My new TV news source

Actually, it's been new to me ever since I bought my present TV set in July 2023...my first Roku TV.

That month, I started watching TYT.

TYT (short for The Young Turks) is America's biggest online news network; it's been around since 2002 and available on all sorts of platforms...like YouTube TV, the Roku Channel, Twitch, and so forth. It's an independent news source...so, unlike mainstream media, it isn't beholden to corporate interests.

TYT presents the news first ("just the facts"), followed by analysis and perspective. It's a network that fights for rank-and-file Americans instead of for the nation's 1,000 wealthiest people.

Yes, TYT is a progressive network...but, according to the network's Website, opinions range from far left to center. And the network's reporters and hosts try their very best to tell the truth and try their utmost to be honest with viewers. They give credit where credit is due.

So...if you watch TYT, you're not only likely to watch Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian give Donald Trump credit for something...you're also likely to watch them put Joe Biden down. (As well as vice versa.) No wonder the TYT Network has racked up 30 billion views by 27 million subscribers since Day One.

Speaking of Kasparian and Uygur...they host "The Young Turks," the network's flagship program...a weekday two-hour newscast that airs live from 6:00-8:00 PM Eastern time (5:00-7:00 PM Central time). "The Young Turks" covers news events America's corporate networks touch...and quite a few events those corporate networks don't have the guts to address.

That's also the case with two other TYT programs: Dr. Rashad Richey's "Indisputable" (2:30-4:00 PM Eastern, 1:30-3:00 PM Central) and John Iadarola's series, "The Damage Report." (That one comes on live from 1:00-2:00 PM Eastern, 12:00 Noon-1:00 PM Central.)

If you're tired of the way ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox, MSNOW (the former MSNBC), and NBC try to inform you, just slip on over to TYT.

For more information about this online news giant, log onto https://TYT.com.

Take a good, good look...

That's right...take a good, good look at these photos...photos of some of Big Media's biggest powers at the top.

Netflix founder Reed Hastings...

Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav...

Comcast CEO Brian Roberts...

Paramount Global CEO Bob Bakish...

Disney CEO Bob Iger...

Fox Corporation CEO Lachlan Murdoch...

Yes, I'm going to ruffle a bunch of feathers for saying this...but I'm going to say it:

If it weren't for (let's face it) corporate greed and for complacency at the top (in other words, the studios' tremendous reliance on movie franchises, movie remakes, and TV reboots), the Writers Guild of America and the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists wouldn't be out on strike. It's the first time since 1960 that both unions shut down.

Not all actors are wealthy. Matter of fact, the average California actor earned $27.73 per hour in 2022, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. And movie-TV performers aren't paid full-time year-'round. And, per a 7-17-2023 post on cnn.com on why the writers and performers are picketing, 12.7% of all SAG-AFTRA members make an annual salary of $26,470...the minimum amount that qualifies an entertainer for health insurance.

160,000 SAG-AFTRA members...11,000 people in the WGA.

I still think that there's more than enough money out there to satisfy all sides in the matter. How about you?

Dear Jeffrey Toobin:

You recently told Larry Wilmore that you now find yourself regretful about your role in pushing a "false equivalence" between Hillary Clinton's actions and those of Donald Trump during Big Media's coverage of the 2016 US presidential race.

Fine.

There's just one thing:

You're too freakin' late!  

The whole problem is that you, your buddies at CNN, and counterparts at America's other newsgathering television networks pushed this "false equivalence" to begin with.

After all, Jeffrey, you work for Jeff Zucker...the same man who, when he headed up NBC Entertainment, helped Trump's The Apprentice get on the air in the first place.

You people were so smitten over the prospect of one of your medium's biggest stars landing the most talked-about job in politics that you failed to see the danger signs...such as his studying Adolf Hitler's speeches for ideas on how to handle things.

By telling your viewers that Clinton- one of the most politically-experienced major-party nominees in a long, long time- is just as wretched as Trump, you helped usher in a period where, when Trump, Pence, McConnell, Ryan, and Co. are through doing their damage to this country's government, we won't have a constitutional republic anymore...let alone a shot at a real democracy.

You helped usher in a time where America's now the laughingstock of Planet Earth.

ARE YOU SATISFIED?? 

Instead of going for truth, you folks in Big Media wasted the 6-15-2015/11-8-2016 period going strictly for ratings...and you consistently think the way to get those good-looking Nielsen numbers is to portray every US political campaign as a horse race.

The way I see it, we stopped having presidencies on 1-20-2017.

Instead, we've got an emperor/king/dictator/premier/generalissimo. 

I hope you're happy, Jeffrey.   




  

Killing the Game?

This year, I've been following more NCAA Division 1 women's basketball tournament games than NCAA Division 1 men's basketball tourney ones.

The big reason: I'm upset at CBS CEO Les Moonves for crowing that the sexist, racist, homophobic, religiophobic, etc., etc. rantings of Donald Trump and other 2016 Republican presidential candidates are "good for CBS." Moonves likes how all the excrement slung by the Elephants' office seekers means more advertising money for the folks at the Eye Network. (Never mind the continuing corrosive effect the propagation of hate has on the collective American conversation.)

