4 ms·

A friend in town from London reminded me that his show is actually shown outside the US, and said that British advertisers are quite understandably unhappy with

A friend in town from London reminded me that his show is actually shown outside the US, and said that British advertisers are quite understandably unhappy with his show. I've never seen it, but I can't imagine it appealing to an international audience.

mahmud 17y ago
I was once in a feel-good Arab-American lovefest summit where influential Arabs were being shown around NYC and DC at the behest of Karen Hughes and the Bush administration. I was in it for the free food. They bused an assortment of Iraqis back to their hotel after a day of sightseeing historic places in town. And I stuck around interpreting for one of the artists .. Long story short. The Iraqis gathered in the hotel lobby where the TV was set to Fox news and, I must say, a day's worth of diplomacy was undone with one hour of the O'Reilly Factor. I am all for freedom of expression, but Fox News is something I rather keep in the U.S. Fox can broadcast overseas as long as they supply traveling and expat Americans with Canadian-flag backpack badges. It's just embarrassing, eh.
- chriskelley 17y ago
  I know your last comment was in jest, but as someone from the US that travels a lot, I would like to mention that I think it is really important for educated/reasonable US Citizens to engage with locals and other travelers while abroad and let people know that what they see on Fox News (et al) isn't all we have to offer! Many of my friends and colleagues here at home are some of the most wonderful, intelligent, caring people I have met anywhere on the globe, and it does them a great injustice to let people around the world judge the US based on what they see or hear on TV. It's the responsibility of those of us that travel to spread the good word of the reasonable US Citizen!
  - dhyasama 17y ago
    I couldn't agree more. I traveled to Croatia a few years ago and stayed with locals. One of the first things each of them said was some variation of "I don't like George Bush." Simply saying "I don't either" brightened them up considerably.
    - jdminhbg 17y ago
      It's kind of sad to be so narrowly defined by politics like that. I'm not really interested in being friends with someone who would dislike me due to someone there's a 75% chance (totals + participation) I didn't vote for. Which doesn't even begin to scrape the surface of the importance of knowing and talking to people with opposing views in the first place.
  - CWuestefeld 17y ago
    Somewhat tangentially, it's interesting to watch news when traveling abroad. Even aside from Fox, the stuff you're like to see is quite a bit different even from CNN. The international perspective is quite a bit different from that of Americans. I don't mean that (only) in the sense that we tend to be America-centric. It's also in the way the stories are told, and indeed what stories lead and how much time is spent on them. I can't recall any specific examples, and it wasn't obvious on just a short viewing, but over a period of time I was very much struck by the difference.
- filosofo 17y ago
  If this is more than just hyperbole on your part, it reflects poorly on your guests. There are badly-behaved people on television shows around the world; to conclude that such people represent their native countries in any meaningful sense is naive at best.
johnwh 17y ago
From the little I have seen, the show is very American centric, and at many points is arguably xenophobic (isolationist to say the least). It is very strange that this would be shown in Brittan (much less popular).
- jonny_noog 17y ago
  For better or worse, Fox (ergo, Fox News) is shown just about everywhere, dude. Fox News is shown in Australia as one of the channels included with Foxtel pay TV. I had to go to Papua New Guinea for work last month, turned on the TV at the hotel in Port Moresby and there it was too. For the English speaking countries at least, I have always assumed that there was a core audience agreeable to the views portrayed by Fox News, hence why it is shown. I'd be happy to be proven wrong though.
  - olefoo 17y ago
    I've always assumed that Fox (News Corp) made it's editorial decisions based on the interests of it's owners. As far as I can tell, it's profitability comes second to it's function of being able to drive the news cycle and move public opinion.
    - jonny_noog 17y ago
      I'm not aware of the profitability of Fox News specifically or any of the Fox related ventures, I not surprisingly have no interest in such things. No doubt what you're saying is not outside the realms of possibility though. But I guess I figure a safe assumption to make in most situations involving musings on the motives of publicly owned corporations is that money and relatively shortsighted plans to acquire more of it tend to trump most else. e.g. Foxtel in Australia shows John Stuart and Stephen Colbert most weeknights. Not I suspect, because the execs at Fox agree with their POV but because there is an audience for that POV and the execs can spend their money in more places than they can spend their moral conviction in their position on the political spectrum.
    - jimbokun 17y ago
      "As far as I can tell, it's profitability comes second to it's function of being able to drive the news cycle and move public opinion." I would think these two goals are very well aligned.
andyking 17y ago
Fox News is relayed on the News Corp-owned Sky platform in the UK, in an obscure EPG position down among the other "international" news channels from Japan, Russia, France etc. It doesn't show any advertising - where the US has ad breaks, the UK feed shows information screens with weather and financial information etc. I'm not entirely sure why it's there, to be honest. Some friends in this country get worked up about Glenn Beck on Twitter but I just find it really hard to care about the rantings of a man on a foreign TV channel, to be perfectly honest. I'm sure there are other TV channels in other countries that are far worse.
- goatforce5 17y ago
  It's surprisingly cheap to have a TV channel broadcast on satellite in the UK, assuming you have content to fill the time. I always treated Fox News as comedy, to be honest. I'd like to watch it in Canada, but having to pay an extra couple of bucks to them directly is not agreeable to me (it's not a free channel on my cable package here).

