Posted on 03/25/2005 3:50:21 PM PST by Tumbleweed_Connection
It's not that Sam Kimery objects to the views expressed on Fox News. The creator of the "Fox Blocker" contends that the channel is not news at all.
Kimery figures he's sold about 100 of the little silver bits of metal that screw into the backs of most televisions, allowing people to filter Fox News from their sets, since its August debut.
The Tulsa, Okla., resident also has received thousands of e-mails, both angry and complimentary - as well as a few death threats.
"Apparently the making of terroristic threats against those who don't share your views is a high art form among a certain core audience," said Kimery, 45.
Formerly a registered Republican, even a precinct captain, Kimery became an independent in the 1990s, when he said the state party stopped taking input from its everyday members.
Kimery now contends that Fox News' top-level management dictates a conservative journalistic bias, that inaccuracies are never retracted, and that what winds up on the air is more opinion than news. "I might as well be reading tabloids out of the grocery store," he says. "Anything to get a rise out of the viewer and to reinforce certain retrograde notions."
A Fox spokeswoman at the station's New York headquarters said the channel's ratings speak for themselves. For the first three months of this year, Fox has been averaging 1.62 million viewers in prime time, compared with CNN's 805,000, according to Nielsen Media Research.
Kimery's motives go deeper than preventing people from watching the channel, which he acknowledges can be done without the blocker. But he likens his device to burning a draft card, a tangible example of disagreement.
And he's taking this message to the network's advertisers. After buying the $8.95 device online, would-be blockers are shown a letter that they can send to advertisers via the Fox Blocker site.
"The point is not to block the channel or block free speech but to raise awareness," said Kimery, who works in the tech industry.
Kimery doesn't use the device himself; his remote is programmed to only a half-dozen channels. Plus he occasionally feels the need to tune into Fox News for something "especially heinous."
Business could pick up, since the blocker was alluded to in a recent episode of the ABC drama "Boston Legal." The show's original script mentioned Fox News, but ABC had the references removed.
The boisterous conversations on Fox News may be why the station is so popular, said Matthew Felling, media director for the Center for Media and Public Affairs, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media watchdog group. And despite a perception that Fox leans to the right, Felling said, that doesn't mean people who lean left should tune out.
"It's tough to engage in an argument when you're not participating in it," Felling said. "It's just one more layer in the wall that the right and the left are building in between each other."
He didn't invent squat; it's called a "trap", sometimes refered to as a filter.
Been used by the CATV industry for years...they buy them by the bucket load for anywhere from a buck twenty-nine to three dollars, depending on the channel.
Former GOPer Invents markets channel blocker to people too stupid to change the channel to eliminate Fox News Blocker and laughs all the way to the bank.
That's better.
You beat me to it.
Yeah, and to think all these years I JUST FLIPPED THE CHANNEL!
Too bad there are no freq. (freak?) traps for morons.
typical-liberal-headline-grabbing-third-party-solution-circumventing-the-need-for-responsibility-and-action-on-the part-of-the-first-party-alert.
LOL...how can the economy improve if you use common sense instead of buying worthless stuff. 8^)
Yeah, what #3 said....
Of course you would have to stock a bunch of different frequencies, since it isn't blocking FOX but the frequency it is being transmitted on, and that varies from locale to locale and cable system to cable system.
And only lazy, ignorant people who value symbolism over substance (in other words, your typical liberal) would buy the silly things. Even my little $60 cheapie TV has provisions for programming out any channel or channels you want.....
I suppose I could program out CNN CBS ABC NBC etc, but if I don't want to watch something, I just move on up or down the "dial".
The guy selling these things is following the old W.C. Fields adage: "Never give a sucker an even break".
*shrug*
2. If advertised, who is seeing it?
**shrug* not me
3. Those who are exposed to the marketing, what value is this product to them?
none, unless their remote or off button is broken. Maybe a replacement for a pet rock.
4. What objections would FOX have?
none...the people who would buy this already don't watch FOX at all...repeat at all. If you install one of these, you block the entire channel, not just the news; if you want to see anything on FOX, you'd have to take it off.
Traps were basically used to prevent a subscriber from receiving a pay channel they hadn't payed for, and though still used in some locales, their use has decreased drastically in the last few years.
My point is, just like normal liberal "logic", who besides them cares? The hole since 1994 continues to get deeper.
Oh, great... Now the "inventor" is claiming that he is getting death threats.....
Every neo or paleo leftist that wants publicity these days is claiming death threats from conservatives.
Ludicrous on the face of it.
I thought this guy might be just an entrepreneur taking advantage of the ignorance of liberals, but with this claim, he officially joins hillary, kerry and the other kool aid servers and drinkers IMO.
Deaath threats? What about those people in Waco?
Got it.
Maybe I missed something , but the only Waco death threats I can think of is what Janet Reno and Wes Clark actually caried out.
Like putting blinders on a horse. Keep him focused on what you want him to see and not what is going on around him. Thus, the term - narrow minded.
Good post Bro! It's about time you stopped lurking... :-)
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