostly from south central Wisconsin USA
Megyn Kelly, FOX News mid-day infotainment anchor, is known for boldly claiming things to be fact when they are anything but. She is truly amazing in her ability to do this not ony with a straight face but with absolute conviction. It begs the question: Is she a really good liar, or just really doesn't care about having any shred of journalistic integrity? Perhaps it's both. I'm certain it's not a matter of intelligence, because she's not stupid. Just wrong. A lot.
Last week she boldly told a guest that no one on FOX News ever compared anyone on the left to being a Nazi... the other N-word. For the Jon Stewart and the staff of The Daily Show, to refute this claim was just too easy.
These nincompoops on FOX News, especially the clowns on the FOX & Friends morning program, are so often unintentionally hilarious that it's hard to keep count anymore. But the Daily Show does what it can...
It's not even worth pointing out their hypocrisy anymore, nor pointing out how they are so not credible in any journalistic sense whatsoever. Just point and laugh.
This video has been around for a while, but I still laugh at how dead-on it is. TV news is a commodity these days; one network or local station looks like the next, and then the next after that. Sure, FOX News drips of conservative memes, and everything is a crisis to CNN, it seems. But, especially at the local level, TV news is as predictable as Wonder Bread.
Charlie Brooker, columnist for The Guardian and host of the BBC program Newswipe, shows just how formulaic TV News field reports have gotten...
Parody at its best.
[Update: For video at it's best, view Brooker's report here in High Definition. I can't seem to get this thing to fit into Kerfuffle's low definition format. Time for a Kerfuffacelift perhaps.]
Yesterday I pointed out to a friend that there was a Tonight Show even before Jack Parr did it. It was actually Steve Allen who began the show in 1954 as part of a multiple day-part strategy conceived by NBC's Pat Weaver. Weaver's intention was to offer a topical late night program as a matching bookend to his morning Today Show, created two years earlier. While Allen and Parr got it going, Johnny Carson really made the show into a broadcasting icon in and of itself.
Alas, that was then, this is now. Jay Leno got tired of Tonight and made his play for prime time. He failed, miserably. His reward, it seems, is to screw new Tonight Show host Conan O'Brien right out of his brand new Universal lot studio. Sure, O'Brien's ratings weren't as strong as Leno's, but as every NBC local affiliate knows all too well, Leno's sucked big time. NBC made a miserly move to try to get out of producing high quality dramas and similar programming for a real life bobble-headed joke and cliche dispenser. FAIL.
So Conan takes the fall for their idiotic decisions. Granted, he lands on about $30 million. NBC Sports CEO Dick Ebersol trashed O'Brien in an interview with the New York Times' Bill Carter. Ebersol calls O'Brien gutless for taking shots at Leno, and cites the sharp decline in Tonight Show ratings as a failure on O'Brien's part. I'm no television genius like Dick Ebersol, but I have to think a show like O'Brien's needs more than seven months to find it's spot. Look at Letterman's track record early-on. (Isn't it curious how Ebersol can slag O'Brien for ratings shortfalls while his own NBC Sports' Olympics coverage is losing the network hundreds of millions of dollars. Explain that one to us, Dick.)
Of course, Letterman's been having some fun with this, as well he should. NBC more or less fucked him out of the Tonight Show gig back when they installed Leno. As Dave put it earlier this week, you'd think after that debacle, they'd have been a little more savvy about their late night franchise, but instead decided to make it as disastrous as their prime time efforts.
As this all unfolded, the FOX network (not the cable news schmucks, but the broadcast network) was mentioned often as a potential new home for either Leno or O'Brien. Non-compete clauses being what they are, that may be a long time in coming. But I think FOX may have a real opportunity. And some of that opportunity could come in stealing share from Comedy Central's The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. Consider that FOX only programs prime time until 10 pm EST. The 10pm spot is used by most local affiliates for a prime-time newscast. FOX could come back with a late night show that directly counters both Jon Stewart and the other network affiliates' late local news. With a strong enough hour, FOX could hold onto viewers that otherwise might have switched over to the Tonight Show or Letterman. If there was a $2 window for that bet, I'd be in line.
To extend the FOX scenario for which I'm willing to risk $2, consider that such a programming grid would mean after the FOX show concluded at Midnight, viewers could ride on over to ABC to watch the late night show that seems to have garnered hardly a mention in all this: Jimmy Kimmel Live. (Yeah, really. ABC has a late night talk show. Seriously. After Nightline or whatever that news thing is called now.)
Leno thought he might get a little positive mojo from turning to Kimmel earlier this week. He was wrong...
Looks like Conan's done, Leno gets a do-over, and I'll just stick with Letterman because he's really this generation's Johnny Carson in ways Jay Leno never was and never will be.
Well, it's come to this. Venerable conservative "news" network FOX News has become liberal. Say it ain't so!
Jon Stewart does what he does best as he takes a walk through the video archives to prove FOX News now leads the pack of liberal media... if you use their own previous reporting to define "liberal."
Oh, FOX. How unfortunate that you have memory issues, no longer being able to recall what was said on your network in previous years... and even recent months. Makes me think that maybe their key editors and strategists have the reasoning capacity of ten-year-olds.
Pieces like this support polling data that places Jon Stewart -- a comedian by trade -- at the top of the list of most trusted newscasters in America. Just pointing out the rank hypocrisy of FOX -- and countless politicians and other news organizations as well -- is enough to make Stewart as the most honest. And why not? By doing so, he demonstrates every day how full of shit most of the media... and most often, FOX News... really proves themselves to be.
President Obama put it rather well in his statement this evening...
For decades, Walter Cronkite was the most trusted voice in America. His
rich baritone reached millions of living rooms every night, and in an
industry of icons, Walter set the standard by which all others have
been judged.
He was there through wars and riots, marches and milestones,
calmly telling us what we needed to know. And through it all, he never
lost the integrity he gained growing up in the heartland.
But Walter was always more than just an anchor. He was someone we
could trust to guide us through the most important issues of the day; a
voice of certainty in an uncertain world. He was family. He invited us
to believe in him, and he never let us down. This country has lost an
icon and a dear friend, and he will be truly missed.
In a related story, serious journalism in television news died about 20 years ago.