mahmud 17y ago

I was once in a feel-good Arab-American lovefest summit where influential Arabs were being shown around NYC and DC at the behest of Karen Hughes and the Bush administration. I was in it for the free food. They bused an assortment of Iraqis back to their hotel after a day of sightseeing historic places in town. And I stuck around interpreting for one of the artists .. Long story short. The Iraqis gathered in the hotel lobby where the TV was set to Fox news and, I must say, a day's worth of diplomacy was undone with one hour of the O'Reilly Factor. I am all for freedom of expression, but Fox News is something I rather keep in the U.S. Fox can broadcast overseas as long as they supply traveling and expat Americans with Canadian-flag backpack badges. It's just embarrassing, eh.

chriskelley 17y ago
I know your last comment was in jest, but as someone from the US that travels a lot, I would like to mention that I think it is really important for educated/reasonable US Citizens to engage with locals and other travelers while abroad and let people know that what they see on Fox News (et al) isn't all we have to offer! Many of my friends and colleagues here at home are some of the most wonderful, intelligent, caring people I have met anywhere on the globe, and it does them a great injustice to let people around the world judge the US based on what they see or hear on TV. It's the responsibility of those of us that travel to spread the good word of the reasonable US Citizen!
- dhyasama 17y ago
  I couldn't agree more. I traveled to Croatia a few years ago and stayed with locals. One of the first things each of them said was some variation of "I don't like George Bush." Simply saying "I don't either" brightened them up considerably.
  - jdminhbg 17y ago
    It's kind of sad to be so narrowly defined by politics like that. I'm not really interested in being friends with someone who would dislike me due to someone there's a 75% chance (totals + participation) I didn't vote for. Which doesn't even begin to scrape the surface of the importance of knowing and talking to people with opposing views in the first place.
- CWuestefeld 17y ago
  Somewhat tangentially, it's interesting to watch news when traveling abroad. Even aside from Fox, the stuff you're like to see is quite a bit different even from CNN. The international perspective is quite a bit different from that of Americans. I don't mean that (only) in the sense that we tend to be America-centric. It's also in the way the stories are told, and indeed what stories lead and how much time is spent on them. I can't recall any specific examples, and it wasn't obvious on just a short viewing, but over a period of time I was very much struck by the difference.
filosofo 17y ago
If this is more than just hyperbole on your part, it reflects poorly on your guests. There are badly-behaved people on television shows around the world; to conclude that such people represent their native countries in any meaningful sense is naive at best.

johnwh 17y ago

From the little I have seen, the show is very American centric, and at many points is arguably xenophobic (isolationist to say the least). It is very strange that this would be shown in Brittan (much less popular).

jonny_noog 17y ago
For better or worse, Fox (ergo, Fox News) is shown just about everywhere, dude. Fox News is shown in Australia as one of the channels included with Foxtel pay TV. I had to go to Papua New Guinea for work last month, turned on the TV at the hotel in Port Moresby and there it was too. For the English speaking countries at least, I have always assumed that there was a core audience agreeable to the views portrayed by Fox News, hence why it is shown. I'd be happy to be proven wrong though.
- olefoo 17y ago
  I've always assumed that Fox (News Corp) made it's editorial decisions based on the interests of it's owners. As far as I can tell, it's profitability comes second to it's function of being able to drive the news cycle and move public opinion.
  - jonny_noog 17y ago
    I'm not aware of the profitability of Fox News specifically or any of the Fox related ventures, I not surprisingly have no interest in such things. No doubt what you're saying is not outside the realms of possibility though. But I guess I figure a safe assumption to make in most situations involving musings on the motives of publicly owned corporations is that money and relatively shortsighted plans to acquire more of it tend to trump most else. e.g. Foxtel in Australia shows John Stuart and Stephen Colbert most weeknights. Not I suspect, because the execs at Fox agree with their POV but because there is an audience for that POV and the execs can spend their money in more places than they can spend their moral conviction in their position on the political spectrum.
  - jimbokun 17y ago
    "As far as I can tell, it's profitability comes second to it's function of being able to drive the news cycle and move public opinion." I would think these two goals are very well aligned.

andyking 17y ago

Fox News is relayed on the News Corp-owned Sky platform in the UK, in an obscure EPG position down among the other "international" news channels from Japan, Russia, France etc. It doesn't show any advertising - where the US has ad breaks, the UK feed shows information screens with weather and financial information etc. I'm not entirely sure why it's there, to be honest. Some friends in this country get worked up about Glenn Beck on Twitter but I just find it really hard to care about the rantings of a man on a foreign TV channel, to be perfectly honest. I'm sure there are other TV channels in other countries that are far worse.

goatforce5 17y ago
It's surprisingly cheap to have a TV channel broadcast on satellite in the UK, assuming you have content to fill the time. I always treated Fox News as comedy, to be honest. I'd like to watch it in Canada, but having to pay an extra couple of bucks to them directly is not agreeable to me (it's not a free channel on my cable package here).