“I’d take it in it’s format as it was under Weyrich”
I used to watch NET a lot back in the days when it was only on the big dish. Enjoyed it very much, especially the morning show with Dan Mitchell and his wife. Also liked Major Garrett, Larry Klayman and Tom Fitton. Then, I tried never to miss Bob Novak’s long-form interview show once-per-week at night.
But let’s face it. NET’s production values were sorta amateurish, very little pizazz. Even worse, many of the shows were downright boring. Weyrich was a truly creative visionary, but he could never compete with a real TV pro like Roger Ailes.
So I guess what it came down to was that NET just couldn’t attract the kind of big advertising bucks needed to produce high-quality “cable ready” fare.
Too bad, but that’s just the way the world sometimes works.
Once Weyrich began stepping on establishment GOP toes by questioning backroom deals being made including his one time friend Trent Lott the takeover was being set in place. Remember how angry Weyrich was over Lott's deals?
When it became a threat it was taken over and the LIB's brought in. The new management thought they could keep the original viewers. They were wrong. Did the Libs really need one more media outlet? It would be like FR opening the site to the Liberals. That hasn't happened because it is a donor sponsored site and not quite the cost of TV networking and also because it is a private ran site with no B.O.D. establishment can influence even though we do have some devout GOP-E posters in here who would vote for Lindsey Graham rather than an Independent Conservative because he's a Republican.
N.E.T. was around several years before FR was even on the old site. N.E.T. gave groups like Judaical Watch who went after the Clinton's in civil court a voice. On the flip side America's Voice quality got so bad I had to finally turn it off. By that time if I wanted to hear Liberals all stations including FAUX News had plenty.
The Conservatives need a Conservative based network to get their voice & platform out uncensored by owners or board members with huge GOP-E sympathies. Did you know the late John Lofton was a Freeper? He was in here a while and some My Party Tis of Thee posters went after him calling him Noob, Troll, etc. Yeah they really knew Conservationism. Here's an example thread http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/1988689/posts His user name was NotChosenName. He also put his real name in his post.
For a while to be honest I thought FR was going to go down the tubes of Establishment Ran like N.E.T. because Party-Bot Apologist had taken over and Conservatism took back seat to party as it did in the 2000 election. Many good posters here from the very early days were banned for daring to question Bush policies in 2000. Many who questioned Bush policies history has now proven right including the expansion of powers Obama now enjoys.