Le Blog

Media Musings

Some Change Is For The Better. Yes, Even The Name.

You know how I’ve railed against the amount of time and money that’s been wasted on changing the name of a media company?  You hopefully do recall those incidences; I went on such a rant as late as yesterday. There is a caveat to all of that vitriol though.  The changes I worked on, not

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Media Musings

Maybe They Should Have Considered Glue. Or Snot.

It was hard to keep a straight face when I saw this nugget that somehow qualified as breaking news in the cable industry come in from multiple sources yesterday.  Even though it was written rather plainly, it was practically trolling that one such source was CNN’s Brian Stelter: As the cable news channel MSNBC splits

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Media Musings

Yes, You Tubers, You CAN Put Lipstick On A Pig

I’m always a little jazzed when someone (or, more accurately, some machines) plow through exorbitant amounts of data to conclusively show that it corroborates what has otherwise been asserted as gospel truth that heretofore had been given the same sort of attitude that Bill Maher often references in his monologues.  I don’t know it for

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News Notions

Hypothetical Rejection? More Like Hypocritical.

I spent a total of 15 years in the employ of companies owned by Rupert Murdoch, achieved some of the greatest professional success of my career and every single check I ever received cleared.  I never worked directly for FOX News or The New York POST, perhaps two of the more notorious brands that he’s

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News Notions

An Alaskan Pipeline Clogged With Sh-t

I knew they had relocated DEAL OR NO DEAL to a tropical island.  I had no idea they were doing new episodes on an Alaskan peninsula. When I staggered home yesterday to find Roomie perched in front of our communal TV eagerly anticipating the press conference that was to provide details for the Trump-Putin summit

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Media Musings

Pick Your Platform. Pick Your Team.

NOTE:  This also appears today on our sister site DoubleOvertime.  Please visit it daily for coverage of sports of all sorts plus occasional commentary on business and technology. When it comes to TV, the NFL season has already started.  And I don’t just mean the slew of exhibition games that are available almost non-stop on

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Media Musings

For TV’s #2 Station Group, It Could Be Fifty Shades Of Green

I realize that it’s downright chic to dismiss broadcast television as a dying industry, especially since every time Nielsen offers up new data its Gauge its share of measured viewing continues to decline.  Given what little has been on this summer to spike it–heck, even BIG BROTHER is relatively meh compared to prior seasons–I strongly

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Life Lessons

Talk To Someone Else’s Hand. Please.

Happy Birthday To Me.  Yep, I let a select few of you down yet again. Yes, compared to the alternative aging another year is more than favorable.  But that doesn’t mean it’s a joyride, either. I’m now inexorably in a demographic category that advertisers largely consider irrelevant.  Even in the more generous surveys where ten-year

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Media Musings

A Franchise Extension That’s Out Of This World

It would be easy to be dismissive of FX’S ALIEN: EARTH as yet another lazy example of a platform (yes. given its omnipresence and proportion of total viewership of Hulu it’s much more appropriate to not call it merely a network these days) taking pre-existing IP that’s a known quantity to enhance the chance that

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