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SCROTUS tells his cult to stop watching Fox

So what then... Newsmax? The Blaze? An Internet streaming collection of far right-wing Memes?
 
The most noticeable break that Fox made from the Cult was reporting their own polling results that showed Trump less popular across all demographics (not just among Republicans) than the least popular Democratic nominee. Fox reported that "It is looking today like any Democrat can beat Trump in 2020". This was last week, if I am remembering correctly.
 
Maybe he's decided to launch his own channel after all. We speculated that was what he would do after he lost the 2016 election. (sob)
 
Gun Nut said:
Fox reported that "It is looking today like any Democrat can beat Trump in 2020". This was last week, if I am remembering correctly.
Click to expand...

Today the news came out that Trump can't break above 40% against the top 5 Democratic contenders:

https://poll.qu.edu/national/release-detail?ReleaseID=3638

"In hypothetical matchups between President Trump and the top five Democratic presidential candidates, one key number is 40," said Quinnipiac University Polling Analyst Mary Snow. "It's the ceiling of support for Trump, no matter the candidate. It hovers close to his job approval rating, which has stayed in a tight range since being elected."
Click to expand...

I predict a couple days of angry tweets before he retreats to one of his golf resorts to sulk.
 
Not to worry. There are many white nationalist sites that a huge % of his base already get most of their information from. All they need to do is go to the 2nd largest conservative media outlet, Breitbart, and they will find plenty of links and reference to these sites and the white supremacists who publish on them.
 
The thing is, Fox is all about ratings... News, Fiction... whatever... the three most important things are Ratings, Ratings, Ratings.
If they (as an organization) are convinced that Trump will move to obscurity in 2 years, that they will lose their protection from FCC violations of equal time, libel suits, and loss of contestants (err.. I mean guests)... It's prolly time for them to start establishing the "we don't work for him (anymore)" theory.
 
Gun Nut said:
The thing is, Fox is all about ratings... News, Fiction... whatever... the three most important things are Ratings, Ratings, Ratings.
If they (as an organization) are convinced that Trump will move to obscurity in 2 years, that they will lose their protection from FCC violations of equal time, libel suits, and loss of contestants (err.. I mean guests)... It's prolly time for them to start establishing the "we don't work for him (anymore)" theory.
Click to expand...

Fox is not all about ratings. Fox News is crafted to advance the self interests of those who control it's content. As THE #1 source of right-wing propaganda in the world, they have massive influence over politics and economics. Murdoch, the rest of their board (which includes Paul Ryan), CEO, and their major show hosts like Tucker Carlson all have many financial interests that extend beyond the profits of the Fox News channel.

Economic interest means interest in particular political outcomes, particularly ensuring that the 1% pay as little taxes as possible, that corporations can get away with anything they want, that the rich have total control over government policy, and that none of the unearned privilege that their race has enjoyed are threatened. By extension, fueling xenophobia and white nationalism is also in their interests, which is why they constantly do it. Granted, the many millions of white nationalists, homophobes, and misogynists in the US are the primary source of ratings and thus direct profits to FOX News. However, Fox New's controllers also indirectly profit politically and financially from stoking this bigotries because it distracts the majority of their economic victims (the poor and "working class") from these viewers real political and economic enemies, the 1% and most multinational corporations. Also, by stoking the fears of bigots they drive them to support the party of bigotry, the GOP, which just so happens (by design) to also be the party of extreme right wing economic ideology.

Note that while dishonest rightists will use the strawman of "nice conspiracy theory", these empirically supported realities require nothing other than that those who run Fox Corporation are acting out of greedy self interest.
 
When Roger Ailes took over Fox under Murdoch, it was because he was a showman that knew how to secure Ratings. Roger took an emerging news network that was paced far behind MSNBC and CNN in their new offerings at the time, and not expected to succeed as their competition. Roger took Fox from underdog to leader in the field by specializing in one-sided uber-conservative leaning, to become the most watched network.
What Murdoch did not realize at the time is that Roger was a paranoid nut case, the likes of which were unparalleled by even the looniest of right-wing conspiracy theorists. Roger single-handedly turned Fox into the state-run RT equivalent, as part of his personal ideology. He practically ran Trump's campaign. It was Roger's idea to hire stand-ins at the Trump Tower staircase. It was Roger who first said, "Make America Great Again". Roger groomed Hannity and Tucker to be what they are today.
Roger Ailes died in 2017, while in the middle of being "Me Too'ed". In fact, it was the case brought against Roger that started the "Me Too" movement. When they went public with the case, the law firm received many voicemails from women that worked with Roger, and some of the most poignant messages had the phrase, "... and I just wanted to say that this happened to me too..." - thus the term was coined.
Roger is dead and Fox News is run by a female CEO, under Murdoch's two sons who hated Roger and everything he stood for.
It is not at all out of the realm of possibility that Fox is now slowly recovering from Roger's reign and attempting to recapture the original "fair and Balanced" tag line.
Speaking of which.... It is said that when Roger was challenged by his leaders about promoting the Obama Birther conspiracy, his response was, "It's balanced. We'll get to Fair later".
 
repoman said:
Has the Fox Disney merger changed Fox News at all?
Click to expand...

They didn't really merge. Disney took control over some of the holdings of Fox Corp, but Murdoch still controls Fox News, Fox Sports, Fox TV network, and the Wall Street Journal, all under a Fox Corp which is completely separate from Disney.
 
