The Fox Network acquisition of KTVU will have zero influence on the look and editorial style of Channel 2. As I told Chuck Barney of the San Jose Mercury News, viewers thinking a Fox News conservative mode will blanket Channel 2 are mistaken.
Fox News is not the over-the-air Fox TV Network, nor does it have anything to do with the overall business model. It is all a part of News Corporation, the parent company of Rupert Murdock's vast media empire that includes a wide array of TV, Newspaper and digital holdings.
Like I told Barney, "You're not going to see Bill O' Reilly popping up on Channel 2 any time soon."
In addition, KTVU News will look and sound very much the same and the average viewer will notice no difference whatsoever. At least for the coming months it'll be business as usual at KTVU while down the road the FCC approves the transaction which it is expected to do so.
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Rich- You're absolutely right about the editorial side. But in terms of look, News Corp standardizes its graphics and music across all of its local stations. And it is more of a 'Fox News' type bold look and the music is very in your face. Star contrast to the understated KTVU approach.
ReplyDeleteTake a look at newscasts from WNYW in New York, KTTV in Los Angeles, WFLD in Chicago, and you'll get a sense.
They would be wise not to standardize here. But precedent says otherwise.
Ironically, word was KTVU was about to bring back some interpretations of its classic old Ten O'Clock News theme.
Aren't there already Fox "news" type shows on KTVU?
ReplyDeleteOn weekends I've seen their version of 'Meet the Press' with Chris Wallace, Krauthammer and the rest.
Given that it's going to be a Fox O&O, standardization would seem to be inevitable.
ReplyDeleteThis market is changing. The Baby Boomer hippie thing is finally fading away because the generation that created it is fading away. May I never again see another stringy grey haired seventy year old woman wearing readers with a wine glass in her hand, thinking she can change the world by eating the right cheese or carting her bacteria infested cloth bag back and forth to the local Whole Foods.
In her Prius, listening to KQED radio, and hating herself.for being white.
DeleteRootvg ...must suck to be you ....and the opposing reality in the world you moved from and yearn to be back in is the 38 year old 350 pound white woman waddling back to her ford f150 with a Hank Williams Jr. T shirt and impossibly stretched sweat pants with her sack of free government cheese and two gallon jug of Sunny D.....hating everyone who isn't white.
Deletefeel like I'm in either Berkeley or Tennessee.
DeleteAre you ready for some football? Where is Hank Jr.?
Delete10:47 just described all the Latino women the Democrats are flooding the country with to guarantee they breed and produce more and more Democratic voters. Now THOSE are the government cheese recipients.
DeleteIf he leaves who will pay to support all the illegals with all the Democratic handouts?
DeleteNo currently 70 year old American of either gender is a "baby-boomer". do you know why? Cheese clogs your arteries with yellow gunk, unfortunately, regardless of your skin tone. No Whole foods store serves wine. Whole Foods sells wonderful, insulated bags( with long, wide straps) that keep your healthy, but overpriced stuff chilled on the road home. They are easily washed in the washer and are also great for lugging around swim gear.You may not be saving the world to use one, but you are getting money back everytime you use them,unless you give the bag credit to a local charity. I think you are a little right, however, about the self-hating white Prius drivers.
DeleteI'm always puzzled by the references to Prius owners. I'm a hard working, brown and proud Latino living in Pebble Beach. A Prius to me makes sense because I can drive quiet a few miles with a full tank of gas. The snide comments by a bunch of right wing idiots is odd. Would it be more prudent to drive a gas guzzler and waste money?
DeleteI'm really starting to love Christine. I listened last week and it was refreshing to hear your voice.
DeleteNo ,10:54, the Prius is quite lovely and the gas savings seem terrific, of course. There is however, in the world of stereotypes, a certain type of hypothetical Prius driver , a "progressive"(just means you are afraid to be called liberal) who constantly bemoans how evil old white people have ruined the world. This hypothetical person is, of course, tres white, but would be loathe to acknowledge it.. This hypothetical white person is the one who parks over the lines at Whole Foods. Like all stereotypes , it is only sometimes true. This is kind of like the stereotype of right wing true believers as "idiots". Most people fit neither of those stereotypes. I like the quiet driving and the Pebble part.
