The Venus Veil!
“John Oliver tricked local news shows into promoting a bogus ‘sexual wellness blanket,'” Slate notes. “The trick was, he paid them.”
Watch:
Posted on May 27, 2021
BMW Is The Answer To The Begged Question
By David Rutter
This is the interlude in our chat, dear friends, in which I complain like an old “Get off my lawn” coot about modern commercial culture.
But there are benefits that can broaden a person’s education. Another generation, another chance to explain what “begging the question” means and how it works.
Take, for example, the Allstate car insurance TV ad in which a BMW convertible driver sails down the road while singing a duet with his female silver hood ornament. Nice visual, though not quite as enticing on the 500th time you’ve seen the ad.
“You’ve got the brains, I’ve got the looks, let’s make lots of money,” she sings.
Posted on April 23, 2021
AT&T’s HBO Max Deal Was Never Free
By Ernesto Falcon and Katharine Trendacosta/Electronic Frontier Foundation
When it launched HBO Max, it was discovered that usage of the service would not count against the data caps of AT&T customers, a practice known as “zero-rating.” This means that people on limited data plans could watch as much HBO Max content as they wished without incurring overage fees. AT&T just declared that it would stop this practice, citing California’s net neutrality law as a reason. No matter what spin the telecom giant offers, this does not mean something “free” was taken away. That deal was never free to begin with.
It should be noted that net neutrality doesn’t prevent companies from zero rating in a non-discriminatory way. If AT&T wanted to zero rate all video streaming services, it could. What net neutrality laws prevent is ISPs from using their control over internet access to advantage its own content or charging services for special access to its customer base. In the case of HBO Max and zero rating, since AT&T owns HBO Max, it costs them nothing to zero rate HBO Max. Other services had to pay for the same treatment or be disadvantaged when AT&T customers chose HBO Max to avoid overage fees.
Posted on March 22, 2021
Misinformation-Spewing Cable Companies Come Under Scrutiny
By Joshua Braun/The Conversation
Looking at political violence in the U.S., a New Jersey state legislator sent a text message to an executive of cable television giant Comcast: “You feed this garbage, lies and all.”
The cable channels Fox News and Newsmax were “complicit” in the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol insurrection, the lawmaker, Assemblyman Paul Moriarty, said. Like other cable companies, Comcast brings those channels into American homes. What, Moriarty asked, was Comcast going to do about them in the wake of the assault on democracy?
Posted on March 11, 2021
How Mark Giangreco Blew Himself Up
By David Rutter
Everybody has weeks they’d just as soon never happened.
Take ABC 7 sports newsie Mark Giangreco, for example. He is now eligible to teach the Medill Masters Class on how to assassinate your own TV career.
If Giangreco does not return from his imposed vacation on Elba, that week for him might be the last week of January 2021. He’s been off the air for five weeks with no word, or any signal that he’s still among the living.
So much for million-dollar contracts.
Two really bad things happened between Jan. 21 and Jan. 28, and Giangreco caused both of them and will pay for both of them.
Posted on March 5, 2021
Trump’s Last Day
Hollywood Still Can’t Get Abortion Right
By Stephanie Herold and Gretchen Sisson/The Conversation
According to decades of research, abortion is an incredibly common and safe medical procedure.
But if you learned about abortion only from movies and TV, that’s not the story you’d see. For the last eight years, we’ve been studying onscreen depictions of abortion. We’ve found that Hollywood tends to dramatically exaggerate the medical risks associated with abortion while downplaying real barriers to access.
Posted on January 6, 2021
Newsmax: Why People Take Fox News’s Betrayal So Seriously
By Newsmax TV
“Chris Salcedo examines the ‘disloyalty’ Fox News has shown to their faithful followers and why Newsmax TV welcomes them with open arms – via Newsmax TV’s The Chris Salcedo Show.”
Posted on November 23, 2020
Outgoing FCC Plans One More Favor For Fox
By Free Press
The FCC announced plans late Friday afternoon to make the Fox newspaper-broadcast cross-ownership waiver permanent for the New York City market, where Fox Corp. owns two local television stations and one local newspaper.
Fox’s request would make permanent waivers allowing the company to own WWOR, WNYW and the New York Post despite FCC cross-ownership limits that prohibit one company from controlling this many broadcast and newspaper outlets in a given market.
The outgoing Pai FCC tried to strike down those cross-ownership limits in 2017, but lost on appeal. The case is now before the Supreme Court.
Posted on November 17, 2020
How To Cut Your TV Costs
By The Citizens Utility Board of Illinois
As part of its efforts to help consumers cut their costs during the pandemic, the Citizens Utility Board (CUB) of Illinois has released its 2020 Guide to Cutting Your TV Costs.
CUB’s guide outlines consumers’ choices in the current market, provides strategies for negotiating with a cable provider, and explains options for ditching cable service entirely.
Posted on November 13, 2020