Gun Nut said:
When Roger Ailes took over Fox under Murdoch, it was because he was a showman that knew how to secure Ratings. Roger took an emerging news network that was paced far behind MSNBC and CNN in their new offerings at the time, and not expected to succeed as their competition. Roger took Fox from underdog to leader in the field by specializing in one-sided uber-conservative leaning, to become the most watched network.
What Murdoch did not realize at the time is that Roger was a paranoid nut case, the likes of which were unparalleled by even the looniest of right-wing conspiracy theorists. Roger single-handedly turned Fox into the state-run RT equivalent, as part of his personal ideology. He practically ran Trump's campaign. It was Roger's idea to hire stand-ins at the Trump Tower staircase. It was Roger who first said, "Make America Great Again". Roger groomed Hannity and Tucker to be what they are today.
Roger Ailes died in 2017, while in the middle of being "Me Too'ed". In fact, it was the case brought against Roger that started the "Me Too" movement. When they went public with the case, the law firm received many voicemails from women that worked with Roger, and some of the most poignant messages had the phrase, "... and I just wanted to say that this happened to me too..." - thus the term was coined.
Roger is dead and Fox News is run by a female CEO, under Murdoch's two sons who hated Roger and everything he stood for.
It is not at all out of the realm of possibility that Fox is now slowly recovering from Roger's reign and attempting to recapture the original "fair and Balanced" tag line.
Speaking of which.... It is said that when Roger was challenged by his leaders about promoting the Obama Birther conspiracy, his response was, "It's balanced. We'll get to Fair later".
Click to expand...

Fox News , in particular, did not exist until Roger Ailes created it, and did so to the specs of Murdoch, who hired the Republican media consultant and could have instantly fired him at any time, but did not b/c it was all went as designed. He was fired solely b/c his sexual predation known to all at Fox was made public by one of Fox's rising stars who gleefully spread Fox's message of bigotry while employed. After all, even some Fox News fans might start to be bothered by sexual assault when it happens to women who share their bigotries. The hiring of female to replace him is clearly pure PR and ass-covering, rather than any signal of real change in their ideology or business model.

From day 1, Fox News business model one basically the well worn Republican "Southern Strategy" of fueling the fears of white supremacist, misogynists , homophobes, and theocrats (all highly correlated with each other and social conservatism).
In fact, the whole point of the "Fair and Balanced" tagline was to promote the notion that because most major media does not actively promote these values along with blind war-mongering nationalism that they are biased by a liberal agenda.

As for the sons, who knows what their actual agenda is, and their hatred of Ailes may be largely jealousy that they weren't given the reigns of Fox News to begin with. Also, Rupert Murdoch is still the Chairman of the Board at Fox News, and the addition of the rarely fair, balanced, or reasonable Paul Ryan to the board doesn't signal any substantive change. However, Ryan does prefer his racism more subtle, like his use of standard tropes about poverty being due to generations of lazy men in the inner cities. So, maybe Fox will reel back the open honesty and return to their more coded language to fuel the bigotries that made them so successful.
 
ronburgundy said:
Gun Nut said:
The thing is, Fox is all about ratings... News, Fiction... whatever... the three most important things are Ratings, Ratings, Ratings.
If they (as an organization) are convinced that Trump will move to obscurity in 2 years, that they will lose their protection from FCC violations of equal time, libel suits, and loss of contestants (err.. I mean guests)... It's prolly time for them to start establishing the "we don't work for him (anymore)" theory.
Click to expand...

Fox is not all about ratings. Fox News is crafted to advance the self interests of those who control it's content. As THE #1 source of right-wing propaganda in the world, they have massive influence over politics and economics. Murdoch, the rest of their board (which includes Paul Ryan), CEO, and their major show hosts like Tucker Carlson all have many financial interests that extend beyond the profits of the Fox News channel.

Economic interest means interest in particular political outcomes, particularly ensuring that the 1% pay as little taxes as possible, that corporations can get away with anything they want, that the rich have total control over government policy, and that none of the unearned privilege that their race has enjoyed are threatened. By extension, fueling xenophobia and white nationalism is also in their interests, which is why they constantly do it. Granted, the many millions of white nationalists, homophobes, and misogynists in the US are the primary source of ratings and thus direct profits to FOX News. However, Fox New's controllers also indirectly profit politically and financially from stoking this bigotries because it distracts the majority of their economic victims (the poor and "working class") from these viewers real political and economic enemies, the 1% and most multinational corporations. Also, by stoking the fears of bigots they drive them to support the party of bigotry, the GOP, which just so happens (by design) to also be the party of extreme right wing economic ideology.

Note that while dishonest rightists will use the strawman of "nice conspiracy theory", these empirically supported realities require nothing other than that those who run Fox Corporation are acting out of greedy self interest.
Click to expand...

Fox is all about ratings and for most of its existence, their demographic of middle aged and retired white people meant a good return on investment. The problem with that demographic is, there comes a day when an older white person has bought their last Buick. No point in trying to sell them another. Advertisers know when their message is getting to the right people. Fox's audience is rapidly moving into that "bought their last whatever" demographic. Ten years from now, more than half of Fox's most dedicated watchers will be dead(statistics pulled out of my ass).

The people who get paid to worry about this sort of thing are very worried.
 
Fox has served its purpose of conditioning U.S. conservative voters into authoritarian follower disease. That phase is complete. Trump fellators now have their messiah so Fox doesn't really matter anymore. Of course, authoritarian followers like when Fox fellates their leader along with them, but that's no longer necessary to control the base or inform them as to what to think and who to hate and fear. Trump's got that well in hand now.
 
As I understand it, there are at least 3 Trump media projects in the planning stages.
For live streaming: Trump International Trending Stories
For cable: Trump Allied Independent News Television
For talk radio: Trump Universal Radio Digest
Now if he could just buy an hour on Telemundo.
 
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