Tag: Fox Business

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media and media people

The Independents Streak

I learned something the other night, on the new Fox Business show The Independents: Mr. John Stossel’s eponymous show is the highest-​rated show on that same network.

It’s no shock. It’s my favorite show, there, too. And I know folks who have even upped their cable or satellite packages solely to view Stossel every week.

Call it a comfort, call it a relief, call it whatever, but it’s nice to know that one’s own political and rhetorical tastes are shared by a growing number of others.

One thing to like about Stossel is also a reason to like The Independents. The hostess, saucy Kennedy (of MTV fame), and her cadre of commentators, Matt Welch and Kmele Foster, aim to keep the debate civil. They said as much. And followed through. No yelling; a minimum of over-​talk. Apparently the format of the show is to invite two guest commentators every episode (one from “the left” and one from “the right”), and on the debut episode we watched Fox contributors Basil Smikle and Jedediah Bila … the latter ostensibly a conservative, but who sounded just as libertarian as the show’s core committee.

Fox’s increasing independent-​minded viewership — and, like the show’s creators, I’m using “independent” partly as a code word for “libertarian” — is being rewarded with more fare to their tastes.

Modern society needs an independent streak. We gain; Fox gains.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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media and media people

There Goes Da Judge

Andrew Napolitano, former New Jersey superior court justice (and therefore often called “Judge Napolitano”), has been a legal and constitutional analyst for Fox News for some time. For several years now he’s hosted a nightly program on Fox Business called Freedom Watch, ending each show with a tagline: “Defending freedom, every night of the week.”

Monday night he amended it: “Defending freedom, everybody’s freedom, every chance I get.”

The tagline changed because Freedom Watch is now off the air. Fox pulled it.

Thankfully, Napolitano will still appear on various Fox commentary shows as an on-​air consultant. Hence the teeth in those parting words: “every chance I get.”

The show began three years ago as a weekly webcast video. It soon began to air more frequently, and in 2010 hit the Fox Business channel — though it should have found a place on the News channel, alongside Hannity and O’Reilly and The Five. Napolitano drove home his philosophy with a series of oft-​repeated slogans, including one of my favorites, “Does the government work for us or do we work for the government?”

Napolitano’s straight-​forward, enthusiastic and general “good guy” approach made the radicalism of his political beliefs palatable to a wide viewership.

Yes, Freedom Watch was a great show — there is nothing else quite like it on television, though John Stossel’s weekly show remains on Fox Business, and hails from a similar perspective. Both are popular as excerpted on YouTube.

A lot of folks will miss Freedom Watch, but I, for one, will keep watch for Napolitano’s future projects.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.