Is it ideology or just plain greed?

[question everything]

EUGENE ROBINSON THE WASHINGTON POST

Is it ideology or just plain greed?

May 27, 2005

Rupert Murdoch owns the Fox network, which for the first time won the season-long ratings battle for viewers age 18-49, a benchmark demographic that makes advertisers salivate and pull out their checkbooks. Fox's "American Idol" – to which I am, yes, addicted – was the top-rated show among viewers across the board. Murdoch also owns the No. 1 cable news network, Fox News, which has left CNN and MSNBC in its dust. And you might have heard of the little movie that's raking in a bit of change for Murdoch's 20th Century Fox movie studio: "Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith."

In other words, at the moment Rupert Murdoch pretty much owns this country's eyeballs. The question is, does he have designs on any other parts of our anatomy? The conquest of the United States by this aging, Australian-born, workaholic billionaire fascinates me. Murdoch's reach has become so broad and all-encompassing that it's tempting to break out the "Citizen Kane" analogies, especially in light of his well-known conservative political views.

(snip)


I haven't used the phrase "right-wing" to describe him because he seems so different from the sanctimonious right-wing politicians who have become so lamentably powerful in Washington, D.C. His upstart Fox network, which 15 years ago wasn't even broadcasting a full seven-day schedule, overtook the established troika of NBC, CBS and ABC among young viewers not by appealing to the Christian right but by being flashy, racy and wildly secular. Remember "Temptation Island," the reality show that proudly promoted infidelity?

"The Simpsons," which was Fox's first breakout show, is hardly written for the likes of Tom DeLay or Rick Santorum. But my sense of the way the Murdoch empire functions is that if slathering on the false piety were likely to draw more viewers, Fox probably would have been happy to oblige. Bart Simpson could have been rewritten into a Bible-toting young Baptist seminarian. What works, works. In the same vein, Fox News is engineered to fill a market niche, not to spur the conquest of Middle Eastern oil fields. The growth of conservative talk radio suggested there might be a similar opportunity in television – and it turned out there was. Maybe Murdoch would have had qualms if the opening had been on the left, but somehow I doubt it.

(snip)


Find this article at:
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20050527/news_lz1e27robinso.html

[GreenArrow]

1. it's an ideology of greed

.

[Protagoras]

2. Exactly!

Sometimes we have to apply Occam's razor.

A great place to see the distilled essence of Neoconservativism is the movie Wallstreet. Gordon Gekko's Speech to the stockholders.

Greed is Good. IT's the elevation of soulless pursuit of wealth and power to a religion. It's is all about ends, with no concern about the means.

And it's taken a cultlike hold in this culture.

[Norquist Nemesis]

3. "engineered to fill a market niche"

Precisely! Which is why MSNBC or CNN should go Liberal and fill the void. Can you imagine how they would KILL Faux if that approach were undertaken? They keep trying to outdo Faux and it's not going to happen by being like them. If they want to gain viewers, they can only do it by mirroring them--literally, the reflection in reverse.

From a marketing aspect, it's easy to see why Faux commands the ratings. They penetrated a specific segment of the market through target and captured the cross-segment. Simple target marketing.

The problem? It's touted as NEWS in a country that espouses free press as fundamental to our success in the great experiment. But Murdock played the game through cable-TV (vs. public airwaves) and has had an impact of making the "free press" to become the "free-market press". Meanwhile, the public still thinks we have a free press.

So, it's both...and it's neither. His greed is enhanced and maximized through his ideology. He's used and abused the system.

[carnie_sf]

4. It is an ideology

and it's as old as man. In the bible it's called the worship of Mammon.