DeleteAh yes now I get it. Thanks for the explanation Christine. Sort of like the stereotypical old big mouth broad who had some lawsuit 50 years ago and appeared on a late night show hosted by a gap toothed philanderer. The stereotype of that woman is that she's now irrelevant and contrary to her self description is not cute as hell even when packing heat and surrounded by attack dogs.
Delete11:13's mommy didn't treat him right, so he's taking it out on the world by being an ageist and misogynist. Perhaps, 11:13, you could learn to monetize your middle-aged angst and depression. Others have.
DeleteInteresting. Christine seemed to take the description of the stereotypical AND hypothetical person described by 11:13 to heart. Wonder why? At least Christine stayed on topic and didn't try to find grammatical or spelling issues with the post. You get a treat babe!
Delete"Like I told Barney, "You're not going to see Bill O' Reilly popping up on Channel 2 any time soon." "
ReplyDeleteYou neglected to add "Not that there's anything wrong with that."
He's known in the business as Ted Baxter.
DeleteI think it would be a BIG jolt to see the standardized, all-American, good-old-USA Fox graphics and "cube" logo replace the forty-years-plus old KTVU "2" logo and design, with has always changed so subtly over the years. "There's Only One -- 2"
DeleteI agree with Anon 9:08 and Rootvg. I am so weary of everyone in the Bay Area assuming everyone else is liberal. I can't wait to leave here in a few years and get away from the intolerance that dominates the area if you don't believe what the liberals believe.
ReplyDeleteJust because we believe there IS global warming and it IS manmade and Iraq and Afghanistan were mistakes. (You're not really going to still say they were successes, are you? Even Glenn Beck has backtracked now.)
DeleteIt'd be nice if you'd offer up some facts for your position once in a while.
"Fox News is not the over-the-air Fox TV Network, nor does it have anything to do with the overall business model. It is all a part of News Corporation, the parent company of Rupert Murdock's vast media empire that includes a wide array of TV, Newspaper and digital holdings."
DeleteAnd they ALL suck.
"I can't wait to leave here in a few years"
Delete-we can't wait for you to go.
I agree that the intolerance of liberals in this area is ironic at best, and the assumption on their part that everyone that lives around here agrees with them is tiresome at best as well.
Delete" I can't wait to leave here in a few years ...."
DeleteBut then how will you get to exercise your well-honed sense of victimhood?
They always come back. Wasn't it Jim Eason who moved to North Carolina to get away from all the Bay Area liberals? Last I heard he is living somewhere in the East Bay.
DeleteI don't believe what they believe - not even close. I'm also in the habit of saying whatever the hell it is I want, political correctness be damned.
DeleteThe liberals don't give me any lip. That's one of the advantages of being a big guy.
My late father in law said a redneck with a college education is one of the most dangerous things in the world. Now I know why.
12:06, thanks for making 12:11's point! I too am not liberal, but I will not be leaving the Bay Area. I love the natural beauty, even though much of it is now overpopulated thanks to the efforts of the libs to bring the lowest common denominators up here by way of illegal immigration/"amnesty". So, you may not like the fact that there are people in the area that don't parrot Reid/Pelosi's talking points, but you're going to have to "coexist" with us anyhow.
ReplyDeleteThey're all mindless Democrat sheeple, drinking the Kool-Aid on a daily basis.
Deleteefforts of the libs? Actually the Obama administration has deported more individuals from many countries in five years than Bush the younger did in 8. The fact of the matter is that american employers, whether right or left politically....want cheap labor....they give a wink and a nod to illegality, because it suits their bottom line, flag wavers or not..really.
DeleteI'm very left on lot of things, but untrammelled immigration is not one of them. I don't trust the leadership of either party to put the best interests of this country first.
@12:48 Obama has never been the deporter in chief. He cooks the numbers. Google it. Complete BS. I posted about this last night however Rich failed to approve it for some reason while at the same time approving your political bias. Keep believing the liberal spin.
Delete"I love the natural beauty, even though much of it is now overpopulated thanks to the efforts of the libs to bring the lowest common denominators up here by way of illegal immigration/"amnesty"
DeleteHow is "natural beauty" overpopulated? Didn't know it was possible to populate "natural beauty." One can populate a forest, beach, park, town, city, etc. But how does one populate "natural beauty"? Then again, wing-nuts never think things through. They just parrot whatever they're told and consequently look stupid in the process.
