Tag: CBS

Hate Wins Again

Donny and the conservs got their way (finally–after trying for decades) the funds for NPR/PBS will dry up….

There are many reasons I have heard but none is a sound reason for trying to kill this broadcast entity….

Below is an opinion (not mine–keep that in mind before you go off half cocked which seems to be a tradition with some)…..

Our public radio and TV stations are in grave peril, and with them the unique services they perform for our communities.

By the end of day Friday July 18, we’ll know if Congress has clawed back the money it already gave to public broadcasting, through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, or CPB. (The House will decide; this is your moment to call your representatives to ask them to support their public radio and TV stations, and to join — for free — Protectmypublicmedia.org.) Even if that money stays protected, though, public radio and TV will continue to be attacked.

I’ve studied public broadcasting here and around the world for 40 years. And I serve on the board of directors of the taxpayer-funded Independent Television Service, which coproduces a lot of the documentaries you might see on public TV. So, of course, I think it’s an important part of our media in America. But I think you probably do, too.

You might know public broadcasting through your local TV or radio station, both private nonprofits. Or you might know it through the services many such stations depend on for daily, high-quality, award-winning programs: National Public Radio (NPR) and Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). Both of them are private nonprofits that make, select, and bundle programs for public stations.

Either way, you’re in good company. PBS and NPR are the most trusted media brands in the United States. Half of PBS viewers depend on PBS for news and information, including more than half of people who identify as “extreme conservatives” or “extreme liberals.” NPR’s news is trusted by more than half of those who have heard of it. Americans trust public media news and public affairs much more (by half) than they do commercial mainstream media.

https://www.rawstory.com/corporation-for-public-broadcasting/

Silence from NPR/PBS was not enough…..they are going after the late night shows as well because they are critical of the present POS of government….

Then there is this Colbert and CBS thing….

Stephen Colbert made the announcement himself to his studio audience on Thursday at the Ed Sullivan Theater in New York City. “I want to let you know something I found out just last night,” he said, USA Today reports. “Next year will be our last season. The network will be ending The Late Show next May.” When the audience registered its disappointment, Colbert said, “Yeah, I share your feelings.” CBS said the cancellation was a financial decision, per Variety.

It’s not just his show being canceled, Colbert said, it’s CBS’ late-night talk show franchise—a run that began when the network hired David Letterman from NBC in 1993. “I’m not being replaced,” Colbert told the audience. “This is all just going away.” There had been speculation that Skydance Media, which is acquiring CBS parent company Paramount Global, might not appreciate Colbert’s jokes at President Trump’s expense. In Monday’s show, Colbert had talked about CBS Global settling Trump’s lawsuit over the editing of a 60 Minutes story, per the AP. He said the technical name for such a settlement is a “big fat bribe.”

CBS referred to the speculation in its statement. The network blamed “a challenging backdrop in late night,” adding that the cancellation “is not related in any way to the show’s performance, content or other matters happening at Paramount.” Advertising revenue has been drying up for late-night shows, per the Los Angeles Times. Media companies are unhappy with the high production costs and the loss of young viewers to digital video. The network praised Colbert and the show, saying they’ll “be remembered in the pantheon of greats that graced late night television.”

Wassup with this move?  Is it politics?

The announcement from CBS executives came just three days after Colbert spoke out on his show about a recent $16 million settlement reached by CBS parent company Paramount over an interview that “60 Minutes” aired with former Vice President Kamala Harris ahead of the 2024 election, in which Harris ran against President Donald Trump.

Colbert had told his audience that the settlement appeared to be a “big fat bribe” to end a “nuisance lawsuit.”

“This all comes as Paramount’s owners are trying to the get the Trump administration to approve the sale of our network to a new owner,” said Colbert, referring to a pending $8.4 billion merger with the entertainment company Skydance—whose billionaire founder, David Ellison, has been spotted with Trump in recent months.

Trump’s lawsuit against Paramount claimed the Harris interview was deceptively edited and amounted to “partisan and unlawful acts of election and voter interference,” allegations that legal experts and First Amendment scholars denounced as “ridiculous” and “dangerous.”

After the settlement was announced earlier this month, with Paramount pledging to release transcripts of future “60 Minutes” interviews with presidential candidates, one press freedom group condemned the company for “capitulating” to the president’s demands.

