Free Republic

It’s a Duck Nation, and we’re all just living in it. Last week, A&E Network’s reality show “Duck Dynasty” catapulted to become the biggest unscripted show in cable history with its fourth season premiere. With nearly 11.8 million viewers, the show about a Louisiana family that has made millions from its duck call fabrication business is on the brink of toppling “The Walking Dead.” If it does, it will become cable's biggest show. The A&E Network, as Duck Commander patriarch Phil Robertson would say, is “Happy, happy, happy.” The show premiered in March 2012 and finished its first cycle with...

With streaming television becoming more and more popular, and providers like Aereo making an end-run around cable and satellite providers, a lot of attention is being paid to the future of bundled cable. In a world of growing choices and a weak, jobless economy, how long can something last that charges customers a ton of money for dozens of channels they never watch? Bundled cable is, in my opinion, one of the greatest hustles ever perpetuated against the American people. The worst part is how it works as a kind of affirmative-action program for left-wing programming that likely wouldn’t survive...

Pay-TV providers like Verizon and tech giants like Microsoft are developing devices that can monitor our behaviors as we watch TV and play games. “Watching the watchers” is taking on a whole new meaning. News that Google .. may be developing a television set-top box with a motion sensor and video camera has rekindled the debate over technology that can record so-called ambient action. Should a TV-mounted box have the ability to track our movements, record our voices and monitor our behaviors? Should cable providers and tech companies be allowed to collect such information without our consent? Lawmakers and privacy...

Cameras in your cable box? No way, said Rep. Michael Capuano (D-Mass.), who has introduced a new bill that would stop technology and TV video services from monitoring viewing using cameras or microphones built-in to set-top boxes or DVRs in order to analyze viewing behavior and serve up targeted ads. The bill, called the We Are Watching You Act of 2013, would prohibit video service operators from collecting visual or audio data from the vicinity of the device without express permission from the consumer. For viewers that opt in, the monitoring company would have to display a "we are watching...

The CEO of the Tennis Channel, who also bundled millions of dollars for President Barack Obama's presidential campaign and was a co-chair of one of his fundraising committees, compared Comcast to a "brutal captor" and a rapist after the Tennis Channel lost a ruling in a federal appeals court. After a the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled last month that Comcast did not have to include the Tennis Channel on its basic cable package, Ken Solomon, fired off an email to his employees. Solomon was sworn in on Obama's Committee on the Arts and the...

John McCain, the media’s favorite “maverick” – unless he’s actively running for something – has just introduced a bill in congress called the Television Consumer Freedom Act of 2013. Normally, my iron clad rule of thumb is to take any side this guy is against but I have to admit he may have a point here. The bill would allow consumers to buy only the cable channels they want “a la carte” and not have 500 others jammed down their throats. Does anyone recall the original promise of cable TV? More than 30 years ago we asked, “why should we...

TV Ratings: 'Duck Dynasty' Tops 'American Idol' With Record-Breaking Finale UPDATED: The A&E reality series outperforms all of Wednesday's cable and broadcast series in the targeted adults 18-49 demo --- and pulls in nearly 10 million total viewers. Duck Dynasty shows no signs of slowing. The A&E series' season finale drew a record 9.6 million viewers during its one-hour episode -- and an equally impressive 5.5 million adults 18-49. That haul in the key demo puts it ahead of all of cable and broadcast offerings for the night -- including American Idol. Duck Dynasty's 4.3 rating with adults 18-49 rating...

The White House accused Republicans of a political distraction Wednesday after House committee chairmen asked President Obama to release a State Department cable that they said would prove Hillary Rodham Clinton, as secretary off state, signed off on security cuts at the diplomatic post in Benghazi ahead of the attack Sept. 11. According to the committee chairmen, the April 2012 Clinton cable denies the U.S. Embassy in Libya’s request for more security. Five months later, the outpost in Benghazi was attacked and four Americans were killed, including Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens.

After winning a major court battle last week, Aereo has Fox Television so freaked the network is considering becoming a cable channel, which would mean yanking their broadcast from the public airwaves: At the National Association of Broadcasters’ annual trade show on Monday, Carey, the News Corp. president, said, “We will continue to aggressively pursue our rights in the courts, as well as pursue all relevant political avenues, and we believe we will prevail.” Carey added: “One option could be converting the Fox broadcast network to a pay channel, which we would do in collaboration with both our content partners...

Mark Burnett's "The Bible" miniseries concluded this past Sunday with strong ratings, attracting 11.7 million viewers, 14 percent higher than its previous week of 10.3 million viewers. "The Bible" miniseries' great success resulted in the History Channel being the top cable network, both in total viewership and with adults ages 25 to 54, for the month of March. The episode's finale, which featured Jesus' crucifixion, death, and resurrection aptly on March 31, Easter Sunday, received 3.8 million viewers among adults ages 18 to 49 and 4.6 million viewers among adults ages 25 to 54, according to Nielsen ratings. As Deadline...

