Yes, Democrats

 

Maybe they could do both?

National TV is mainly for their own image.  Local TV is for the citizenry's benefit. 

Also...

Traditional Dems are living in the past when both parties played by the same, mostly respectable rules.

Edward R Murrow: Prophet

From his speech on October 15, 1958, to the Radio Television Digital News Association... 

Believing that potentially the commercial system of broadcasting as practiced in this country is the best and freest yet devised, I have decided to express my concern about what I believe to be happening to radio and television. These instruments have been good to me beyond my due. There exists in mind no reasonable grounds for any kind of personal complaint. I have no feud, either with my employers, any sponsors, or with the professional critics of radio and television. But I am seized with an abiding fear regarding what these two instruments are doing to our society, our culture and our heritage.

[...]

I invite your attention to the television schedules of all networks between the hours of 8 and 11 p.m., Eastern Time. Here you will find only fleeting and spasmodic reference to the fact that this nation is in mortal danger. There are, it is true, occasional informative programs presented in that intellectual ghetto on Sunday afternoons. But during the daily peak viewing periods, television in the main insulates us from the realities of the world in which we live. If this state of affairs continues, we may alter an advertising slogan to read: LOOK NOW, AND PAY LATER.

For surely we shall pay for using this most powerful instrument of communication to insulate the citizenry from the hard and demanding realities which must indeed be faced if we are to survive. And I mean the word survive, quite literally. If there were to be a competition in indifference, or perhaps in insulation from reality, then Nero and his fiddle, Chamberlain and his umbrella, could not find a place on an early afternoon sustaining show. If Hollywood were to run out of Indians, the program schedules would be mangled beyond all recognition. Then perhaps, some young and courageous soul with a small budget might do a documentary telling what, in fact, we have done--and are still doing--to the Indians in this country. But that would be unpleasant. And we must at all costs shield the sensitive citizen from anything that is unpleasant.

[...]

What, then, is the answer? Do we merely stay in our comfortable nests, concluding that the obligation of these instruments has been discharged when we work at the job of informing the public for a minimum of time? Or do we believe that the preservation of the republic is a seven-day-a-week job, demanding more awareness, better skills and more perseverance than we have yet contemplated.

I am frightened by the imbalance, the constant striving to reach the largest possible audience for everything; by the absence of a sustained study of the state of the nation. Heywood Broun once said, "No body politic is healthy until it begins to itch." I would like television to produce some itching pills rather than this endless outpouring of tranquilizers. It can be done. Maybe it won't be, but it could.

[...]

But this nation is now in competition with malignant forces of evil who are using every instrument at their command to empty the minds of their subjects and fill those minds with slogans, determination and faith in the future. If we go on as we are, we are protecting the mind of the American public from any real contact with the menacing world that squeezes in upon us. We are engaged in a great experiment to discover whether a free public opinion can devise and direct methods of managing the affairs of the nation. We may fail. But in terms of information, we are handicapping ourselves needlessly.

[...]

This instrument can teach, it can illuminate; yes, and even it can inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise, it's nothing but wires and lights in a box. There is a great and perhaps decisive battle to be fought against ignorance, intolerance and indifference. This weapon of television could be useful.

[...]

We are currently wealthy, fat, comfortable and complacent. We have currently a built-in allergy to unpleasant or disturbing information. And our mass media reflect this. But unless we get up off our fat surpluses and recognize that television in the main is being used to distract, delude, amuse and insulate us, then television and those who finance it, those who look at it and those who work at it, may see a totally different picture too late.

  RTDNA

He doesn't have time to watch TV

He's watching all the ultra-right crazies.

The country's biggest rube is also its president.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

His Lardship responds to Fox News pulling Saturday's "Judge Jeanine" show

He's unhappy about the TV this morning.



What "other side"?  They go with whoever's making headlines.  And you suck all the air out of headline time.

An advertisement without consequences?



He's calling for censorship of comedy.  How very authoritarian.

And, yes.  It is hard to believe you won. You've finally hit on something true.  And we, too, are Sorry!

UPDATE: In case you missed it...

Last week, Fox News condemned remarks made by Pirro after the host on air questioned whether Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) is loyal to Sharia because she wears a hijab.

[...]

Several advertisers pulled their ads from Pirro's show last week in the wake of the Omar controversy. Tucker Carlson, host of Fox's "Tucker Carlson Tonight," also lost advertisers after a left-leaning blog resurfaced [racist and sexist] comments he made during appearances on a radio show between 2006 and 2011.

  The Hill

UPDATE:

Meanwhile in creeping fascism news

In 2004, Congress limited the national reach of a television-group owner to 39 percent of U.S. homes. This limitation was put in place to keep the major networks, who are also station-group owners, from having too much control over local news.

This was actually an increase from the limit set by Ronald Reagan’s Federal Communications Commission, which first instituted the ownership cap in 1985 at 25 percent.

[...]

But when Sinclair Broadcast Group proposed merging with Tribune Media in May 2017, it would have created a new company that reached 72 percent of all TV households in the U.S.

[...]

The merger was dropped, but it is still too early to celebrate. Tribune is apparently for sale again.

[...]

Sinclair was able to bid for Tribune and attempt to reach 72 percent of the country because in April 2017 the FCC re-instituted something called the UHF discount.

The UHF discount was an archaic regulatory rule that allowed television stations broadcasting on UHF frequencies to be counted at half their actual reach. In the past, this made sense, since UHF spectrum was considered to be inferior to VHF spectrum. Technology, however, has now made the rule obsolete because, since the 2009 transition to digital broadcasting, UHF signals are no longer inferior to VHF spectrum. In fact, UHF is now the preferred broadcasting frequency for digital television.

Shortly after the switch to digital—sometimes called the “DTV transition”—the FCC began a rulemaking to eliminate the UHF discount. According to the FCC, “the transition to DTV … undermine[d] the basis for the UHF discount” because it was “premised on the constraints of old technology.” The FCC formally eliminated it in 2016.

But then, inexplicably, the discount was restored in 2017—a move widely viewed as providing a loophole for Sinclair to skirt the ownership limit.

[...]

Public interest groups immediately filed for a stay of the decision and appealed to the federal court in the District of Columbia, arguing that it should nix the new UHF discount as inappropriate and dishonest. In July, the court ruled that the petitioners did not have jurisdiction in the case, without discussing the merits of their arguments. For now, the UHF discount remains in place.

  Politico

State run television isn't necessary if you have a corporation like Sinclair that broadcasts state propaganda. ...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.