Posted on 01/06/2018 4:46:39 PM PST by CtBigPat
Enough with the polarizing political chatter on cable TV.
Life Time Fitness has removed CNN, Fox News Channel, MSNBC and CNBC from its televisions.
(Excerpt) Read more at yahoo.com ...
Well they do at times resemble a bunch of yapping dogs.
Man you ain't kidding. The late 80s. She was a goddess.
Can they show the Gorilla Channel?
The “Gorilla Channel”, and CNN, are one and the same.
Been preaching this for years.
Where do I sign up?
Used to have an account at Bank of America.
My mother also had her Social Security deposit account at BOA.
Every time I saw a manager of assistant manager at that office, I would ask why they had that junk on TV, meaning CNN.
I got tired of asking and transferred both accounts to another bank that had no TV in the lobby at all. Felt a lot better after that.
Good idea.
Remove all TV, esp. where kids might be. i’m Sick of fast-food and doc offices playing shows where there is zero concern about language much less slimy situations.
Never mind it enforces the screen addiction while enabling alienation from those you’re supposed to be interacting with.
first we get 100 billion..............
The 99 restaurant chain in New England used to put news channels on TV—was at one once and saw report of JFK Jr’s plane gone down.Now most if not all run sports only.Maybe they figured it’s less polarizing...but the Danvers MA one has TVs with MSNBC on. I no longer go there.
No go. Hard as it is to accept, “News” as we know it is optimized for profitability. For multiple reasons, people find it difficult to ignore bad news, and so that is what actually defines news.It is easy to see why journalism would claim to be objective; we all think of ourselves as objective, at least internally. Even tho in philosophical reflection we know better. But for journalists, it’s part of the business model. And because all those “competing” newspapers and broadcast journalists are members of the Associated Press, they are all of them in an echo chamber which assures them - however falsely - that they are objective.
People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. It is impossible indeed to prevent such meetings, by any law which either could be executed, or would be consistent with liberty and justice. But though the law cannot hinder people of the same trade from sometimes assembling together, it ought to do nothing to facilitate such assemblies; much less to render them necessary. - Adam Smith, Wealth of NationsBut if you simply combine the negativity of bad news with the arrogance of claimed objectivity, what you get is cynicism. It is inescapable. If you know you are negative, yet you claim objectivity, you are actually asserting that negativity is objectivity. And “the conciet that ' negativity is objectivity’” is a very serviceable definition of “cynicism.”Understand, tho, that no one can be cynical about everything. If you are cynical about “A,” and if “B” is the opposite of “A,” you cannot but imply faith in “B.” Journalism is cynical about American society. But as the first two paragraphs of Paine’s Common Sense make clear, society - far from being a synonym for government, as some claim - is in a very real sense an antonym for it. Society is a good, government is necessary but is an evil to be minimized.
Journalism is cynicism, all right - you can’t be more cynical than putting out a constant stream of negative propaganda about society. Worse, that maps to a stream of propaganda in favor of perpetually increasing the evil which is govenment. Clearly, I have not only described journalism, but socialism as well.
Journalism is pro socialist, anti American propaganda. The only escape from that trap is philosophy. That is, eschewing any claim of virtue but only claiming that virtue exists, and that you want to be virtuous. You don’t claim to be objective, and you don’t claim to be wise - you claim that wisdom exists and you are open to legitimate argumentation about what it consists of in any given circumstance. Which is precisely what a conservative talk show host does. A conservative talk show host is openly conservative, rather than arrogantly claiming to be objective.
A good talk show host takes on all comers, and debates opposing opinions without ad hominem attacks and such. “Liberal” talk show hosts fail because they are in direct competition with the sophists known as journalists, and cannot get away with the hit-and-run tactics inherent in journalism. So if you are a convinced “liberal” you just listen to the news, if you are a conservative you listen to conservative talk radio, and if you are neither - well, you listen to the news until it convinces you either to be another “liberal” or to reject the dissonance and become conservative.
“BARNEY!?! That would make me run OUT of the gym!”
That would be soooo inappropriate!
After leaving HLN she moved to Toronto where she had her own radio talk show for a while. I occasionally listened but that was a long time ago now. I think she returned to the US but am really not sure.
” people find it difficult to ignore bad news, and so that is what actually defines news.”
Trump is better than they make him look and Detroit isn’t doing as well as they make it look.
“reject the dissonance between society as experienced and the image of society as slandered by journalism and become conservative.”
BUMP!
CNN lasted less than one hour in my Dentist.’s office. Some of the patients complained. But, I live in flyover country.
Before replying, I need to lay my creds out there...
Until 2015, I spent about 17 years in media (TV, radio, print and web). The most recent stint was supporting systems that put all those ‘talking heads’ on those so-called cable news shows.
You stated that news as we know it is optimized for profitability. You are correct. I can add that the content of most media is driven not by ratings, but by advertisers.
But there are billions to be made by the person(s) who take a national news network and make it completely objective. How is that possible? Start by going back to local.
On the morning drive to work across the country, you hear a common phrase: “Traffic and weather together”. In most cases, that is the information needed by folks going out for the day. In rural areas, you hear about farm prices, etc. And of course, there’s always school and business closings.
That’s news. And it works. When we focused on providing information people NEEDED to know, we kept an audience. But when everyone started getting lazy, it became easier just to pull something off the AP wire and call it news than to have someone go get the story.
Politics only poisoned the well; to the point that simply reporting what a politician said can start a firestorm against the media outlet that reported it. Unfortunately, political talking points and twitter snarks are now considered “news”, which is not. Most if not all of it should be paid political ads, or simply filtered as to what they are - opinions.
If I were in charge, here’s all I would need to report on a politician to their local constituents:
1. The public statements (usually be press release)
2. How they voted
3. The financial disclosures of campaign contributions and other income while in office.
Those three items alone would could be handled by one person, and could end up being the most scandal-ish stuff on the local news.
There ya go: Traffic, weather, construction projects, market news, reports on politicians. sprinkle in an events calendar, and the local police and court blotter. and you have yourself a news channel - in whatever media form you like.
And how to make a profit? Make the news watchable and business friendly. Stay positive. Stay professional. Don’t criticize other media. my rule would be not to mention them unless you are quoting one of their reports as background for the one you’re doing. Bad news? The car wreck, the big fire? Amber alerts? You report that only when you need help from the public.
e.g.: what’s more important: The latest national scandal of (fill-in-the-blank), or a local water main break affecting hundreds and re-directing traffic?
Now, just image groups doing that in every major media market - then networking among themselves. You would then have a respected national news network - soon to be constantly attacked by the old media. And that’s when you’ll know you’re doing a good job.
I could go on for hours on this. But this is justification for a more broad discussion.
P.S.
I’ll never forget what my Mass Media teacher stated when I was in high school: “Other than basic information, people watch the news to see how the media covers the stories they already know about”.
Thanx JJ
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