Facing Competition from Newsmax and OAN, Fox News Demotes Martha McCallum

They're replacing her with an "opinion" host (supposedly she's non-opinion), partly because Newsmax's Greg Kelly delivered the first Newsmax victory over Martha McCallum.

Fox News wants to deny Newsmax the 7pm slot.

The major change for Fox News is the move of "The Story With Martha MacCallum" out of its 7 p.m. Eastern time slot to make way for a new opinion show, tentatively named "Fox News Primetime," which will have a rotating group of hosts.

MacCallum's program -- which featured interviews with newsmakers and commentators -- will air at 3 p.m. Eastern. "The Story" had seen its audience level fall in recent months as Newsmax, a competing right-wing channel, had gained viewers in the hour with its host Greg Kelly.

Remember back in 2000? CBS News and other leftwing networks called Florida early for Gore -- calling it wrong, and when tens of thousands of Panhandle voters still had yet to vote?

Conservatives were rightly pissed off at a left-leaning network either intentionally, hopefully, or "mistakenly" calling a state early thereby depressing the still-to-vote Republican vote, and causing the year 2000 "hanging chad" trauma.

Fox News' editor for all of their non-news "journalism" is Bill Sammon, a neocon/neoliberal.

Bill Sammon used to write articles about how unfair it was for the leftist media to get anxious to call elections for Democrats, thereby demoralizing Republican voters.

He actually wrote a book called, At Any Cost: How Al Gore Tried to Steal an Election. (Is that book still legal? Should Sammon be deplatformed? Maybe someone should alert Sammon's corporate/media allies that he has written a Wrongthink Book.)

So Bill Sammon knows -- or used to know -- that conservatives are rightly pissed off at biased media calling elections early for the Democrats.

In the aftermath of 2000, all networks -- including the leftwing ones -- agreed to no longer call any states until the polling had stopped in those states (and in all sections of those states, for those with varying poll closing times).

So a mistake was made, and an adjustment was made.

But in 2018, what did this rabid NeverTrumper do? Or, at least, permit the "News" division to do?

Call the House vote early, before any other networks had called it, resulting in the GOP losing races in California that it would have won if Republicans hadn't been demoralized again by another early call by a biased, left-leaning network.

And make no mistake: When it comes to the "News" Division, Fox news is indeed a biased, left-leaning network.

We conservatives complained of the early call.

Fox News said: Go fuck yourselves, right-wing hobbit extremists.

You'd think they might have adjusted their election-call protocols slightly, given that they had just stuck their thumbs in the eye of their actual audience, rushing to call an election and send conservatives home without voting.

They did not.

Come 2020, the same crew acts with the same swaggering attitude that You Stupid Conservative Fucks Just Don't Matter, and again calls the Control of the House early while there is still a lot of voting on the West Coast.

Note that once again, Fox News made this call much, much earlier than any of the leftwing media outfits that it's supposedly a "fair and balanced alternative" to.

They claimed the Democrats would not only hold the House, but would actually pick up between 10 and 15 seats.

In fact the Democrats lost 12 seats.

And who knows how many more close West Coast races they would have lost if Fox News had not come riding to the Democrats' aid yet again.

And yes, they called Arizona and all the rest of them fast and hard for Biden, while delaying calls for Trump states.

But no, my hatred of Fox isn't just because the Democrats stole the presidential election and Fox News assisted with that.

It's because Fox News, the network, made millions in dollars in advertising revenue in 2000 decrying the early Florida call for Gore.

They know this is an issue.

But in two elections in a row, 2018 and 2020, they decided to say fuck you to their own audience and call still-live elections for the Democrats.

That's why I'm done with Fox.

And still, to this day, they have not issued any kind of apology for this.

They have continued doubling down. They refused to cleanly admit error in "calling" that Democrats would pick up 10-15 sears in the House. They instead stressed that they were right that Democrats would hold the House.

They have made no commitments about holding off the calls during live election.

Instead, they've preened that they were "right" -- for certain values of "right."

As fat toadlike blowhard Chris Stirewalt explained in 2018, defending their early call for Democrats: "We're just that damned good."

Go fuck yourselves, assholes.

You're not very good at all. You're slipshod, slapdash operation that only got away with being such because you were the only alternative to the leftist monopoly on "news."

No longer.

If you don't respect your audience enough to even honestly confront their complaints, rather than straw-manning them as "pissbaby Trump supporters just whining that their man lost," then your audience leaves.

They will not even discuss the actual cause for complaint, or the actual cause for the boycott and their ratings woes, because they're our enemies and your enemies don't ever want to dignify you by admitting that maybe you have something of a point, and maybe they should change their race-calling protocols to address that complaint.

I don't watch CNN because it treats me as an enemy not worthy of good-faith exchange.

And now I don't watch Fox for the exact same reason.

Good riddance to bad rubbish.

posted by Ace at 04:40 PM

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