Battling for TV's Relevance

Have you heard about the battle royale between Time Warner cable and the Fox network's threatened walk-out from the cable television system? Or Time Warner's pending decision to drop Fox from their lineup? The story varies depending on who's telling it.

Seems that Fox is demanding new, higher rates from Time Warner to carry the network to its cable subscribers. And Time Warner is barking back, saying they're not going to pay a higher fee because the cost would ultimately fall on their precious subscribers.

In the middle, as usual, sit the subscribers themselves: people who have been paying their cable bill and - from what I hear friends say - putting up with shoddy service for years. At risk are the many sporting events scheduled to air these next few days on the Fox network, as well as several popular Fox prime time shows. If Fox and Time Warner don't reach an agreement by midnight tonight, some or all of Fox's programming might be blacked-out across our area for people with cable TV. The world won't come to an end because of it, but considering how football-crazy this part of Texas is, one might think it has.

Me? I don't have cable. I don't have a dish, either, or any other fee-based TV provider. You think I want to PAY for the trash that constitutes network television these days? Fortunately, I don't live in a neighborhood that bans TV antennae (thus requiring homeowners to purchase fee-based TV). Neither do I watch much television except sitcom re-runs and PBS anyway. So, for me, fee-based TV isn't worth it. For a lot of other people, however, it is; and the ones I know who have cable seem to complain a lot about its reliability, cost, and customer support.

But Fox and Time Warner don't care about any of us anyway, except when it comes to cable subscribers paying their bill. Because all they care about is revenue, they're looking for any way they can find to get as much money out of their product, and if cable customers are going to get jilted along the way, so what? While making a profit isn't a bad thing, how one goes about making a profit says a lot about one's perception of the people buying their products. Both Fox and Time Warner say they're not going to keep football programming from north Texas, but they've certainly dangled the possibility low enough to make people sit up take notice. What this episode is doing to both company's credibility is anybody's guess at this point.

After watching Fox and Time Warner duel, out have come the pundits who say this is all part of the preliminaries for the end of free broadcast television as we know it. They say because producing new shows for network television has become so expensive, plain old advertising doesn't cut it anymore. Today's television audience has become so sophisticated and demands such technological wizardry in its entertainment that sponsoring companies once relied upon to cough up advertising dollars are balking at what it costs for a 30-second spot on even a poorly-rated show. Indeed, the old advertising model of cigarette companies trotting out celebrities before half-baked backdrops and fake plants is so passe as to be absurdly amateurish. Indeed, even the amateurs of today (which encompasses 90% of current TV actors) command a level of showbiz that would stun the medium's founding fathers (and mothers).

While it's amazing that costs have risen but quality has fallen, what's more amazing is the rate at which American viewers - who claim they don't have enough time - seem to be able to justify the dollars they spend on fee-based television. Most of middle America pays for their TV access now, leaving the elderly, folks in the rural hinterland, or in the slums to serve as the backbone for free broadcast television. And what market do you think advertisers are going to go after? They want the viewers who have already proven they can be bought - because they're paying for their TV broadcasts! If they're that careless with their money, maybe they'll drop a few more clams on this car they can't afford or the home trinkets they don't need.

Of course, I'm being cynical, aren't I? After all, I've already acknowledged that some people have cable because it's forced upon them (more's the pity). And if you're really a sports freak, ESPN probably is worth it to you - college football is certainly better for you than most everything else on Fox. So I'm not saying that all television is bad, or even that people shouldn't have to pay for it. On a certain level, it's a basic function of capitalism for people to pay for what they use, even if they still have to put up with all the commercials.

What gets me is spirit with which this whole Fox - Time Warner deal is going down. Fox's Rupert Murdock was quoted recently as saying it's impossible for him to produce programming without raising a lot more money. To Murdock I would ask, "and what makes you think your programming is good, just because a lot of people watch it?" A democracy is good when it comes to deciding political leaders, but just because a lot of people like something doesn't make it good or right. A lot of people used to like to smoke. A lot of people used to think the world was flat. Just because Fox produces a lot of programming that people like doesn't mean that programming is any good. It just means Fox is capable of appealing to the lowest common denominator. And you need MORE money to do that?

