By Jonathan Pie
“What’s going on? What is this lack of moral backbone? We’ve crossed a line. Stand up to this man – this stupid, deluded, talentless, fucking joke of a moron of a man is a joke no longer.”
Posted on July 20, 2019
Weakening TV Programming Rules, GOP-Controlled FCC Throws Kids Under The Bus
By Andrea Germanos/Common Dreams
The Federal Communications Commission was accused on Wednesday of sacrificing children’s “education and well-being all for corporate profit” after it weakened television programing rules.
The new order, framed by the agency as “modernizing” the decades-old broadcast rules, passed along party lines with the three Republican commissioners approving and the two Democrats dissenting.
Among the changes in the new order are that it requires “stations to air the substantial majority of their core programming on their primary program stream but allows stations to air up to 13 hours per quarter of regularly scheduled weekly programming on a multicast stream.”
That leeway means the content can be booted away from a channel’s main viewership to secondary stations, which allows the channels to focus more on monetizing – exactly what they had wanted.
Posted on July 11, 2019
The Hood CNN
By Complex News
“Zack Stoner wasn’t your typical journalist. The 30-year-old made a name for himself with his YouTube channel ZackTV, which he used to document various aspects of Chicago’s South Side community, providing an apologetically raw look at the city’s violence, poverty, and music scene,” Complex News reports.
“A lot of people respect what I do,” he said in a 2018 interview with the Defender. “I’m the ‘Hood CNN.'”
“Less than two months after the Defender profile was published, Stoner was murdered in the South Loop. The case remains unsolved.
“In the latest installment of Complex News Presents, we take a closer look at Stoner’s impact on Chicago’s South Side as well as the mysterious circumstances surrounding his death.”
Posted on July 10, 2019
To Grow Women’s Soccer, Don’t Banish It To Pay-TV
By Dan Plumley and Rob Wilson/The Conversation
English national football teams going out in the semi-final of a major competition is nothing new. In fact, it has happened in successive women’s World Cups in 2015 and 2019 and with the men in 2018. But this time the mood feels different – England’s women, the “Lionesses,” have taken their nation on an incredible ride.
An overwhelmingly positive reaction following the team’s semi-final defeat to the USA swept the country – there is a sense that the potential to grow the women’s game is now more achievable than ever before.
The semi-final attracted a record-breaking peak TV audience of 11.7 million in the UK and the game is currently the country’s most-watched television program of 2019. The question now turns to how best to capitalize on this. Where does women’s soccer go next?
Posted on July 9, 2019
Dramatic Increase In Smoking On Shows Popular With Young People
By Truth Initiative
A new report released today by Truth Initiative, the national nonprofit dedicated to making tobacco use a thing of the past, reveals 92% of the shows most popular with young people aged 15 to 24 years old depict smoking prominently.
The organization first reported on the issue in 2018 with the groundbreaking report While You Were Streaming that found 79% of the shows popular with youth contained images of tobacco.
Approximately 28 million young people have witnessed tobacco use based on the estimated viewership of the 13 shows studied in this year’s report. According to the surgeon general, youth with more exposure to tobacco in movies are twice as likely to begin smoking compared to those with less exposure.
Posted on July 5, 2019