"I love the natural beauty, even though much of it is now overpopulated thanks to the efforts of the libs to bring the lowest common denominators up here by way of illegal immigration/"amnesty"
DeleteHow is "natural beauty" overpopulated? Didn't know it was possible to populate "natural beauty." A forest, beach, park, town, city, etc. can be populated. But how does one populate "natural beauty"? Then again, wing-nuts never think things through. They just parrot whatever they're told and consequently look stupid in the process.
KTVU better start running non-stop promos stating/promising not to reflect FOX News programming then. Cause the liberal (and I believe, majority of) viewers in the Bay Area will be running to other stations. All I hear from my friends and neighbors is shock and alarm.
ReplyDeleteWhat little babies...
DeleteLos Angeles is not exactly a hotbed of conservative activity, aside from areas of the northern San Fernando valley and parts of Orange County. FOX 11 in LA does quite well down there. Like NBC, where MSNBC tends to lean to the left, the company's local stations tend to stay in the middle (with not a lot of crossover between the cable entity and the local stations). I would not expect KTVU to become a local version of the Fox News Channel.
DeleteKnow of 10-12 former co-workers who retired out of the area and were either conservative or very conservative type people. Just makes the area more liberal.
ReplyDeleteThe only thing propping this "melting pot" up and making it so successful is the tech industry. Take the tech industry away and the beloved Bay Area would look like Tijuana and Manilla. Democratic voters, gotta love them.
DeleteTake the government jobs and military away from a lot of them Red States areas, and you got it too. Many of them pull more money from DC than they give in taxes (state welfare). I see the new job industries being created out here. I don't in the Red States. Which is going to pull a nation into economic recovery: More tech and new industries or more Wal-Mart and McDonalds minimum wage jobs with no benefits?
DeleteSure, Liberals can be intolerant as well. But I'll take the flawed "strive for the higher ideal" over just being blatantly open about being intolerant. Banning Gay Marriage and Gay Rights. Taking away a Women's right to chose. A War of Science and Education. Favoring a Christian religion over other religions. These aren't coming from the Liberal side of the aisle, folks.
I gave up on the Channel 2's simulated news 3-4 years ago. If they're not going to change things, I'm not going back.
ReplyDeleteThey'd be smart to pick up John Kessler for the mornings, if he's willing. That would be huge.
I think KTVU should be more like Fox News. It would be nice to have a local station aggressively cover school bonds and parcel taxes from a conservative point of view.
ReplyDeleteI have no interesting in reading pouts about what's what, treating the word "liberal" as if it were a worse curse word than real profanity, or thinking every "conservative" is mean-spirited and will kiss up to any fatmouth or bespectacled alien. What I am interested in is an end to the extreme dissension, tension, and boneheadedness that has been plagueing the Eastbay's only major TV station and its newsroom. KTVU used to be the top-notch brand in the Bay Area for local news. Now even with some of the same great reporting personalities, it has become a laughing stock who has seen PIX & KGO-TV pull away from them a bit. Let's hope FOX sees the error of the departing GM and hopefully-soon-to-depart-was-worse-than-Special-Ed ND's ways and does what it can to remove all the culprits behind Channel 2's broadcasting meltdowns during the middle of this decade. Most of them are behind the scenes, and perhaps some are on the air but not be who you think.
ReplyDeleteI find it more interesting to know that each Bay TV station is providing information the best way they can than to read the ever-increasingly boring rants that may show the spirit of the First Amendment but also shows how low our society standards are. Hats off to Rich for sharing often great info about our TV and Radio stations when no one else is. May there be more similar news to come more often!
Point well taken: Fox News is not the over-the-air Fox TV Network, nor does it have anything to do with the overall business model. It is all a part of News Corporation.
ReplyDeleteI can tell you from experience the majority of the public does not know the difference and many will believe it is promoting the conservative views of the network talk shows.
But to think that it will have zero influence on the look and editorial style of Channel 2 you are dead wrong.
The FOX News station chief will have major influence on the future of news content and talent at KTVU. But he never pushes a conservative view from what I know. Also KTVU will get the FOX Graphic & music look and sound.
No "You're not going to see Bill O' Reilly? Really? Do your homework. Many of the FOX Gang show up on local FOX Stations from time to time.
Best bet, make sure your news vans are unmarked and pull your mic flags when heading into the liberal zone which is most of the Bay Area. Unfair? Yes. But true.