Fox On the Run

A couple of weeks ago Rupert Murdoch made his long-expected - and in some cases, eagerly awaited - retirement announcement, with plans to hand over control of his media empire to his son Lachlan.  As far as I'm concerned, good riddance to bad Rupert. 

By hiring the late Roger Ailes to start the Fox News Channel, Murdoch probably did more than any other individual in America to corrupt broadcast journalism with lies, smears, racism, and reactionary politics.  His anchors and commentators did a great deal of damage to the body politic by promoting all sorts of conspiracy theories and corporate-friendly analyses of serious issues such as taxes and the environment.  And the channel's bashing of liberals and Democratic politicians for the sake of character assassination for fun and profit only widened the divide between the two major parties in Washington.  Also, I need to point to Murdoch-owned papers like the New York Post, which only amplified Murdoch's right-wing polemics in print.

It wasn't just Fox News, of course.  Murdoch dumbed down popular culture with its sister broadcast network, which, despite airing a couple of watchable sitcoms and dramas, mostly aired shows lacking in taste and dignity.  It's as if the Fox network, which went on the air in prime time in 1987, aimed to attract the same undereducated, low-information proles to watch lowbrow entertainment to prime them for the ethically challenged "news" channel that came later.

It should be noted that Murdoch broadcast shows to appeal to lucrative audiences that would enable him to obtain the capital necessary to launch the Fox News Channel in 1996.  Even as he was appalling folks with "Married . . . With Children," Murdoch aired respectable black sitcoms like "Roc" and "Martin," which inevitably drew black audiences to Fox and helped his bottom line.  None of that had anything to do with a desire to help black actors break through to wider audiences. He pretty much much made the money he needed to start a cable news channel off the eyeballs of black audiences and the popularity of black celebrities.  And when the Fox News Channel debuted in 1996, it began running racist stories about how food stamps were used the most in poor "urban" (read black) neighborhoods with liquor stores.  This was some time after Murdoch had black-oriented public affairs shows on local stations he'd purchased, like WNYW-TV in New York (which he'd bought from MetroMedia) canceled entirely.

No wonder Martin Lawrence - a comedic genius with the same level of intensity and madness as the late Robin Williams - went crazy.

I can also assure you, dear readers, the Fox's acquisition to broadcast rights to National Football League, whose games it began airing in 1994, had nothing to do with the Australian-born Murdoch having a personal interest in American football.  It didn't even have anything to do with expanding the broadcast schedule of the Fox network (which still ends prime-time programming an hour earlier than the Big Three networks).  It was all in the interest of funding the Fox News Channel.  And the purpose of the Fox News Channel was to keep the Republican Party dominant in American politics.

While I'm happy to see Rupert go, lets not kid ourselves.  Lachlan Murdoch is every bit as conservative and ruthless as his father, and he will most likely keep Fox News' standard for journalistic malfeasance going strong.  Besides, after 27 years ofthe Fox News Channel on the air and 37 years of its sister broadcast network on the air, Murdoch has already done so much harm to American culture that it will likely never recover from it.

After all, despite his own better judgement, Rupert Murdoch promoted Donald Trump.

TV Guide

I've been meaning to comment on the new 2010-11 American television season since as the schedules from the four major networks were announced last month, but I haven't had the opportunity. With everything going on in the world today, I'd keep putting off such commentary if I didn't give myself time to do it, so why don't I do it now?

Please be aware that I'm only focusing on highlights, not a comprehensive overview of the network schedules.

CBS is going retro in its upcoming schedule, ordering a new version of "Hawaii Five-O" But contrary to what you might think, "The Defenders," another new show, is not a remake of the E.G. Marshall-Robert Reed drama of the same name. Jim Belushi and Jerry O'Connell play two Las Vegas lawyers with a passion for life and the law. Also, Tom Selleck stars in the police drama "Blue Bloods." Although it's been thirty years since "Magnum P.I." first debuted, I wouldn't count Selleck out; he's a very underrated actor, maybe in part for his good looks and conservative politics. You might disagree with me, but I saw him in a TV movie about D-Day as Dwight D. Eisenhower, and I thought he was very good in it, especially in his approach to the role, so I know better.

CBS's new comedies include "Mike and Molly," a new series about two unattractive people developed by "Two and a Half Men" creator Chuck Lorre, which I consider to be a red flag. Lorre has done more than anyone else of late to damage the genre of situation comedy; "Two and a Half Men" is sexist, moronic, largely prurient, and thoroughly unlikable. I was elated to hear that Charlie Sheen was asking for more money, because I thought it might lead to the show's early demise - it had been renewed through May 2012 - but they gave Martin Sheen's less talented son what he wanted, and so we're subjected to this witless continuing story of a hedonistic jingle writer, his nerdy brother, and his ill-mannered dim-bulb nephew for at least two more years.

On the other hand, I'm neither surprised nor sorry that Jenna Elfman's "Accidentally On Purpose" was cancelled, though I regret that the Julia Louis-Dreyfus show "The New Adventures of Old Christine" is gone. The former "Seinfeld" star had a respectable run with her own show, picking up an Emmy along the way, and the show may not be defunct; ABC might pick it up.

As for NBC, whose ratings have been in the toilet for six years . . . well, let's see. "Chuck," one of those shows I keep meaning to see, has been renewed, and new shows include "The Event," about an average guy who stumbles on a government conspiracy, and the somewhat more promising "Love Bites," a romantic comedy-drama anthology. "Parenthood" is back (yay!) after two hours of the reality show "The Biggest Loser," but the biggest loser may be Amy Poehler, whose "Parks and Recreation" sitcom has been relegated to a mid-season placement just as it was starting to get funnier. "Trauma" and "Mercy," shows that attempted to fill the 10 PM ET block left by Jay Leno's return to "The Tonight Show," are done. So is "Heroes." Hopefully Ali Larter still has a brilliant future ahead of her.

ABC has a few interesting shows up its sleeve. Dana Delany of "China Beach" fame returns to the network as a medical examiner in "Body of Proof," and in "Mr. Sunshine," Matthew Perry stars as the self-involved manager of a second-rate San Diego sports arena who begins to re-evaluate his life when he turns forty. I assume Perry won't have to do a lot of acting.

His former co-star Courteney Cox returns with "Cougar Town," and that show will still be called that, apparently, despite the sexism in the title. "The Middle" stays on Wednesdays but moves to the 8 PM ET time slot and frees up space for "Better Together," a marriage comedy that stars "Reba" alumna JoAnna Garcia. Oh, and "Modern Family" is back too.

Not back are "Flash Forward" or "Happy Town." One other new series, "Detroit 1-8-7," about the Motor City police's homicide unit, is a series I give only a couple of weeks because I feel that the last thing people want to watch is a series about murder in a dead city. How much do you want to bet that WXYZ-TV, ABC's Detroit affiliate (yes, those are the actual call letters, and there's even a radio station in nearby Ann Arbor with the call letters WWWW) won't show it? (You must see murder and mayhem on their local newscast every night. :-O)

And Fox? "American Idol" and "The Simpsons" continue, likely until the end of time, and they have two or three new shows that will likely be forgotten in two months. If they can't find a replacement for Simon Cowell on "American Idol" who can't measure up to his standard of nastiness, then that show (like most of its winners) might be quickly forgotten as well, and that's when I'll know the two thousand zeroes are really over.

Right, I'll comment more on current events - the news you need to know, the songs you like to hear, yada yada yada - tomorrow.