Josh - amen!  Beyond real person-based media audiences and typically unsound CPMs (Completely Positively Mad), overall media and program content and environment have always been a critical part of planning and buying effective media along with concerns for other brand messages displayed and their "suitability" on any media/channel under consideration.  As noted, the GARM Guidelines were voluntary.  However, placing one's brand message on the various gutters of social media is an unecessary risk when so many quality safe media vehicles are available that protect a brand's stature and long term equity.  

When did brand safety become a crime?

Agreed Tony.

In Australia we've had a few 'researches' reported that in a month that more than 100 million Aussies watched a particular programme.   Quite a miracle with Australia when it just crossed 28 million people!

Great commentary Gord.

I agree that effectiveness over efficiency is a likely road to staleness rather than expansion.

But I have spotted that when you tried various podcasts but still felt things missing ... it's serendipity found your hat! 

Wayne: We need to always remember "served" is not necessarily "viewed" and even real persons-based "viewed" metrics are not necessarily reflective of "attention".  Without attention there can be no outcomes for programmers or advertisers.  So the final attention proportions across the programming and channels mentioned will, most likely, be significantly different.  

What's next ... maybe AI going to the toilet for you ?!?!?!

What is the step-by-step process that can put an end to the Super PACs?  Who is the "we" in "we declare the Super PACs are over."

Money will always be in politics and I don't believe politicans on either side when they say that which Abdual El-Sawayed ads is saying he'll get money out of politics not happening. In Michigan Larry Lessig idea maybe on the ballott to get money out of politics I'll vote to end it, it will be the courts that decide it as will be a lawsuit in my opinion.

"It is hard to defend soliciting donations from the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. But Lawrence Lessig, a Harvard Law professor, has been trying."

That's your friend?

Wayne, haven't the TV/Movie guys--the ones who make TV series,  movies, etc--always been willing to license their fare--originals or rerus--to Netflix or anyone else who will pay them? Isn't standard "TV" content the backbone of the libraries of virtually all streaing services? 

Good job Jordan keep going when the tornado was at the station glad no major damage to WDNH and no injuries as well. I'm always weather ware when it is a level 3 and I was glad this past Monday was a dud in Michigan was in a level 3 was under a thunderstorm watch. I think the dying thunderstorms in the morning helped along with it being cloudy as well only saw flitter sun only for a few minutes which the clouds won out.

It was just rain & garden variety thunderstorms on Monday only warnings were Michigan/IN stateline. I felt sorry for WI, IL, IN that delt with the storms on Monday in around Appleton, WI seeing the video of the car and the powerlines coming down and the sky looking green and very dark as well.

Josh and Ed, thank you for your honesty of the comments you have discussed.   Wisdom has strength.

Five  months ago I took a gander at my Linkedin profile with an eye to updating it. We had a new service--"TV AD Cume"---and I was about to publish my new book, "TV Yesterday, Today And Tomorrow". However for some reason that I have no explanation for, AI had revised my old profile and turned it into a pile of BS crap. So I quickly redid it. AI has some valid  uses, but , so far, it stinks when it comes to creating  what amounts to a  personal resume. 

I notice that, unlike pretty much every other tool I sit down t, LinkedIn no longer asks if I want AI to "fix" my post.

First of all when you said "the man" I thought you meant Mamdani. Now I understand you meant "the man" in the collloquial sense.

Second, I still think this is more or less objective - citing the absurd right-wing led outrage is worthwhile, especially when contrasted with the data that the writer includes, i.e. "At Hunts Point in the Bronx, where the first store is scheduled to open by the end of 2027, 77% of households struggle to pay for basics. A recent poll finds that 80% of New Yorkers have some concern about food prices." 

What definitely gave me pause is this one: "Because profit margins are already so thin for grocery retailers, several experts tell the outlet, such a steep discount will generate losses, ultimately paid for by taxpayers." Uh... how will coompetition among grocery stores, especially in food-deserts where these new stores are being opened, affect the taxpayers whatsoever? Will we pay MORE taxes if an Aldi goes out of business? This made zero sense to me.

Compared to what I'm paying fpor Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, Paramount+, Peacock, and HBO Max, that seems like a bargain.

