America Deserves A Second Right Wing Cable "News" Outlet to Compete With Fox.

[David Zephyr]

There's an old marketing axiom: "There's always room for two."

None other than Ted Turner, the founder of CNN, said that for years he'd always feared a right-wing television cable network. Why? Because Ted knew that there was a market for news that catered to an element of society that felt picked upon and that was basically reactionary. And sure enough, Republican strategist and long-time television producer, Roger Ailes saw the same market opportunity that Turner did and with the help of a hungry Rupert Murdoch, cable news soon had a new player with a ready-made, built-in audience base.

Well, David Zephyr says that Mr. Roger Ailes knows that what goes around comes around and says that Ailes' biggest fear is that a group of well-heeled investors might figure out that Fox's little corner on providing 24 hour politically biased news targeted to the conservative demographic in American could be easily tapped.

And oh, what a tragedy that would be! ;-)

There is no medium on earth more imitative than television. None. And no understands that paranoia more than a television producer. For that's the history of television, isn't it?

If one network had the Adams Family, another had The Munsters. If one had The Brady Bunch, another had The Partridge Family. Dallas? Yep, Dynasty.

The greatest threat to success has always been its own success. Ya know: a victim of success. After all, the old Russian proverb is still as true today as ever: The tallest sunflower always gets picked first. Always.

In his ample gut, Roger Ailes, that old right-wing television producer who parlayed his stint with the Mike Douglas Show in the 1960's into helping repackage Richard M. Nixon, then Ronald Reagan and later even Poppy Bush, has the same gnawing fear that Ted Turner -- once the king of cable news himself -- had: someone is always eying your market with envy.

Frankly, I'm surprised that Rupert Murdoch's nifty little hold on the nutty right-wing has held as long as it has. But we are in a different world today. People get their "news" from many different sources these days and, even worse for Fox, the old stitching that once uniformly held their right-wing quilted audience together is, dare I say it?, coming apart at the seams. From tea-baggers to Ron Paul libertarians, there is discord and they want the message even more finely tuned to their particular pathologies.

Those Country Club Republicans, the Wall Street Crowd, are not comfortable with the snake handlers much anymore: The truth is that the religious nuts just give the blue bloods the willies. All that Bible thumping upsets their martinis. And of course, the Baptists loathe the Mormons. And the Pentecostals loathe the Pope. OMG! What's a right-wing Cable News outlet to do?

Roger Ailes once quipped that he could replace Paula Zahn with a raccoon and get better ratings. That's how Roger sees his anchors: raccoons or sock puppets in his theater. Exhibit A? Glen Raccoon Beck.

There was really nothing original about what Fox News did. Ailes and Murdoch saw the same untapped market that Ted Turner was aware of and milked it for all it was worth. Not orignal at all. In fact, none other than a far greater pioneer in television, Paddy Chayefsky, foretold of the eventuality of a Fox News decades ago in his landmark script that became the prescient film and amazing film, "Network".

So any savvy business man or woman should be able to smell the sweet odor of success over at Fox and figure out: Hey, I can hire some of those sock puppets myself and carve into some of that dysfunctional audience share because, after all, there's always room for two.

The market is there. Audiences are fickle. There's money to be made. Here's hoping that the old dependable, capitalist motivation of American greed will soon launch another Fox...or, at least, a Raccoon.

Hey Roger! Here's looking at you!

[naaman fletcher]

1. Somebody give Joe Farrah a big check

I'm sure he will put his screwball reporting on the air if he can afford it.

[Winterblues]

2. What would you call CNN?

:shrug:

[David Zephyr]

3. Well, the rightwing television demographic calls it "Clinton News Network"

We may moan about CNN among ourselve, but that targeted audience demographic that I am speaking of "knows better" than to be caught dead with CNN on their screens. CNN can not co-opt that market, but a new, "truer" cable network could.