The Cranky Media Guy

“The Secret” is to palm your unprofitable and unnecessary TV network off on the suckers at NBC Universal for $925 million.

I remember when The Oprah and her as-seen-on-TV pals Marcy Carsey, Tom Werner and Caryn Mandabach started Oxygen.  Oh, it was going to be the Cutting Edge® of television, with those “interactive” elements everyone was all a’twitter about a few years back.  Viewers were going to “talk back” to the network, which would result in…well, something.  That something was going to change TV for the better and empower women and, you know, stuff.

According to this article, the 2007 version of Oxygen “broadcasts syndicated sitcoms such as “Mad About You” and “Roseanne,” as well as reality shows and movies geared to women.”  That’s, uh, not quite so cutting edge, huh?  I’m guessing that watching sitcoms doesn’t empower all that many women.  If viewers are talking back to Oxygen, they’re doing it by yelling at their TV sets (which is pretty much how I deal with TV, actually).

All that cutting edge “interactive” stuff went out the window sometime back when they canned the people who worked for the “cyberspace” part of Oxygen. 

It’s amusing enough to me that The Oprah (who has direct access to the Secrets of the Universe, after all, which I would imagine include how to run a TV network) has to sell her shitty TV network.  It’s even more amusing that the dopes at NBC Universal think that they can spin gold out of that pile of manure.  “Oh, you silly blogger,” they say, “we’re going to synergize Oxygen by cross-promoting it with iVillage, the female-oriented website we also own.”

Um, do I not remember reading a while back that iVillage was a big disappointment in terms of profitability?  Apparently, the geniuses at NBC Universal have found a way to add 0+0 and get something other than 0.  These Big Media Conglomerate execs remind me of the people I debate with on another website who keep telling me that chain letters aren’t illegal and really CAN make a profit for every participant.

I kind of understand Magical Thinking when it’s promoted by poor individuals who are hoping to get rich quick as a way out of their financial dilemma (I’m not defending it, mind you.  I just said I understand why a person in a bad situation would want to believe something like that).  It’s Extra Stupid, though, when execs at a billion-dollar publicly-traded corporation engage in financial voodoo.

If this is the level of thinking in the board room in Burbank, sell your NBC Universal stock.  Now.

NBC Universal buying Oxygen for $925M - Yahoo! News

I’ve never really paid any attention to NBC’s David Gregory; you probably haven’t either.  Maybe that’s why Douchebag (my new name for him) felt the need to defend Ann Coulter’s third grade-level personal attacks.  Hey, that whole saying-crazy-shit-to-get-attention thing works for Bill O’Reilly (and Coulter too, of course).

Here’s what I would do in response to someone like Gregory if I was to get on one of those shows (’cause, you know, that’s likely to happen and all):  I’d look at him and say in a calm voice, “I hope your wife gets hit by a bus today, David.”

He’s go fucking ballistic, of course and say, “HOW CAN YOU SAY SOMETHING LIKE THAT??”

Then I’d say, “If you strip away the inflammatory rhetoric against your wife, what I was saying was that I disagree with you, David.”

American TV news ain’t “news” in any real sense.  It’s like a carnival freak show…except that the carnival freak show never pretended to be anything but a freak show.

NBC’s David Gregory thinks we just need to “strip away” Ann Coulter’s inflammatory rhetoric to listen to her points - AMERICAblog: A great nation deserves the truth

COMSTOCK’S LOAD By PETER LAURIA

NBC/Universal, for some reason (probably to impress the Cool Kids in the Graphics department) bought this women-oriented web site, iVillage.com.  Eh, nothing horrible about that.  Since EVERY media deal involving ANYTHING on the Internet HAS to include “synergy,” they decided to spin off a TV show and make their owned and operated stations run it.  Oops.

“The show’s audience ranges from a high of 31,000 viewers on average in
New York to a paltry 9,000 viewers in San Francisco, according to
Nielsen Media figures.”

