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bought & installed TVs in waiting rooms around the country. The stipulation was they had to play the Fox cable station.
This was in the early days when Fox first started & it was promotional. I also remember reading here that Fox gave the cable owners it's station for free if they would add it to their cable line-up.
I guess you'd say that's good business, but you have to have a hell of a lot of money to pay for that gamble. But then, what gamble? You have politicians doing whatever you ask of them, & you feed the masses fear, danger & whathaveyou in big bold colorful, fast & fancy graphics - & it's like showing cartoons to little kids.
I've been searching for articles on this & on how the GOP fast tracked Murdock's American citizenship to enable him to buy up several small stations all across America as well as the big Faux News.
I think a lot of criminal activity is involved here, & I also believe some very big political names are, too. But we'll never know because this sadly will never be investigated. And in the meantime, the non-thinking & increasingly belligerent masses will still be mesmerized by the Fox-like cartoons. And, in this Citizens United PAC-world, I bet there are many televisions going into a lot of waiting rooms & restaurants during this campaign season.
I swear I'm going to 
I also wonder why those ultra-patriotic Americans - those who cry foul for the most mundane, don't stand up against having their news negatively & very much in partisanship fed to them by "foreigners"- this also includes Saudi investments.
Couple of different things going on:
First, back in the mid-1980s, Murdoch wanted to start a broadcast network to compete with NBC,CBS and ABC. As an anchor for that network, he wanted to purchase some stations, but to do that he needed to become an American citizen and he needed it done in a hurry. As you suggest, with a little "help" from friends in the Reagan administration, he got his wish and the way was cleared for the creation of the Fox network in 1986 or thereabouts.
Fast forward a decade to 1996. Murdoch decides to launch a satellite delivered news channel to compete with CNN. His naturalization as a US citizen is unrelated to this, since there are no foreign ownership rules governing cable networks. But he was having trouble getting on cable systems, so he offered major "launch" fees to systems that would add his channel to their line up. Around the same time that Fox News was launching, CNN was being sold, along with the rest of the Turner media services, to Time Warner. As part of a consent decree allowing that transaction to move forward, Time Warner agreed to carry a second news channel. Originally, it looked like that channel was going to be MSNBC (which also had just been launched out of the ashes of a channel called "America's Talking"
. But after additional litigation, a settlement was reached that resulted in Fox News being added to the bulk of Time Warner Cable's systems over a five year period.
Fast forward again. During the Bush years, Fox News' ratings surge and it becomes a channel that most cable and satellite companies feel is a 'must have' channel (along with channels such as CNN, ESPN, etc etc). As the original carriage agreements come up for renewal, the shoe is on the other foot -- instead of being paid by Fox, cable and satellite companies now have to turn around and pay, dearly, to keep Fox News on their line ups. Fox (like other companies that own both broadcast and non-broadcast networks) also takes advantage of its right to demand payment for carriage of its broadcast network (with popular sports and entertainment programming) by bundling those rights with rights to channels like Fox News to further ratchet up the payment.
Completely empty room on the ICU floor, tv blaring. I had to be in that room while a family member was being seen in ICU.
I turned it to Nat Geo channel, turned volume down. After a few minutes someone else came into the waiting room
and stared at the tube, then asked if I minded if they changed the channel.
I told them only hospital staff were allowed to touch it.
If I were not so opposed to destructive actions, I would offer a low-tech solution"
I need them a lot less than they need me. They can go to Faux hell.
Ed: Thanks for the heads up. I'll know to stay away from now on.
They've got it set up as a Volksempfänger
Volksempfängers were inexpensive radios that would receive nazi propaganda and very little else. They are attempting a 21st century version of this tactic by shoving faux noise in everywhere they can. Goebbels would be so proud.