Comcast Cable, "the nation's largest cable provider," has decided it will not accept firearm and ammunition advertisers in the future. This decision comes after Comcast has been running ads for some gun and hunting groups for decades. Comcast chose this new position after purchasing NBCUniversal, which has a long-standing ban against firearm, ammunition and firework advertisements. This move brings Comcast in line with its competitors, Time Warner Cable and Cox Communications. Cox already had a ban similar to the one Comcast has now instituted and Time Warner Cable announced in January that it was banning "ads showing semi-automatic weapons and...

SAN DIEGO - A new San Diego-based cable channel could end up competing with Fox News for the conservative cable audience. It is unapologetically conservative and it could be coming to a cable channel in your home. The upcoming launch of the One America News Network was announced Thursday. It is a creation of San Diego-based Herring Broadcasting. On July 4, the company – which also produces cable channel Wealth TV – will launch its newest venture, a conservative cable news network.

I've been 3 months trying to get TWC to come and get my defective DVR (we have 2) several calls promising they would come and they would adjust our bill blah blah blah. Then the new bill came and informed us we are getting a price increase so we talked it over and did some research. Our TV bill (We have their internet as well) was over 110 bucks a month. We realized we could get Hulu plus and receiver most of the shows we watch for about 9 bucks a month and the two shows we definitely watch that...

Veteran programmer Rob Barnett recently attended a breakfast meeting of television executives where the talk turned, as it almost always does these days, to “disruption,” the industry buzzword for the way new technology is upsetting the TV applecart. From somewhere down the table, he heard a question: “Has anybody here cut the cord?” — that is, dropped cable service in favor of just watching TV through the Internet? Barnett shrugged and raised his hand. “Mine was the only one,” he recalls. “But when it went up, I saw beads of sweat break out on the foreheads of some of the...

2. I caught an interesting factoid ... Algore selling his Marxist agitprop cable station to Al Jazeera last week. ... it was reported that CurrentTV received cable and satellite licensing revenues of $0.12 per month per subscriber - that is the pinch of incense you people who had CurrentTV included in your cable/sat package were paying to Algore. ... Your $0.12 per month multiplied together put $80 million per year in cashflows into Algore's hands in order to spread his evil, satanic filth. The interesting factoid released last week was that cable/sat licensing revenues comprised 80% of CurrentTV's revenue, with...

"Real competition in the cable television industry is forcing change at long last. And we can thank the dawn of streaming content. Time Warner Cable just axed the Ovation channel, and the cable giant threatens more channels may get trimmed in the coming months. But Time Warner Cable warns subscribers in an online notice today that there’s no guarantee it will continue to carry several other channels whose contracts expire soon including mainstays such as E!, Lifetime, and Starz, and a bevy of international services ... Former Vice President Al Gore’s Current TV also remains in danger, although it survived...

Conservative America can't get enough of the story about liberal former Vice President Al Gore selling the Current TV network he co-founded to Al Jazeera. Or, as Fox News commentator Ann Coulter described it - "a foreign company that hates America."........ .......Despite what perceptions remain about its political bias, analysts say Al Jazeera has developed a strong journalistic reputation with international audiences as it reports from places that U.S. outlets, with their scaled-down overseas reporting staffs, barely touch. Aside from the media implications, some analysts wonder how Gore, a part-time San Francisco resident who won the Nobel Peace Prize for...

Several big-name Hollywood stars appear in a new anti-gun public service YouTube video calling for Americans to demand that their elected officials come up with a strategy to curb gun violence. In the video, A-listers like Cameron Diaz, Paul Rudd, and Chris Rock read the names of the sites of the most horrific gun massacres before calling on viewers to “demand a plan” to stop mass shootings. But now a new video called “Demand a Plan – Demand Celebrities Go F*** Themselves” has been created that highlights the gun violence many of these same stars have taken part in in...

Intel is reportedly on the cusp of delivering something that consumers around the world have been wanting for a long, long time. Kelly Clay at Forbes reports Intel is going to blow up the cable industry with its own set-top box and an unbundled cable service. Clay says Intel is planning to deliver cable content to any device with an Internet connection. And instead of having to pay $80 a month for two hundred channels you don't want, you'll be able to subscribe to specific channels of your choosing.

Ovation, the arts-culture cable channel that's enjoyed a distribution surge the last several years, said Tuesday it expects to be dropped by Time Warner Cable on Dec. 31, potentially losing about 7 million subscribers and the key markets of New York City and Los Angeles. The independently owned network, reaching 51 million homes via cable, satellite and telco providers, went public about the expected drop in hopes of gaining support from viewers and arts organizations that would persuade Time Warner Cable to rethink the decision. “If Time Warner Cable proceeds then, in 2013, its customers who love the arts will...