The ratings are in: 9/11 beaten by NBC easily.

[Yukari Yakumo]

Not surprisingly, maybe, NBC won the Sunday night ratings battle with the battle of the Mannings with a 13.1/20 rating.

Path to 9/11? A 7.9/12 rating.

For comparison's sake, The Simpsons got a 6.9/11 rating, and CBS's "9/11" got a 7.0/10.

In other words, ABC's propaganda piece got crushed by football and didn't do much better than the other networks.

Note: The first number represents how many homes were watching (1 rating = 1,102,139 homes). The second number is the percentage of homes watching.

[autorank]

1. ABC is going to lose it's license and much more all for this.

Great post, great news. Thanks, K-R

[ClintonTyree]

5. I wish I could believe that.......

but somehow I think it's going to be business as usual for the Corporate Media. The fascist regime is solidly in place and It's propaganda wing will circle the wagons and repel any and all attacks. In other words, we're fucked. I just woke from a sound sleep at 3:30 AM and can't get back to sleep. Maybe I'm being a bit of a pessimist. I need coffee.

[Bucky]

7. Huh?

When did Bruce Wayne ever fire Alfred? Of course ABC won't be inconvenienced even slightly by serving up lies to keep the rightwingers happy.

[Totally Committed]

10. I am surprised to hear you say this...

I know you wouldn't say that if you didn't believe it, but do you really think any action will be taken against them, with the Republicans protection woven into that corporation? Geez, I hope you're right! I don't want to get my hopes up (again!), but just the thought of ABC actually having REAL consequences for this action is something that brightens my day!!!

Thanks.

TC

[autorank]

15. The source of my optimism was the Reid letter to ABC...which represents

a corporate nightmare. They're going to be praying that we never take back the house or Senate.

That letter was hard hitting and largely unprecidented. They really laid it out, violating public trust, calling the show political thus violating some fairness doctrine maybe (have to look into it) but certainly violating public trust, and abusing the minds of children through the misrepresentation
of traumatic material for political gain.

It's about time we unloaded. So, if they pursue this, then I'll continue to be optimistic for now.

We can all challenge ABC license renewals of ABC owned affiliates. More on that later. This would not work but why not get local Dems involved. If the party is serious, they will do that.

Cheers for now;)

[hvn_nbr_2]

11. The network doesn't have a license. Only individual affiliate stations...

have licenses. At least that's my understanding.

[autorank]

14. Good point, Networks can own a bunch of locals so that's the place to

hit them. From below: "TV ownership rule prohibits an entity from owning television stations that would reach more than 39% of U.S. television households." Obviously, the percentage is related to audience, hence the network cherry pick with the largest markets. Fine and dandy. You've got me motivated to check this out. ABC and the stations that they own would be the target for licensing issues.

Another issue, from the Reid letter to ABC, is the $40 million production costs. ABC will, no doubt, claim these as a business expense. If it can be shown that the motivation for this was political, then that expense is bogus and there are people who would want to speak to them, people whose name I shall not mention... If I were them, I'd be pretty upset about that. If they knew the background of these characters they worked with and if it's reasonable to assume the production group was doing this for political motives, then ABC knowingly claimed a deduction that it should have not claimed. Ouch in the extreme.

There's a fairness doctrine out there somewhere, I'll check that out.

Each state has license renewals and comments are needed 4 months prior to renewal. Maybe we need a list prior to that and some great boilerplate material;)

Thanks for the comment.