So while I'm watching ESPN and ESPN2 whenever they show D-1 women's tourney contests, it's TBS and TNT for me when it comes to seeing D-1 men's tourney teams play. (To get truTV, I'd have to pay my local cable outlet for another tier of channels.)

Speaking of ESPN2...I was watching this afternoon's Tennessee-Syracuse game (the Orange won the Midwest Regional final, 89-67, to get into the D-1 Women's Final Four for the first time in program history) when I saw the scroll on the bottom of the screen: "Geno Auriemma won't apologize for his team's success." 

Why should he?  

Yesterday, his Connecticut Huskies mauled, crushed, demolished, and crucified Mississippi State, 98-38,

for the biggest victory margin in any regional or Final Four game since the NCAA started conducting a Division 1 women's hoops tourney in 1982. (The 60-point margin topped the 51-point difference between UConn and Texas in one of last season's East Regional semifinals.)

It was the 72nd straight time Breanna Stewart and Co. won a game; Stewart led the way with 22 points, 14 rebounds, and five blocks.

After the game (one in which the Huskies put in the game's first 13 points, enjoyed a 32-4 lead on the Bulldogs, then stretched it to 61-12 at the end of the first half), Auriemma fielded a reporter's question about whether Connecticut's total domination of D-1 women's b-ball- three straight championships and ten overall coming into this 2015-16 season- is killing the sport. 

The head coach with the most Division 1 women's basketball titles ever wasn't pleased with the question.

"When Tiger (Woods) was winning every major, nobody said he was bad for golf," said the Man from Philadelphia. In fact, Woods' phenomenal success drew more fans to golf as the 20th Century was getting ready to make way for the 21st Century.

What's more, Tiger's presence on the links made the other PGA golfers step up their game. 

Result: Since the current century began, golfers like Phil Mickelson, Padraig Harrington, Zack Johnson, and- more recently- Rory McIlroy, Bubba Watson, and Jordan Spieth have shown they can frequently come away with The Big Check, too.

Same thing happened in NCAA Division 1 men's basketball...which, from the 1963-64 campaign to the 1974-75 season, was in the grip of one team: John Wooden's UCLA Bruins.

The Bruins took ten of the twelve D-1 men's titles offered during that span of time. It would've been twelve straight if Texas Western hadn't stopped Kentucky, 72-65, to end the 1965-66 season- a season where Oregon State interrupted UCLA's reign in the old AAWU (now, of course, called the Pac-12); and if, in 1973-74, North Carolina State hadn't beaten Marquette, 76-64...after the Wolfpack dethroned the Bruins, 80-77, a couple of days earlier.

By the way...a year after their school won it all in men's hoops, Texas Western College of the University of Texas officials changed their institution's name to the University of Texas at El Paso. 

Wooden showed that he could get UCLA to the top with any kind of team, be it a run-and-gun kind, a patient team, or one headlined by a certain 7-2 center who, while still in high school, had college recruiters all over the country knocking each other over to sign him.

Lots of other head men's hoops coaches breathed heavy, heavy sighs of relief when John decided to hang up his whistle after the 1974-75 season...a campaign that ended when UCLA thwarted Kentucky, 92-85. 

That's how the 37th NCAA D-1 men's hoops tourney ended. Before the Blue and Gold seized control of men's D-1 roundball, 18 different squads had won the first 25 NCAA D-1 men's basketball tournaments, starting with Oregon (the 1938-39 kingpin). And Kentucky was the sport's gold standard, with four championships- 1947-48, 1948-49, 1950-51, and 1957-58. 

By the time the 1974-75 season ended, 21 teams had won the 37 NCAA D-1 men's b-ball tourneys. Since then, 14 others had taken the pot of gold for the first time ever.

And men's college basketball has grown exponentially in popularity since then...to the point where the gender's D-1 Big Dance is the NCAA's most lucrative event. (An event where this country's president fills out a bracket every March, just like millions of other Americans.) 

While the 78th NCAA D-1 men's hoops tournament is going on, the 35th NCAA D-1 women's basketball tourney is also happening. 

And, as Geno will tell you, it's all taking place at a time similar to what was happening in men's Division 1 ball during the 1963-64/1974-75 era.

Connecticut's first D-1 women's title came at the end of the 1994-95 season. Before that, eight different clubs claimed the first 13 NCAA Division 1 women's basketball tournaments, with Tennessee leading the way (the Volunteers, then under Pat Summitt, were tops in 1986-87, 1988-89, and 1990-91). 

Since UConn got that first notch, teams headed up by Auriemma and Summitt nailed down 14 of the next 20 titles in D-1 women's roundball...with Tennessee grabbing three championships in a row from 1995-96 to 1997-98,

then triumphing in 2006-07 (the act that angered Rutgers fan Don Imus) and 2007-08.

Five other teams accounted for the other six championships of the 1995-96/2014-15 period- Purdue (in 1998-99), Notre Dame (whose 2000-01 title prevented what ultimately could've been a UConn five-peat), Baylor (the only one able to go for seconds; the Bears followed up their 2004-05 championship by ruling in 2011-12), Maryland (the winner in 2005-06), and Texas A&M (which took it all in 2010-11).