I'm not just blasting Fox; take any of the networks and really think about their programming. Where are shows that will be legendary for their quality? Shows like Seinfeld, which spent as much time nurturing their characters as they did spitting out ingenious catch-phrases like "no soup for you!" What about the Gunsmokes, Paper Chases, Columbos, or even the campy Star Treks? Maybe these don't qualify as the best entertainment of all time, but they're certainly classic for the medium of television, whose own legitimacy as an art form, even at the dawn 2010, has yet to be completely accepted anyway.

Here's another question: how can the BBC, Britain's quasi-governmental production company, produce such programming gems as "As Time Goes By," "Office," and others at a fraction of what it costs Hollywood studios? Is it because they pay their actors far less, and their production staff even less? Is it because they re-use props? Or is it because they rely heavily on well-honed scripts and classically-trained actors to compensate for what the technical sophistication may lack? In other words, do they strive more for the upper end of the entertainment spectrum, as opposed to the lower end?

At what point will American television executives - both in the production and distribution sides - realize that they serve the American viewing public far better when quality acting, writing, and directing (the core components of any performance-oriented art) serve as the medium's standard-bearers?

Free broadcast television may soon be a thing of the past. But if we're all going to have to pay for TV, it better get much better pretty fast.

Oh, What Fun It Is...

In case you were wondering, suburban Detroit is not America's most scenic Christmas vacation spot.

And while the refurbished terminal now housing American Airlines at Detroit's Metro Airport is brighter than the old terminal, it is woefully less efficient. I think we walked half the way from Dallas to Detroit in that interminable terminal.

On Christmas day, some idiot Nigerian tried to blow up a plane preparing to land at the same airport, but the explosives packed between his legs malfunctioned. Meanwhile, the Fort Worth - Dallas area enjoyed its first white Christmas since the 1920's.

A strange way to spend the Christmas holidays. Fortunately for us, our family time pretty much revolved around everything else. Funny, isn't it - how five kids can draw the focus from your own world onto their antics?

Upon returning home, I started checking out FaceBook, and discovered an obscure presidential order that was signed under the cloak of darkness (the darkness being the current healthcare debate) on December 16. You won't find this on any news site; you'll have to read about it on your favorite blogger's site. Just Google "amending executive order 12425". I'll wait while you check it out.

Hadn't heard about "amending executive order 12425", had you? That Obama has granted INTERPOL exclusive privilege to ignore standard law enforcement procedures regarding the rights of American citizens, our privacy, and due process? Depending on the website you researched for this topic, the vitriol against Obama ranges from "maybe we don't know the full story" to calls for impeachment. I would agree with one friend on FaceBook who wondered when Obama is going to prove he's on our side.

Not that Obama is as atrocious a president as Rush and his cronies claim him to be. If George W. Bush was a Democrat, right-wing pontificators would have had similar ammunition with which to blast him (think government spending, immigration, bailouts). From where I stand, the last good president - despite his flaws - was Ronald Reagan. Reagan had the Iran-Contra scandal and a wife who consulted mystics, but he was in the right place at the right time to help push open the Iron Curtain, along with the much-maligned Iron Lady of England, Margaret Thatcher. Maybe anybody who was president at that time could have done the same things Reagan did, but it was Reagan who sat in the Oval Office then, and I don't mind giving him credit for the role he played in the historic stand-down from the Cold War.

Flash forward to December 16, and we have President Obama amending the original amendment signed by President Reagan actually certifying INTERPOL in the USA to begin with. Except Obama went someplace Reagan would never have gone: on behalf of the citizens of the United States, Obama signed away our rights to due process so that INTERPOL can operate virtually without impunity despite our national sovereignty. That, my friends, is not the mark of a good president, whether they be Democrat or Republican.

So, with all of the weird goings-on this Christmas season, from the warped, sleazy healthcare mess to an impotent suicide bomber, we add the sly bit of sovereignty-busting by our very own president.

