For Big Media, No News Is Good News
Posted November 12th, 2007 by Tim Karr
In case there was any doubt that media conglomerates are thumbing their noses at the public interest, the television network CW recently rolled out a series of bubbly ads trumpeting the fact that they offer no news to local viewers.
| CW’s Nutty Professor |
In one targeted at Washington, D.C. viewers, a CW “professor” explains to a classroom that the “good news” about CW is that “there is no news.”
In another ad, rapper Biz Markie sings that CW “got what I need… drama, action and laughs, no news ain’t that a blast.”
What the CW’s corporate owners at CBS and Time Warner forgot is that their stations were granted license to the public airwaves in exchange for broadcasting that serves the “public interest, convenience and necessity.”
Usually that means news and information that helps viewers participate in civic events and engage with other important developments in their community.
| ‘No news. Ain’t that a blast’ |
Sadly, the FCC seems also to have taken a lesson from the “professor’s” own text book.
The CW continues to broadcast no news in certain markets without the slightest blink from the bureaucrats who are duty sworn to protect our airwaves from such abuse.
It’s ironic that these ads ran at the same time the FCC held a hearing in the other Washington, during which residents of Seattle sent a resounding message to FCC Chair Kevin Martin: our democracy can’t survive on a steady diet of junk media.
Apparently, his friends at the CW missed that headline.
Along those same lines, CW11 seems to be claiming that a bunch of twenty-somethings making out is educational television. “Degrassi: Next Generation” is on (noon on Sunday, November 18, 2007, New York City) with the E/I logo in the corner. Absurd.
November 18th, 2007 at 2:38 pm