So, that's it...coming into March Madness 2016, 14 different squads have won the first 34 NCAA D-1 women's b-ball tournaments. 

At this very moment, the Huskies are working on a four-peat.

But first, they'll have to take the Longhorns out of the way tomorrow night to win the East Regional. 

Two more victories after that, and Auriemma will get his eleventh title as a head coach...and he'll pass Wooden in the process.

The way I see it, Connecticut's success (that's putting it mildly) in D-1 women's basketball isn't killing the sport.

Media apathy toward the game is.

I mean, it hurts to turn on one of Disney's ESPN networks each March and find a good, good game being played in front of...rows and rows of empty seats. 

It hurts, too, that these same media people- even those at Disney- don't lavish the same attention on women's ball as they do on men's ball. The scrolls themselves offer a clue: Rarely this season were you told how many points Stewart had in this or that game. (By contrast, Georges Niang's name was almost always seen in the scrolls here in 2015-16.)

Listen...Iowa State's Niang and Connecticut's Stewart were two of college basketball's leading players these last four seasons. Let's give 'em BOTH shout-outs! 

And that speaks to something else.

How committed are many of the NCAA's Division 1 schools to their women's basketball teams? 

Not just in money...but in spirit. 

It's been 44 years now since Title 9 became law...and it hurts that, 44 years later, lots of resentment continues to exist over the law. The resentment not only shows up on TV and on sports radio, but in no telling how many athletic departments at no telling how many schools here in America. 

How much support do the Breanna Stewarts really have, given- let's face it- America's anti-female heritage?

Breanna herself had one real answer to giving women's NCAA basketball a boost: 

"Teams need to get better, players need to get better, and that starts from before we even get to college." 

John Wooden had no problem with women's college basketball. He, in fact, called it a purer form of the sport than the men's kind.

I've always thought athletes were athletes, regardless of gender.

How about you?

That's NOT Entertainment!

Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite, Chet Huntley, David Brinkley, Howard K. Smith, and so many other pioneering television journalists would be turning over in their graves if these legends could find out just how their current legatees are handling this business of newsgathering.   

Sorry, folks, but I just don't see news as entertainment.

News is news...period.  

The way the TV arms of this country's six biggest media companies followed this month's recent national events- starting with the 2014 midterm elections- soured me on continuing to watch their offerings, be they on these companies' broadcast networks or on their cable divisions. 

That's right...no more Hardball. No more 60 Minutes. Since the cable provider I've hooked up with dropped C-SPAN and C-SPAN 2 from the provider's basic lineup, the only meat I'm going to get when I turn on my TV set will come from PBS. 

Nobody else on the tube today is performing the role of watchdog.

TV reporters working for the commercial media firms aren't asking the tough questions...questions that help viewers get better informed.  

For instance, the TV reporters (and no telling how many other journalists in other media), while watching the Nuts (oops, I mean Republicans) retake the US Senate and solidify their hold on the US House, could've asked the new lawmakers- the ones vowing to get the Affordable Care Act repealed- to disclose their own replacement(s) for this law they hate so much. (Never mind that the components of the ACA were originally cooked up by GOP minds!)

These same journalists could've asked the Democrats seeking (and unable to gain) office to explain running away from their party's post-1933 accomplishments...let alone its post-2009 achievements.  

And the voters who just got through setting foot at their neighborhood polling places could've themselves used tougher questions...especially the voters in Florida, Kansas, Michigan, and Wisconsin. (People in those four states complained bitterly about their governors- Republicans all- misusing them. But that didn't stop those same voters from reelecting all four of them to second terms.)

Too much cowardice going on on the air...and I don't want to be in on it anymore.

In the meantime, I'll continue to read newspapers...and I'll continue to get right here on this Internet and go to the online versions of those papers, as well as sites like www.factcheck.org and www.dailykos.com.   

Online, you're not as likely to run into the cowardice that's prevented correspondents from Big Media from asking John Boehner to explain not taking Steve King or Mo Brooks to task for their racist comments...or asking this country's Speaker of the House to talk about that meeting he and Mitch McConnell attended hours after Barack Obama's first inauguration. (You know, the meeting where McConnell, Boehner, and other key Republicans got together and vowed: "We're not going to work with this 'N-word!'")

And then there's the grand jury's decision in Ferguson, MO, where twelve people decided to let Darren Wilson go free. 

These last three-going-on-four months, the only outlet in which I saw any mention of the role White privilege has played in Wilson's murder of Michael Brown (it wasn't enough to take Brown to the police station) was...www.dailykos.com. 

Would a reporter from CBS or CNN still have a job after addressing White privilege in America?  

Yes, Big Media, it's been quite a ride all these years of watching the news unfold on my (or my mom's or anybody else's) TV set. Lots of history being made.

But when your reporters aren't encouraged to ask tougher questions than the ones out there, and it's all because you're more concerned about profit and about glitz than about truth, it's time for me to get off the ship.

When I watch news on TV, I don't want to be entertained.

I want to be informed.