Broadcast Television

Here we go again.  During his opening monologue on ‘Real Time’ Friday night, Bill Maher, couldn’t resist piling on to the David Letterman controversy and the sex jokes made by him earlier in the week regarding Sarah Palin’s daughter. In defending his friend, Maher thought Republicans had over reacted and this was just a case of ‘fake’ outrage. Much ado about nothing. He then went on talking about…

Some statistics: According to the National Center for Health Statistics, 86 percent of mothers who give birth out-of-wedlock are teenagers. According to the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, only 40 percent of teenage mothers ever graduate high school; two-thirds of families begun by an unmarried teen mother are poor; and “Virtually all of the increase in child poverty…

The Big 3 networks' evening newscasts probably turned in their worst ratings week since TVs became a household staple during the week of May 18. Last week (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), based on the ratings for the week of May 11, I noted that the shows' combined audience had plunged a stunning 25% from their late January post-inauguration peak to a level barely above the 20 million mark. At the…

Ann Coulter and James Carville went head-to-head on Good Morning America this morning.  Incredibly, James Carville survived.At least, it sounds incredible until you read the transcript.  A total of nine questions were asked of the two pundits, seven of which went to Coulter.  Carville, on the other hand, was simply allowed to respond to Coulter without questioning - an unfiltered rebuttal, with…

ABC’s new series "The Goode Family" poking fun at liberalism and political correctness has predictably been greeted with disdain by the establishment media. The running theme in reviews of the series is that it is unoriginal, flat, and not funny. Not that the folks at the New York Times and the San Francisco Chronicle are able to laugh at themselves, anyway… The Times’s Ginia Bellafante said: But…

Each of the Big 3 networks' evening news broadcasts is pulling an historically low audience, or close to it -- and it isn't even summertime yet. While they continue to pretend that Obamamania is as alive and well as it allegedly was in January, they have seen 25% of their viewers go elsewhere, including one-third of the 25-54 demographic. Year over year, they're down a collective 6% overall, and…

I hate to pull an "I told you so," but... well, I told you so. Remember just three days ago I showed how an unsubstantiated rumor becomes political "fact" in the Old Media? I reported that CNNs Peter Hamby found one woman that wondered if actor Gary Sinise might make a great GOP candidate and based an entirely fictional run for office on that wild speculation. Also you'll recall that at the end…

Today's Los Angeles Times has a story about freelance comedy writers who get paid for their jokes submitted to late night comics that actually make the cut and air in a monologue. Times staffers Matea Gold and Richard Verrier report that "For some late-night hosts, the laughs come cheap." But alas, it's actually a violation of labor contracts for late night shows to pay freelancers. What's more,…

Watching “24” this week, I realized that our number one threat is multi-national corporations with battalions of hired killers on the payroll.  Similarly, “Michael Clayton,” “The International,” the new “State of Play” and many others have taught me that big companies assassinate their rivals, whistleblowers, policemen and random passersby with astonishing regularity. I wish.  But then, I’m a…

Ladies and Gentlemen, The Lamestream Media The media coverage of the more than 800 Taxed Enough Already (TEA) Party protests that took place in all fifty states on April 15 ranged from disdainful dismissal of their nature, significance and import, to outright hostility towards the events and individual participants, to sexual innuendo-based full-on ridicule…

A grisly late 2007 quadruple-murder case in the Cincinnati suburb of Sharonville has apparently been solved with the arrest of Santiago Moreno. Moreno apparently brutally stabbed his four other apartment mates with near-surgical precision. It is horrible that these men died. It is great news that the monster who did it has apparently been caught. What is hard to understand is why after nearly 1-1…

Here’s a quick informal poll:  Who has heard news of Russia’s recent troop buildup in the South Ossetia region of Georgia?   Most of our readers would immediately think of the Russian invasion of that region last summer, during the presidential contest, but the Russians are arguably saber rattling again with a fresh buildup of boots on-the-ground ahead of planned NATO exercises.  Last August, the…

ABC's Sam Donaldson let a little of his inner-conspiracy theorist out this morning on This Week with George Stephanopoulos.  In a discussion of President Barack Obama's lessening the sanctions on Fidel Castro's Cuba, Donaldson began his analysis with one of a number a Kennedy-Truther notions that have been knocking around ever since President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas on…