BANNED: Coulter Banned from NBC, Both Network and Cable

She hasn't said anything lately that would offer a pretext for this.

NBC, obviously, has decided its brand identity is urban liberal. Their shows skew that way. Their news skews that way. Their sister cable channels like Bravo skew way that way. (NTTAWWT.)

They are, like the New York Times, making the decision to give up on big sections of a potential audience to pander to, and thus attract the loyalty of, a narrower subset of that audience.

But NBC is taking a bigger risk: They're first and foremost a general popular entertainment company, something historically which has been considered an studiously apolitical venture, general.

Can they induce more liberals to watch than they alienate conservatives? I doubt it.

While they will couch their banning of Coulter in ostensibly neutral language -- she's a firebrand; she's not a serious critic; she's an entertainer, etc. -- they will of course fail to apply the Coulter Doctrine to anyone not named Ann Coulter.

UPDATE [DrewM.]: NBC says it's not a ban, just that they don't have time, what with the war in Gaza and all the Hoping and Changing in D.C. and they just don't have a segment to spare or something like that.

As for Perez Hilton, he was already booked in the fluffy and lower rated 4th hour, where Coulter was in the highly prized 7am slot. So, it's not exactly a direct switch.

CBS' perennial bottom dwelling Morning Early Show snapped up the chance to have Coulter on to chat and presumably blast their competitor NBC.

posted by Ace at 05:31 PM

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