Oh yes, add the sloppy, poorly-thought-out missive from the Department of Homeland Security - after the Detroit incident - that airplane passengers couldn't go to the restrooms during the last half-hour of their flight. As if that's the only time during the flight in which an explosive can be detonated!

With the Year of Our Lord 2010 looming in the windshield, you'll understand if I'm not terribly optimistic.

Reid, Greed, and the Status Quo

Frustration doesn't even begin to describe my reaction to Senator Harry Reid's latest comments regarding the pending heathcare legislation.

Shocked? No, politicians have been greasing their own palms for years.

Angry? No, I'm way past mere anger when it comes to the shameless duplicity and vapid rhetoric of Washington.

As if the current healthcare debate isn't nerve-wracking enough, on Monday, Senator Reid casually acknowledged the key problem with Washington today. He wasn't even trying to; as if he realizes it's way too late to try and cover up anything anymore.

When asked by an NBC reporter if the buy-out of Nebraska Senator Ben Nelson (in which Senate Democrats bribed Nelson by paying for Nebraska's medicare costs) was an ethical way of doing business, Reid brushed off the question by saying he wasn't going to go through the bill and address all of the other parts of the legislation that were cobbled together through bribes, pay-offs, and downright pork.

It's as if Reid didn't even recognize that pork is one of Washington's most destructive habits. He could have answered, "Well, we've got a ton of pork in this thing, and it would take too long to go over it with you item by item. Besides, the pork is really what this bill is all about. This is another opportunity for us to bring the bacon home to our individual constituents - in other words, sleazy lobbyists. The fact that President Obama has allowed us to cloak all of this garbage in the guise of fixing healthcare for all really helps us obscure what we're really up to in these closed-door arm-twisting sessions. But as I said, we really don't have time to get into that right now. Besides, most of the media won't report it anyway, so we'd be wasting each other's time, wouldn't we? There's a good lap-dog, right, boy?"

By wilfully stating that the Senate's healthcare bill is full of pork and other gratuitous spending, Reid both confirms the fallacy of this and other recent legislation, and also the entrenched modus operandi of people elected to Washington. To read more, check out this article from the New York Times, whose writers also seem taken aback by Reid's brazenness.

Obviously, this bill is about more than healthcare. It's more than the hollow platitudes of insurance for all and reduced healthcare costs. It's even more than trying to achieve a historic decision that will become a keystone to American society, grander than Social Security and Medicare. It's more than anything good that even the most altruistic optimist could ever hope for in this bill.

It's about greed.

And with greed as the centerpiece of this grand initiative, how can it possibly benefit anybody else but the players in the game, the people who have "crafted" this legislation to serve their own ends? How can the senators who held out for the biggest pork payout say they're working for the common good? How will all of this pork save taxpayers - who are also healthcare customers - any money?

For shame, Harry Reid.

The Problem With Blogs

Of what benefit to the human race is the addition of another blog to the Internet? Before yesterday, my primary opinion of blogs was that they are a dangerous new world where people of questionable qualifications and integrity can say just about anything they want. It's like giving used car salesmen free space in the New York Times (which some conservatives might say would be an improvement).

To create this blog, all I had to do was go to blogspot.com and Google guided me through the easy steps to creating my own mouthpiece on the web. I didn't have to certify any educational achievemments, I didn't have to promise that everything I write will be true and accurate, I didn't submit myself to any governing authority other than the website's policy police.

So how do we know that Osama bin Laden doesn't have his own blog? How do we know that somebody writing under a Rush Limbaugh alias isn't really a covert Taliban operative? How do you know that any blogger you read really knows what they're talking about?

How do we know that Google isn't a secret arm of the CIA, quietly monitoring every blog for subversive content that will be forwarded to a clandestine White House department compiling new McCarthy-esque un-American activities (whatever those are)?

The only guarantee which I can offer readers of this blog - to let you know that I'm an honest, thinking person who is willing to consider alternative viewpoints and use logic to reason away fallacy - is this: if I ever sing the praises of Hillary's Vast Right Wing Conspiracy and/or the late Ted "glug glug" Kennedy, you'll know an imposter has commandeered this blog.