OK, did you get that?  31,000 viewers is the LARGEST audience for this show in any market.  As my Dad used to say, you get more people than that waiting in the candy store for the Sunday paper to be delivered.

Give me a crew of two and a camera, let me wander the streets of New York City and I PROMISE you I will get you a larger audience than that for the show I will produce, at a tiny fraction of what they must be paying for this iVillage show.  I’m serious (not that I expect that any network would have the balls to do this, of course.)

The problem with the people who run TV networks is that they want a Magic Formula.  They want whatever’s hot at the moment, without any regard to the implementation of the concept. 

“The kids seem to like this ‘Internet’ thing.  Let’s make an Internet show!”

“What’s it about?’

“Uh, I dunno.  Just get the Internet in there somehow.”

So they make an “Internet TV show.”  It sucks.  No one watches it.  And they’re baffled.  How could it fail?  It had the Internet in it.  Internet 2.0 even.

Brian Williams Weighs In on New Media | We Want Media

Poor, poor Brian Williams.

“You’re going to be up against people who have an opinion, a modem, and
a bathrobe,” said Williams. “All of my life, developing credentials to
cover my field of work, and now I’m up against a guy named Vinny in an
efficiency apartment in the Bronx who hasn’t le[f]t the efficiency
apartment in two years.”

Oh, the frustration of having to fight the juggernaut of a guy with a computer in “an efficiency apartment in the Bronx” with only a major TV network owned by a multi-billion-dollar defense contractor behind you.  How can you POSSIBLY compete?  How dare some Philistine (who is obviously one of the unwashed, illiterate masses given that he lives in a small apartment in–gasp!–the Bronx! dare to think that he might have something to contribute to the understanding of some issue?

“If we’re all watching cats flushing toilets, what aren’t we reading?
What great writer are we missing? What great story are we ignoring?
This is societal, it’s cultural, I can’t change it. We should maybe
pause to think about it. Because like everybody else, I can burn an
hour on YouTube or Perez Hilton without breaking a sweat.
And what have I just not paid attention to that 10 years ago I
would’ve just consumed?”

Oh, so true, Brian!  I mean, just look at all the hours of programming the major networks devote to the great writers.  Damn that “Internet” thing for taking us away from the cultural Valhalla that is the mainstream media.  Who can forget Howie Mandel as King Lear on NBC’s Classic Theater Hour?

Hey, Brian, if a millionaire talking head like you is worried about poor people in bathrobes encroaching on what you see as your turf, you might want to take a moment to reflect on what market forces are making that happen.

As a person who actually grew up in an apartment in the Bronx (not an efficiency, but a three-bedroom rent-controlled fifth floor walkup), I can tell you that some of out here in “America” (AKA, what your driver takes you past on your way to the airport) are intelligent, have opinions as well as modems and bathrobes and believe that you Big Time Journalists are WAY too fucking cozy with the people you’re allegedly “reporting” on to give us the actual truth about what’s going on in our world.

Your snotty fucking comments about people from the Bronx not leaving their efficiency apartments for two years confirms everything I suspected about how guys like you view the rest of us.  You think that your audience is stupid, poor and knows nothing, so it needs a smart, rich, White guy like you to interpret all those confusing “facts” for it.  Up yours! 

Here’s a news flash for you, Scoop: the largest source of misinformation, not just about the Iraq war but about damn near everything in contemporary American life isn’t the blogs, it’s the network TV news.  Get your own house in order, Mr. Highly-Paid Journalist, before you start lecturing people whose outlets exist because of the huge Fact Gaps in the work produced by people in your profession.  We don’t believe you, we don’t trust you and our blogs came into being because we WANT to have accurate information.  We dare to think that even people who don’t make millions of dollars a year can have something to contribute to the discussion.

OK, I’m done now.  I have to go change bathrobes.  Say “Hi” to the other plutocrats for me, willya, Bri?