TELEVISION DRAMA

There is so much stuff going on right now, I don’t know where to start! 

Al Gore, former Vice President, is a happy camper.  He was the recipient of 20% of the take on a $500 million deal yesterday when Current TV was sold to Al-Jazeera.  Current TV, if you’re not familiar with it, is a liberal biased news station with a viewership of less than 50,000 during prime time.  It has been struggling along for seven years.  Glen Beck reportedly tried to buy the cable channel but his bid was rejected.  How this cable channel is going to do with so many other cable news channels out there is unknown. It will also have to overcome other obstacles such as Americans remembering Al Jazerra being the voice and image of Osama bin Laden after 9/11/01 and, even the name the channel was tentatively given –Al Jazeera America – sounds too foreign to most of us, too close to the government of Qatar who now owns it.

Time Warner Cable has not made a decision whether or not it is going to carry the station.  It was supposedly close to dropping the station due to its low ratings before this sale, which TW did not consent to  If it does continue to carry the station, it will be at a much lower rate than the twelve cents per subscriber per month Current TV was receiving.  To put this in perspective, CNN receives fifty-seven cents a month per subscriber and FOX News, eighty-nine cents.  Outfits like Dish Network, Comcast and Directv may be contractually stuck carrying Current TV or whatever they end up calling it.  I think I can do without my news being bent in still another direction.  How about you?

Another television news story comes from the New York Post.  It is suggested that CNN needs not an outstanding journalist like Ann Curry to bring people over to CNN for their prime time slot but an outstanding personality, Howard Stern.  The author of the article thinks Mr. Stern would be their new Larry King.  I imagine myself sitting there waiting for the first bleep of the evening, the first fight, etc.  How does he get his hair to look that way?

Thank you House of Representatives for re-electing John Boehner speaker of the House!  Now, get off your butts and do some real work to help the people who got you there!  Some of you need to pretend that you work for a living and that you can and will get fired if you piss off your boss.  If you drama queens have forgotten who your boss really is, you may be in for a shock.  We don’t want contrived reality tv.  We want reality.  Reality is, we the people can’t spend money we don’t have, so we don’t spend.  If we get too far into debt, we get in trouble.  We can’t make more money down in our basements and we can’t borrow money from China like you do.  So, lower the debt, stop spending and stay out of our state government unless you’re invited.  I know government is on a vastly larger scale than we the people are but, the same rules should apply.  We put you in charge of helping us maintain and protect our lives in a fashion according to The Constitution of the United States.  We did not elect you to tell us what to do differently.

Sharon

Update on Monday, January 7, 2013 at 10:03AM by Jerry

An update to the news regarding the purchase of Current TV by the Qatar owned Al Jazeera.

Eliot Spitzer, the former New York governor, cancelled his show Sunday.  Spitzer, a politician turned TV show host, announced that he had a relationship with Current's founders, Joel Hyatt and Al Gore -- not Al Jazeera. Spitzer took over VIEWPOINT last year when Keith Olbermann was fired from the show.

Time Warner Cable originally said that it would not carry the channel but now seems to be moving more toward the middle ground. We willl keep you updated.