Free Republic

As Guy Benson wrote, President Barack Obama will address the country on Thursday night to announce his sweeping, unprecedented decision to use executive authority to enact portions of an immigration reform bill that could not pass Congress. It will be, in fact, a move that Obama previously believed was beyond the realm of his authority to perform. There’s just one problem. If you’re hoping to see this critical, all-important address to the public on a proposal that Just. Can’t. Wait… you’re going to be disappointed. “President Barack Obama will announce his highly anticipated plan to deal with millions of...

After failing to mention the upcoming midterm election a single time since he took over the anchor desk of ABC's World News Tonight on September 1, on Monday, David Muir finally informed viewers that a political contest with "enormous" stakes was just days away: "The countdown is on, this evening, to the midterm elections tonight. Your voice, your vote. Just eight days to go before this election. The stakes? Enormous. President Obama, already battling with a Republican House, will he soon face a Republican Senate?" It had been 137 days since the ABC evening newscast had made any mention of...

President Obama has refused to commit American soldiers to the fight against the brutal Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or ISIS), saying “we don’t have a strategy” to defeat the terrorists. Network newscasts have praised the president’s statements against ISIL, labeling them “tough.” They also praised the expediency of his “fighting words.” Newsbusters reports: After President Obama admitted on Thursday that he had “no strategy” for dealing with the ISIS terrorist network, on Wednesday, the network morning shows rushed to portray the aimless commander-in-chief as a tough-talking leader ready to “destroy” the radical killers. At the top...

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) lowered the projected cost of ObamaCare's health insurance benefits Monday by $104 billion over 10 years. The law's insurance coverage provisions will now cost close to $1.4 trillion between 2015 and 2024, about $100 billion less than previously estimated, the CBO said. What is driving the lowered estimate? According to the report released by CBO, it has primarily to do with lower-than-expected premiums for exchange policies. So, good news for the Obama administration? Not so fast. Per CBO: A crucial factor in the current revision was an analysis of the characteristics of plans offered through...

Got an idea for a sitcom? NBC wants to hear from you. The broadcast network announced “an unprecedented effort to discover fresh comedic voices” on Tuesday by launching a national campaign offering aspiring comedy writers from around the country the chance to pitch their sitcom ideas. “We are taking a bold, alternative approach in what we hope will uncover original comedy minds who are looking for a way to get into the television business,” said NBC entertainment president Jennifer Salke. The initiative, dubbed “NBC Comedy Playground,” pledges to reach beyond the traditional talent labs of film schools and comedy...

London, 1772. I have been asked by my superiors to give a brief demonstration of the surprising effectiveness of even the simplest techniques of the new-fangled Social Networke Analysis in the pursuit of those who would seek to undermine the liberty enjoyed by His Majesty’s subjects. This is in connection with the discussion of the role of “metadata” in certain recent events and the assurances of various respectable parties that the government was merely “sifting through this so-called metadata” and that the “information acquired does not include the content of any communications”. I will show how we can use this...

Senate Democrats pledging to get more aggressive on climate change will soon pressure the major TV networks to give the topic far greater attention on the Sunday talking-head shows. Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, are gathering colleagues' signatures on a letter to the networks asserting that they're ignoring global warming. "It is beyond my comprehension that you have ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox, that their Sunday shows have discussed climate change in 2012, collectively, for all of eight minutes," Sanders said, citing analysis by the liberal watchdog group Media Matters for America.

When it comes to breaking news on stories like Saturday's tragic Asiana jet crash at San Francisco airport, it's becoming increasingly clear that we've moved into a new era for journalism. A few years ago, the only real option for news viewers to try and keep on top of urgent stories was to go to one of the cable networks such as CNN, FOX News or MSNBC and watch stories unfold. Today, social media like Twitter, and Internet access to local news and scanner feeds, are getting the jump on the networks. Covering a breaking disaster story is simply...

WASHINGTON, D.C., April 4, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The FCC is seeking comments from the public as they consider relaxing their obscenity standards for broadcast television and radio. If adopted the new, lower standards would allow brief “non-sexual” nudity and isolated expletives even during prime time, when most families are typically watching with their children. Currently, broadcasters face heavy fines for violations of the indecency policy, which bans strong curse words and most nudity. But as media culture grows coarser, the backlog of reported offenses has grown unmanageable for the FCC, leading Chairman Julius Genachowski to order the Enforcement Bureau to...

He brutally killed unborn babies by jamming medical scissors in the back of their necks, but the major network television stations have engaged in a blackout of coverage of his murder trial. To response, 20 prominent leaders of the conservative movement have joined Media Research Center President Brent Bozell in demanding the broadcast networks stop censoring coverage. They are also upset at the lack of coverage of the Florida Alliance of Planned Parenthood Affiliates lobbyist who testified in favor of allowing the killing of children who survive botched abortions. MRC’s Culture and Media Institute finds that ABC, CBS, and NBC...

