PJM Lifestyle
4 Rules For a More Grown-Up Cable News Culture
Who hasn’t savored watching the Final Destination death sequence otherwise known as the career of Piers Morgan?
His sudden post-Sandy Hook notoriety is no accident, however.
As I noted elsewhere a few weeks back:
The average American doesn’t know what a “red top” is or realize that the now-defunct and disgraced News of the World was the British National Enquirer but with Princess Margaret taking on the role usually played by Bigfoot — and Morgan serving as Eavesdropper in Chief.
Before that, Morgan abused his lofty position at the Mirror to do some insider trading, for which his wrist was merely slapped. He wasn’t so lucky after publishing hoax photos of British troops allegedly torturing Iraqi prisoners—that stunt cost him his job.
Yet Morgan keeps getting new ones, his stint as King’s replacement being the latest and greatest.
At least that was the idea.
He signed a three-year, $8-million contract with CNN, but Morgan’s ratings aren’t impressive. He draws half the viewers of Sean Hannity and Rachel Maddow in the same time slot.
With his contract up for renewal this year, Morgan must have been itching for attention, maybe wishing for one of those nigh on unimpeachable “moral panics” of the sort that keep those British tabloids in business.
Along came Adam Lanza. (…)
With his contract renewal a crapshoot, Piers Morgan is clearly auditioning for his next gig, on a stage built with the blood and bones of dead children.
‘What if Blowing One’s Nose into Soft Disposable Paper Were Owned by Kleenex?’
via Douglas Rushkoff – Blog – Apple v Samsung: What if they had Patented the Alphabet?.
Imagine we were just developing spoken language for the first time. And someone came up with a new word to describe an action, thought, or feeling – like “magnify” or “dreadful.” But in this strange world, the person who came up with the word demanded anyone else who used it to pay him a dollar every time the word was uttered. That would make it pretty difficult for us to negotiate our way to a society that communicated through speech.
That’s the way the patent wars on smartphone and tablet advances are beginning to feel to me.
As a human being, I do not particularly care about Apple’s recent victory in the US version of its patent lawsuit against Samsung for copying its iPhone and iPad’s form and features. Now that Apple is demanding that Samsung pull eight of its products off the shelf, my only personal interest is whether the Samsung products, once banned, will become collectors’ items. Will I one day want to show my grandchild the phone that dared to mimic the iPhone?
But while the details of legalities and impact to share prices and even consumer choice don’t keep me or any of my friends up at night, there is nonetheless something creepy about Apple’s suit. It’s not so much that Apple – the biggest company in the world – has turned into a competitive monster; it’s the territory that Apple’s fighting over. It feels as if the technology innovation wars are no longer over one piece of technology or another, but over us humans.
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More on technology from PJ Lifestyle:
The 5 Most Fantastic Technical Advances Coming in Our Future of Abundance
Will Microsoft Surface Complete Me?
Why Your Phone Battery Dies So Fast
CNN’s Drift toward Reality TV = ‘That Moment When MTV Decided to Stop Playing Music Videos’
via CNN Reportedly Considering Talk Shows And Reality Shows To Help Boost Ratings | Mediaite.
It is like “that moment when MTV decided to stop playing music videos,” described one TV producer when giving the New York Post some inside knowledge on CNN’s plans to use late-night talk shows and reality programming as a way to jump-start the cable news network’s low ratings.
Citing internal documents, the Post wrote Monday that CNN executives have made the rounds with Hollywood talent agencies and reality producers, putting together ideas for a late-night talk show in the style of The View, some weekend reality TV programs to complement celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain‘s new CNN show, and seeking out new hosts from outside the cable news world (with Bourdain as the prototype).
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