(Note: I'm excluding Prime, because I buy that for the free shipping.)

Huh? You're being either disingenuous or blind. 3 of the 4 judgements in the lede are negative- "Disastrous communism? Failed socialism? Welcome relief for hungry families? Just another political stunt?"

And all of first 3 pubs cited- NYT, Newsmax and Fox - are the usual slanted screeds from 3 pubs who have invested all their editorial heft to takedown Mamdani. The only mildly neutral take - AP's - is buried in the close.  

Can't help but notice that the combintion of Roku Channel and Tubi would rank third behine only YouTube and NFLX.

Wayne: I wonder if brother Rahm would agree...

How is this "shilling?" Seems pretty objective to me in terms of the variety of sources cited and opinions represented.

shill for the man much?...

Joe, in the past the FCC has taken steps to curb "monopoly control" of the media. Notably this is what obliged RCA to sell its "Blue" radio network and retain only the "Red" network ( NBC ) in the early 1940s.

Thirty years later the FCC imposed the Prime Time Access Rule on the three dominant broadcast TV networks by  limiting the amount of their prime time fare that affiliates in the top fifty markets could carry by half an hour per evening--except on Sundays. Here, the goal was to free up time for independent programmers to compete--perhaps using advertiser sponsorships to do so.

Finally, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the studios created their own prime time networks via independent stations--Fox, AB and UPN. Same goal. To ensure their access to time periods independently of the three dominant TV networks. 

But now, it seems to me that there are many players who might fund and distribute TV content --Netflix and Amazon plus--maybe--You Tube one day--as examples. Couple these with Paramount/WB, Disney and Comcast and setting aside political issues, aren't there enough possible new show funders to go around even if the Paramount merger is allowed? Of course if the mergers continue and Netflix or Google buys Comcast's TV properties the degree of concentration may again become unsettling. 

I hearby oppose the points brought up in this "TVBlog" column starting with the author's point that the threat to fair pricing is just about cable TV subscriptions. It's not. It's about the concentration of market power for the most premium content supplying all forms of television, streaming and theatrical channels -- and yes, cable TV distribution too.

While this column focuses only on the state AG suits opposing the merger, there was another suit covered by MediaPost -- the Writers Guild of America's -- which is worth reading to understand the real concentration of media marketplace power that will result from the merger.

https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/416527/writers-union-sues-to-block-paramount-wb-merger.html

The WGA suit reveals that the merged company will control more than a third of all WGA affiliated TV and film content.

Even during Hollywood's pre-television Golden Years when MGM was the dominant studio, there was far less concentration of market power. There were the "Big 5" studios (MGM, Paramount, 20th Century Fox, Warner Bros. and RKO Radio Pictures) and the lesser "Little 3" (Universal, Columbia and United Artists), but fewer meaningful independent studios.

The real impact on "fair pricing" won't be on cable TV subscriptions -- which currently account for only about 20% of TV viewing, according to Nielsen -- but on the entire supply chain of TV, streaming and theatrical content... From the front-end of what writers get paid to the back-end of what consumers pay to stream, rent, buy TV/video/movie content.

And we won't know the exact economic impact of that until years after the Paramount/WBD merger is completed.

Looking beyond this deal, it will create a legal precedent -- and likely a marketplace impetus -- for further consolidation among other studios in order to compete with a dominant PWBD.

There are many other fair pricing reasons to oppose this deal, but the most important one opposed by "Red, White & Blog" is the very same one this "TVBlog" column glosses over: the concentration of television news content -- including CNN -- in the hands of a company that has already destroyed much of the integrity of CBS News, and will likely do the same for CNN.

The only positive thing I can say about Paramount is that they still let "The Daily Show" do its thing, albeit under the banner of news parody. But under Paramount's enhanced reign it could actually live up to its tongue-in-cheek tagline: "The Most Important News Show... Ever!"

On that note, I highly recommend watching two segments from Monday's telecast, if you haven't seen them already:

https://youtu.be/ZF_tDPRNV5U?si=XHCHSBWUe1Kos5hG

https://youtu.be/wJiBtLAzKPs?si=sjzw5MqvG8q-_8NH