The low-rated Current TV is off Bright House Networks after the announcement that the channel was being sold to Al Jazeera. “Our agreement with Current TV has been terminated and we will no longer be carrying the service,” Bright House spokesman Donald Forbes said Friday. He added that the service ended Wednesday and that Bright House has not yet replaced Current TV on Channel 156.

Don't Mean To Be Alarmist, But The TV Business May Be Starting To Collapse, We almost never watch television shows when they are broadcast anymore We rarely watch shows with ads, even on a DVR We watch a lot of TV and movie content, but always on demand and almost never with ads We get our news from the Internet, article by article, clip by clip. The only time we watch TV news live is when there's a crisis or huge event happening somewhere.

Since The New York Times decided to put Reverend Jeremiah Wright back on the nation's agenda, it's important to note that some voters (especially the youngest new voters) may not understand what happened in the last cycle. The most important part for them is this: Barack Obama said in a widely hailed speech on March 18, 2008 that "I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community." He then disowned him on April 29, and finally cut ties to the church entirely on May 31. None of his craven (if very delayed) moves were forced by...

Sony Corp. is considering launching an Internet-based alternative to cable-TV service, people familiar with the situation said, posing the latest threat to the cable and satellite operators that dominate pay TV. The Japanese electronics and entertainment company has approached several big media companies to negotiate the rights to offer their TV channels over the Web in the U.S., the people said. Sony is proposing to beam the channels over Internet connections to Sony-made devices, including PlayStation gaming consoles, TV sets and Blu-ray players, the people said. Sony has sold about 18.1 million PlayStation 3 consoles in the U.S. alone, according...

As NewsBusters reported Monday, the broadcast network news outlets of ABC, CBS and NBC ran a total of 84 stories on the sexual harassment allegations against Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain in the week following Politico publishing its hit piece. That is more coverage than they gave to Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's connections to domestic terrorist Bill Ayers, convicted real estate developer Tony Rezko, or America-hating Rev. Jeremiah Wright throughout the entire campaign. According to LexisNexis, from February 2007 when Obama announced his candidacy to Election Day 2008, ABC ran 20 stories on Ayers, CBS did thirteen, and NBC...

Viacom employees have been hit with a round of layoffs, Adweek has learned. Pink slips were handed down Thursday afternoon. A Viacom spokesperson confirmed the cuts, and said that the downsizing primarily took place within the media conglomerate’s music group, which includes MTV, VH1, CMT, and Logo. A number of departments within the music group were affected, including digital, consumer marketing, and on-air promotions. Outside of the music group, cuts were made in affiliate marketing, an area that supports BET Networks and Viacom Media Networks, which counts Comedy Central and Nickelodeon among its holdings. The downsizing took place the same...

Because BBM, which rioters are using to communicate, is not traceable by cops, PM David Lammy says it’s “one of reasons why unsophisticated criminals are outfoxing an otherwise sophisticated police force.” LONDON – What, you might wonder, is the modern urban guerilla’s rioting weapon of choice? A machete? You might think so. But for most of the youngsters looting and ransacking the streets of London for the past three nights, cement blocks, iron bars and supermarket trolleys seemed to do the job of smashing in shop windows just as well. A balaclava? Perhaps. Per the multiple videos posted on Twitter...

Internet-connected television sets have been growing fast, and by the end of the year -- for the first time -- there will be more connected TVs than videogame consoles. By the end of 2011, some 52 million connected TV sets will be sold globally -- from Samsung, LG and Sony versus 37 game consoles in the market from Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony --Xbox, PlayStation and Wii respectively. This is according to U.K.-base Informa Telecoms & Media. "Until now, many online video services were launched primarily with the game console in mind, mainly because console users innately understand how to connect...

In the wake of the largest security breach in U.S. military history, the mainstream media have struggled to report all the facts about Bradley Manning, the Iraq war soldier in the middle of the Wikileaks scandal. In an effort to pursue political correctness over truthful journalism, ABC, CBS and NBC ignored uncomfortable facts about Manning's sexual orientation and history of "emotional fragility," choosing instead to describe him as an "outcast who tried desperately to fit in."

Fewer young people watched TV on traditional sets over the past television season, the second consecutive year of decline as viewers face a proliferation of ways to watch TV shows. U.S. TV networks marked the official end of the TV season on Wednesday with a flurry of widely viewed send-offs, including the last episode of "The Oprah Winfrey Show" and the season finale of "American Idol." But those big programs are closing out a TV season in which few new shows became hits, and ratings for the four most-watched networks fell. At any given time of day, about 25.1 million...