Obama should mention Blue's Clues in a speech

Anonus

It would show that he understands us Millennials

thinkfluencing the zeitgeist

Obā-san

obama more like oLAMEa amirite

Sredni Vashtar

You actually thought up the expression "thinkfluencing the zeitgeist."

I feel dirty just typing that. You are really good at impersonating gross marketing people.

Haven

Can't wait for the Fox News segment on the show's hidden commusexual agenda

Anonus

Didn't you hear? Disney is purging Fox News of its nastiness

They own it now, after all

Bee

Fox is like the one media company I wouldn't mind Disney buying out and gutting its staff.

Anonus

They bought 21st Century Fox for a variety of reasons - getting the Star Wars rights they don't already own, getting the X-Men and Fantastic Four movie rights back for Marvel, the Fox Sports cable channels...

They can't abide by Fox News, despite its profitability

Salix Babylonika

I think you're assuming entirely too much goodwill on Disney's part.

Anonus

This is a made-up version of Disney

I needed an excuse to wipe Fox News from that reality

well I sure stupided this thread

Anonus

Also, to be honest, Fox News's Reckoning is coming, probably within the next decade or so

Anonus

this is what I mean by the reckoning

lee4hmz

It's coming for CNN and MSNBC, too. I mean, who watches anything except local news unless there's a big story?

Anonus

CNN has seen better days and it would be nice if its managerial situation improved. But as long as Time Warner remains in one piece, I doubt it'll happen. (One of very few good things about Fox's takeover proposal was the possibility that CBS would buy CNN and fix it - truthfully, I wouldn't trust Disney with anything but their prized family entertainment brands)

Most liberals don't even seem to think MSNBC is worth paying attention to - unless I'm wrong.

lee4hmz

Which reminds me: It's interesting how many ads on WTOP-FM are for the 50+ demo, especially during middays when most of their audience is late-career government workers who take the train in. Ads for things like patent medicines, "virtual" physicals (nuclear stress tests and the like), and retirement and estate planning are all popular. You also get a lot of ads for home improvement stuff like the Gutter Helmet and security systems.

lee4hmz

I would say CNN "wants to be" something, but that's the problem: It doesn't know what it wants to be. Maybe it wants to be the old CNN, breaking news that no one else can or will? Maybe it wants to be TMZ, shallow and celebrity-obsessed to the point of spreading unconfirmed rumours? Maybe it wants to be Drudge Report? Who the hell knows? Unless it picks a direction and sticks with it, CNN won't improve.

I would say the nbcnews.com website is a whole lot better than MSNBC the channel, though there's still the whole Comcast thing to deal with.

Anonus

For years CNN bugged me - a year or two ago a Deadline commenter finally put my finger on it, "rudderless blandness."

Time Warner doesn't seem to be a company that actually cares much about its properties. All they are are money machines - there is no sense of pride in any of it. Except possibly HBO.

lee4hmz

Yup. I would say there hasn't been much of a sense of pride in anything they've done since the Turner merger, and the AOL mess just made things worse.

Anonus

I resent that the Turner merger happened greatly. Fred Seibert's tenure as the head of Hanna-Barbera was too short - the sale to Time Warner prompted him to jump ship from the studio, which would be consolidated into WBTVA the next year anyway.

Anonus

Of course, this resulted in WB regaining the rights to the pre-August 1948 Looney Tunes, so it wasn't all bad...

Salix Babylonika

I actually liked CNN better when it was "bland". News stations aren't supposed to have an agenda.

Anonus

I actually "bought" CNN through my acquisition of Time Warner, and really have no idea how to fix it, other than to tone down the toxicity that seems inherent to today's cable news and get rid of Jeff Zucker.

I have a feeling that someday people will get tired of the tribalism that cable news thrives on - CNN was the original cable news network (literally) and aside from reinforcing a multimedia presence, the only way for it to survive would be for it not to overtly take any sides politically. And stop with the vapidity.

Salix Babylonika

Well it already did that. It now caters to people who have decided that "Republicans and Democrats are the same" and are as such going to vote for Ron Paul.

Anonus

Hm.

I admit, I haven't actually seen it since Mother ditched the cable - or before then - I just hear about things like the Carnival Triumph circus and them pondering aloud if the KKK can be rebranded and they just seem so hopeless.

Salix Babylonika

I mean yeah, it's alternately for the kinda-racist Libertarian crowd and for people who only watch the news for celebrity interest stories.