IF YOU CAN’T BE CLEVER, BE ICONIC

Sherwood Schwartz is dead, as you’ve no doubt heard.

And I feel compelled to say something if only because it’s amazing that a guy who created just two TV successful shows – only one of which I liked, which is also the one that's been routinely derided as one of the stupidest shows ever aired in prime time – should get so much posthumous respect.

Which just goes to show – it’s about quality, not quantity. And this case, quality is highly subjective. But there’s no doubt that Gilligan’s Island is one of the most iconic TV shows ever made – and, arguably, not nearly as “dumb” as critics like to pretend it was. Can the same be said of Friends?

No.

Well, maybe. But did Friends have its own Saturday morning cartoon spinoffs? Or a TV movie with the Harlem Globetrotters where they play basketball against robots controlled by Martin Landau and Barbara Bain from Space:1999?

No. You can get away with stuff like that when yr iconic.

I’m biased, of course. Gilligan’s Island makes my list of the most influential TV shows of my misspent youth, from the old-school slapstick humor to Gilligan himself, the well-meaning dumb-ass who constantly screws up but somehow gets by. I identified with that all too well.

So cheers to Sherwood for that.

Shipwreck television,

This is dF

FOX NEWS WILL NEVER DIE. SORRY.

It was always arguably a matter of time before the FBI jumped into the News Of The World phone-hacking scandal.

That time is now.

And fair enough. If NoW reporters were hacking the voicemails of 9/11 victims in the states – and considering that News Corp’s official HQ is located in the US – then there’s arguably grounds for a case. Eliot Spitzer claims that there’s definitely a case that News Corp violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA).

In which case, he argues, News Corp should have its broadcast licenses revoked by the FCC.

Spitzer is not the first person to suggest this, nor will he be the last, because there is a fairly large group of people who are taking this to mean that Fox News could (or should) get kicked off the air, and oh my what they wouldn’t give to see that, especially over illegal shenanigans committed by the parent company.

Fat chance.

For a start, as far as I know, News Corp doesn’t need an FCC license to run Fox News. You need an FCC license to operate an over-the-air TV station. You don’t need one to operate a cable TV channel. You are of course subject to certain FCC regulations. But there is no license to pull.

Which is probably just as well, because if News Corp did need an FCC license for Fox News, it would also need one for, say, the Fox Movie Channel, Fox Sports, Fox College Sports, the National Geographic Channel, etc. And if Fox News went off the air, so would all the others.

Now, News Corp does own 27 television stations that are licensed by the FCC. But even if the FCC were to take away News Corp’s licenses, the stations wouldn't be shut down. Their licenses would likely be sold to someone else – probably one of the other Huge Evil Corporate Media Conglomerates that own all the other TV stations (who, incidentally, would also likely buy up Fox News if for some reason News Corp had to give that up as well).

So honestly, all this talk of pulling News Corp’s broadcasting rights in the states sounds like uninformed wishful thinking on the part of people who hate Fox News, regard Rupert Murdoch as the inspiration for a James Bond archvillain (it was actually Robert Maxwell, but whatever), and are salivating at the very idea of Murdoch and Fox News finally getting what they deserve.

And hey, I get that.

The thing is, the fact that News Corp has no Fox News license to lose probably won’t stop politicians and political pundits from saying they should lose it anyway, or at least use the NoW investigation as an excuse to remind everyone that New Corp owns Fox News and that if/when a US investigation results in criminal charges against News Corp employees, the company should lose its broadcasting privileges, to include Fox News.

And I do have a problem with that, for a few reasons:

1. As I said, Fox News has no license to lose, so arguing they should lose something they don’t have just makes you look silly.

2. As I mentioned regarding a completely different legal case, I have trouble with the lynch mob of public opinion where people – or Big Corporate Media Empires – are guilty until proven innocent.

3. Strategically, it’s a bad idea for Democratic/left-wing politicians/pundits to use this as an excuse to hint that Fox News ought to be taken off the air. The conservative contingent already has a grandiose martyr complex over how liberals want to silence their viewpoint. (These are the people who claim that criticizing anything they say is the same as trying to take away their free-speech rights.) Feed that habit and they’ll never, ever shut up about how the Evil Liberal Obama Socialist Army conspired to take Fox News away from them.

4. At this point, at least, I think it’s wrong to mistake Fox News’ partisan batshit tendencies, ambush interviews and partisan political sponsorships for the shenanigans of the NoW case. Even John Oliver of The Daily Show makes a great case that when it comes to diabolical media corruption, NoW reporters make Fox News look like PBS in comparison.

Which is no excuse for Fox’s MO. But there’s a big difference between unethical practices and actual criminal behavior.

License to ill,

This is dF