Rating Burns Like a FOXX

This week we saw an unexpectedly dramatic remake of our bitter and belittled junior Senator, one that is sure to arouse envy in the heart of every untreated manic depressive in a three state area. It is all jobs and cotton candy clouds in a reign of unbridled self congratulatory optimism now.

Incredibly, it is as if those East Coast Liberals and their voodoo magic mind control rays never sought to use him to punish our poor defenseless little President after all.

I have this overwhelming urge to swipe the work of Rick Foote of Butte Weekly "Media Watch" here because it is old news (published on September 7, 2005) and he can just sue me if my parroting his work is an inappropriate thing to do. So here goes

Say it ain't so Conrad.
Not much hope of that.
News Corp., which is a Rupert Murdoch organization and the juice behind the ever-Right Wing Fox News, wants to jimmy the television ratings to force the Nielson Ratings, the arbiter of the numbers of people watching any particular television program or network at any particular time.

To foster this, News Corp., according to the New York Daily News- rival of Murdoch's New York Post, has begun pouring huge money into the coffers of Republican and Democratic members of Congress.

The first choice of News Corp.- our very own Conrad Burns.

As a matter of fact, Roll Call, the Capitol Hill newspaper, found that a lobbyist for Murdoch wrote an early draft of the Murdoch backed legislation for Burns.

The reason News Corp. doesn't want honest, independant ratings is because a slip in ratings means the exodus of millions of dollars of television advertising.

With Fox News barely tipping the ratings barely tipping the ratings at about 450,000 viewers, but claiming at least one million viewers, it is no wonder that News Corp. wants to eliminate the Nielson concept of independent ratings.

In actuality, Murdoch and News Corp. believe the bill would give a private broadcast industry panel the power to bar any new ratings system. The bill, the Daily News says, would strip the Nielson of it's independence. The television industry depends on that independence for analysis and for the use of advertisers.

The entire idea was fostered when Nielson had long used its system nationally, local numbers showed that the viewers were switching from broadcast to cable in larger numbers than forseen.

Life must be sweet for the man who never misses a trick.