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FOX Wavers on Renewing Popular TV Nation

At press time, FOX broadcasting was still debating amongst itself whether or not to renew its hit show TV Nation. The show, as many of you may know, is produced by Michael Moore, acclaimed director of the film Roger & Me.
Moore's show was originally on NBC two summers ago, but was dropped by that network despite critical and popular acclaim. Moore shopped the show around and FOX took a chance with it by signing on for eight episodes, but only running seven.
FOX's reluctance to renew TV Nation seems strange. The show continues to receive positive reviews from the critics and it won an Emmy for best informational series last year. Couple this with the fact that 1996 is a national election year, a climate in which informational shows normally thrive, and canceling the show now seems downright ridiculous.
According to Michael Moore himself, TV Nation fans have taken it upon themselves to remind FOX how popular the show is to the unprecedented tune of over 55,000 letters, e-mail messages and phone calls in support of the show. Networks generally operate on the belief that each letter represents an audience base of another 200 viewers who just didn't bother to write. However you look at it, these are impressive numbers.
FOX mogul Rupert Mur-doch, whose politics are decidedly right-wing and corporate, has reportedly been considering creating his own cable news network to compete with CNN. Murdoch has said he considers CNN to be "too liberal."
With or without FOX, there will be a TV Nation, on video at least. All episodes of TV Nation, aired or not, will be making their way to rental stores shortly. Meanwhile Michael Moore fans can check out his new movie, Canadian Bacon, in video stores mid-December.



Nukes, Mickey and TV

It's not as if we ever looked to corporate TV for hard-hitting reporting, but the latest round of corporate acquisitions have further defanged the networks. The TV media are now agents of corporate capitalism in its purest form. Disney is buying Capital Cities/ABC. Westinghouse has gobbled up CBS.
And it hasn't taken long to see the effects.
ABC made a Mickey Mouse apology to Philip-Morris for its essentially-true story about cigarette spiking on the eve of the merger. How's that for responsible, tough-minded journalism? And now CBS has done the same thing. CBS lawyers quashed a 60 Minutes interview with a former tobacco executive, fearing the tobacco company - reportedly Brown & Williamson - would sue CBS for encouraging the executive to break a non-disclosure contract.
ABC has also dumped Texas populist Jim Hightower from its radio affiliates, locally carried by KIRO FM.
Our good friends at nuclear contractor Westinghouse Electric are paying $5.4 billion for CBS. ("Problems at the nuclear power plant? What problems?") In this department, Westinghouse can take a few cues from fellow nukester General Electric, which owns NBC.
And Ted Turner has sealed the deal to swap $7.5 billion in stock to merge his CNN empire with Time-Warner. All this makes Fox mogul Rupert Murdoch look positively independent.



PR Pitches Toxic Shit

Here's the poop on how the PR machine has helped to sell the idea of environmentally-friendly sewage "sludge" as a beneficial fertilizer. On closer inspection, sludge often contains PCBs, DDT, heavy metals, dioxin and harmful bacteria.
The Center for Media and Democracy in Madison, Wis., publisher of PR Watch - a critical look at the public relations industry - has just come out with Toxic Sludge is Good For You: Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry. PR Watch's investigative research has turned up some foul facts: Jody Powell, President Carter's press secretary and Sheila Tate, a Reagan-Bush flack (who is also chair of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting), have stepped up to do the lobbying for the "Water Environment Federation." This friendly-sounding industry group has "greenwashed" the effects of toxic sludge on agriculture and food safety by touting its "beneficial use."
But beware the name: What is now the "Water Environment Federation" was actually born in 1928 as the "Federation of Sewage Works Associations," which later became the "Federation of Sewage and Industrial Wastes Associations," which begat the cleaner-sounding "Water Pollution Control Federation" in the 1960s.
Here's the Seattle angle. Peter Machno manager of Seattle's sludge program orchestrated the 1992 name change to the "Water Environment Federation?" Machno realized he had a PR problem when protesters mobilized to combat plans to dump Seattle sludge on local tree farms. Machno is quoted, "If I knocked on your door and said I've got this beneficial product called sludge, what are you going to say?" Not only did the industry organization change its name, sludge became "biosolids."
But what are the real effects of these "biosolids"? Another local angle. PR Watch reports that Lynden, Wash. dairy farmers Linda and Raymond Zander began to lose cows after sludge was spread on an adjoining farm. Subsequent tests found heavy metals in two neighborhood wells and family members developed neurological damage, the result of poisoning from zinc, copper, lead and manganese. Bad shit indeed.
For a copy of Toxic Sludge is Good For You, by John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton, check the bookstore or write Center for Media & Democracy, 3318 Gregory St., Madison, WI 53711 ($20, includes postage and handling), or call 1-800-497-3207.



NYT Bytes Bill

Just when we thought corporate media had gone soft, science writer James Gleick filed a well-rounded slap at Microsoft for the New York Times Magazine. Of course, it took a stodgy East Coast paper to seriously address charges of anti-trust violations and dirty pool in Redmond. Our local papers are too busy groveling for Bill Gates approval (his column runs in the PI and the Seattle Times hopes to provide content for the Microsoft Network). Gleick's piece makes the following points:



It's Ad Envy, of Course

Are Seattle's two weeklies competing head-to-head or are they two ships passing in the marketing night?
Skimming through the Stranger recently, we saw ads for "Trexan," a company specializing in helping you overcome your heroin problem; "Slave to the Needle" Tattoo removal; "Eavesdrop Line" so you can "secretly listen in on phone sex calls"; a self-help book on methamphetamine manufacture ("You have a constitutional right to know."), and a practical guide to becoming a hooker.
Suiting a slightly more yup-scale readership, we see ads in the now the now-free Seattle Weekly for a European style coffee shop in the Bellevue Square Mall. Bellevue Square is about as European as a stale hot dog.
And don't forget a "European-style" hotel room in Victoria for only $73 a night. But not so European is electrolysis ("free yourself of unwanted hair forever.") Or how about some "pyschic catering" at your next party?
In an attempt to reach a "cross-over market" between the Stranger and the Seattle Weekly, we announce the following readership profile: a heroin-addicted tattooist hooked on phone sex and speed who is looking into the practical aspects of prostitution, but still refined enough to while away the afternoons at a Bellevue mall coffee shop, or take the occasional weekend in Victoria in between rounds of psychic electrolysis.

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Contents on this page were published in the December/January, 1996 edition of the Washington Free Press.
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