http://www.fcc.gov/cgb/consumerfacts/reviewrules.html

#

Local Radio Ownership Rule (1941)
Initially, the FCC’s local radio ownership rules prohibited common ownership of same service radio stations (AM or FM) that served substantially the same area. Currently, the FCC’s local radio ownership rule imposes the following limitations: (1) in a radio market with 45 or more commercial radio stations, a party may own, operate, or control up to 8 commercial radio stations, not more than 5 of which are in the same service; (2) in a radio market with between 30 and 44 commercial radio stations, a party may own, operate, or control up to 7 commercial radio stations, not more than 4 of which are in the same service; (3) in a radio market with between 15 and 29 commercial radio stations, a party may own, operate, or control up to 6 commercial radio stations, not more than 4 of which are in the same service; and (4) in a radio market with 14 or fewer commercial radio stations, a party may own, operate, or control up to 5 commercial radio stations, not more than 3 of which are in the same service, except that a party may not own, operate, or control more than 50 percent of the stations in that market.
#

National TV Ownership Rule (1941)
When the FCC first adopted national ownership restrictions for television broadcast stations in 1941, it put numerical limits on the number of stations that could be commonly-owned. The rule has been amended a number of times thereafter to increase the permitted level of common ownership. Currently, the national “Reach” is defined as the number of television households in the TV DMA to which each owned station is assigned. All TV households in the DMA are attributed to VHF stations; 50% of TV households in the DMA are attributed to UHF stations.

[hvn_nbr_2]

17. Production costs, tax deductions, FEC

Besides the issue of whether the $40M production costs are a legitimate tax deduction, there is also the issue of whether that cost and the 5 hours of prime time broadcast time are an illegal political contribution. I saw a thread about that somewhere recently.

[HarukaTheTrophyWife]

2. I'm not surprised.

I was watching the Manning Bowl and the rest of my family (Republicans) was watching CBS's 9/11. They said they'd rather see the story of the firemen than watch a mini-series, so at least they do show signs of intelligence sometimes.

[Syrinx]

3. viewers were hot for some brother on brother action!

:D

[wakeme2008]

4. First Welcome to DU

:hi:

Also Monday night was another football night so I expect their ratings to be lower than Sunday. :)

[Ken Burch]

6. What's the surprise?

We can assume a Giants-Colts game would be historically accurate.

[HornBuckler]

8. Let's not forget Family Guy

Louis "Oh my god, I'm Barbara Bush!"

in response to holding one's son in water to turn them into a brain dead retard.

[EST]

9. Welcome to DU!

We've all been hoping you'd show up soon.

IF, and that's still a big if, we regain control of the house in November, one of the high priorities that must be observed has to be more influence on the FCC board. That influence should allow us, regardless of the Rovian jihad, to make some major changes in the way that broadcast rules are handled and broadcasting privileges are allocated.

I am quite sure that ABC and the Diz are quite well aware of this hazard-for them- and thus the all out effort to dip their own oar into the mix to try to keep the elections within mugging range. This is the "hail Mary" play that will determine their future.

One would think that an attempt on their part to mollify the probable incoming aggressive heads would be in order, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

Why is this?

My guess would be that, now that even the "moderate" democrats are pissed and impatient, the subpoena power that accompanies the majority shift is the problem.

With that power, all the secret shit agreements and illegal arrangements are suddenly under scrutiny, even those under the "classified" rubric. We are going to find out that our worst nightmares have been insufficient to guess the vile business the executive branch and its congressional enablers, along with virtually all the businesses of any real size, have been engaged in.

Reality has been stood on its head and that's about to change, spelling peril for the vast majority of the golden parachute crowd.

[kster]

13. You are correct

"This is the "hail Mary" play that will determine their future".

If we were able to see the votes being counted

But they are in control of counting the votes, I think this show was them (media) setting the stage for Nov 8th after the election, talking points, when the Rs stay in power, they refer back to the 9-11 show and start spewing "more people must have watched that 9-11 show than we thought" talking points.

Don't mean to be negative, but thats the way I see it.

[newyawker99]

12. Hi Aya Reiko!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[onecent]

16. I may not know alot about football, BUT, I think the percentage of

homes watching the football game was ALOT HIGHER than 20.

Every single man, (family, friends, husband, etc) were tooning into that game. And I mean EVERY ONE I KNOW.

I watched CBS, it was incredible.