CBS executives appeared to preemptively respond to expected allegations that they were canceling Colbert’s show due to his criticism of the settlement—and his frequent rebukes of the president—saying the decision, effective in May 2026, was “purely a financial” one.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/cbs-late-night

Slowly all opposition voices are being silenced….and that is just fine for defeatists that care nothing for this country….but since I am NO defeatist I shall continue on my road….like it or not.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Closing Thought–26Mar18

Into A Stormy Night!

The much anticipated interview with Stormy Daniels has come and gone…..the of a tell-all was not the case……

In her much-anticipated interview with 60 Minutes, Stormy Daniels recounts a threat she received in 2011 about staying quiet regarding her alleged affair with Donald Trump. Daniels told Anderson Cooper that the threat occurred in the parking lot of a fitness center in Las Vegas, a few weeks after Daniels had for the first time agreed to tell her story to a gossip magazine for $15,000, per CBS News. “A guy walked up on me and said to me, ‘Leave Trump alone. Forget the story,’ ” Daniels said. “And then he leaned around and looked at my daughter and said, ‘That’s a beautiful little girl. It’d be a shame if something happened to her mom.’ And then he was gone.” The magazine, a sister publication of In Touch, never ran the story because Trump’s lawyers threatened to sue.

Daniels says the matter largely ended there until Trump won the presidential nomination five years later, and media sites began approaching her. That’s when she says she accepted $130,000 from Trump attorney Michael Cohen to sign a non-disclosure agreement. “They made it sound like I had no choice,” Daniels said. She added that there was no threat of physical violence. “The exact sentence used was, ‘They can make your life hell in many different ways.'” Anderson asked who she meant by “they,” and she replied, “I’m not exactly sure who they were. I believe it to be Michael Cohen.” She said she agreed to the deal “because I was concerned for my family and their safety.”

I think this interview fell to the floor with a very loud “thud”…..Daniels answers to the soft ball questions were generalized and not as telling as the interview had been billed.  Cooper missed several opportunities to expand this conversation and he was shooting blanks. What did we learn?

Photos and messages? Daniels declined to confirm whether photos or text messages that back up her account of the affair exist, the Washington Post reports in its list of five takeaways from the interview. She said her lawyer, Michael Avenatti, recommended she not discuss such things. When Cooper told Avenatti he could be bluffing, the attorney said: “You should ask some of the other people in my career when they’ve bet on me bluffing.”

he wasn’t attracted to Trump. Unlike former Playmate Karen McDougal, Daniels said she wasn’t physically attracted to Trump, who was 33 years older than her at the time of the alleged encounter in 2006, USA Today reports. She added, however, that the sex was consensual and she wasn’t “a victim.” The adult film star told Cooper she had sex with Trump once, without protection, in 2006 after he told her he might be able to get her on The Apprentice. She said when she asked about Melania Trump, who had given birth to Barron a few months earlier, Trump told her they had “separate rooms and stuff.”

The spanking. Daniels said she spanked Trump with a magazine that had his face on it, but it was more playful than erotic. She said that when she joked about spanking him with the magazine he had been boasting about, “he turned around and pulled his pants down a little—you know, had underwear on and stuff, and I just gave him a couple swats.”

A cease-and-desist letter. After the interview aired Sunday, Brent Blakely, a lawyer for Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, sent a cease-and-desist letter to Avenatti, complaining that he had been linked to the alleged threat, the New York Times reports. Cohen “had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with any such person or incident, and does not even believe that any such person exists, or that such incident ever occurred,” the letter stated.

“You remind me of my daughter.” Daniels told Cooper that Trump told her she reminded him of his daughter, the AP reports. “He was like, ‘Wow, you—you are special. You remind me of my daughter,'” she said. “You know—he was like, ‘You’re smart and beautiful, and a woman to be reckoned with, and I like you. I like you.” (This is just creepy)

Silence from Trump. The president has remained silent about the interview on Twitter and in person, ignoring shouted questions from reporters as he returned to the White House from Mar-a-Lago Sunday night. The Hill notes Melania Trump has decided to stay in Florida “for spring break” instead of returning to Washington.

Is she telling the truth?  That is not for me to decide….that is going to be a legal decision….but the flames are being fanned……

I’m guessing that this situation is far from over and will be used for awhile until they find something else they can milk for speculation and sensationalism…..