Food Network Liars! The supposed celebrity cook-off using vegetables from the White House garden was a complete, shameless, and inexcusable fraud. Not one ounce of the veggies harvested in preparation for the cooking challenge was used in any of the dishes by either team. Not one ounce. The only thing from the White House garden that may have been used — and one must wonder even about this — was some honey. Disgusting. What exactly is the point of LYING about the origin of the vegetables?
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The contestants didn't say they used only vegetables of the TYPE grown in the White House garden. They said they had used vegetables actually grown in the White House garden. That is contemptible in the extreme, and Michelle Obama should publicly condemn the deception.
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The Food Network has been much in the news where I live, the New York-Newark Tristate Metropolitan Area, because the company that produces it tried to extort three times as much money per cable subscriber as they had been getting from Cablevision, but Cablevision refused, and dropped it from the lineup. (In part, this was to show how tuf Cablevision was prepared to be in an ongoing dispute with Fox, which is also trying to extort more money from Cablevision, on the theory that Cablevision wouldn't dare drop a major broadcast network. We'll see about that.)
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Good for you, Cablevision! Greedy cable producers have got to be made to hold the line, because cable bills are already so high that I had to have my service turned off. I just couldn't afford it, and so much of what is on cable is crap! — like cooking shows. Has there ever been a time when people did less cooking than now? Why are there hours and hours of cooking shows even on broadcast TV, when nobody cooks?!?
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The costs of any increased payout to the extortionists at the Food Network would not be absorbed by the Cablevision company itself, of course. They would just pass along the increase to subscribers, whether they watch the stupid Food Network or not. Don't cable services already get all or a substantial part of the revenues for commercials placed in their programs? Isn't that supposed to be the way TV is financed, thru advertising? If not, why do we put up with so much advertising?
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There is at least twice as much advertising on TV as there was 40 years ago.

Commercials take airtime away from programmes. In the 1960s a typical hour-long American show would run for 51 minutes excluding commercials. Today a similar program would only be 42 minutes long. In other words, over the course of 10 hours an American viewer will see approximately an hour and a half more commercials than he did in the sixties. Furthermore, if that sixties show is rerun today it is almost certain to be cut by 9 minutes to make room for the extra commercials.

That's bad enuf, for an hour-length program. But a lot of programming is in half-hour shows, interrupted two or even three times for commercials, and bracketed beginning and end by more commercials and promos (advertising by the broadcaster that tries to get viewers to watch others of their shows).

These brief commercial "breaks" that interrupt shows regularly are the primary reason for the existence of modern-day television networks. A typical 30-minute time block includes 23 minutes of programming and 7 minutes of commercials (though some half-hour blocks may have as much as 12 minutes of commercials).

That's 24 minutes of every hour given over to commercials and promos, at the least. Put another way, for every 2 minutes of programming, there is now 1 minute of advertising. That is outrageous. And it's still not enuf for the Food Network. They want to be paid in addition to any advertising revenue they get!
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Infomercials, which are program-length commercials, of course devote 100% of the broadcast time they occupy to advertising.
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What kind of country allows that kind of outrageous abuse? An evil country, that's what kind of country.
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And what kind of broadcaster would use the prestige of the Presidency to draw people into watching a program that is a complete fraud? An evil broadcaster, that's what kind of broadcaster.
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The Obamas have become indignant of late about their image being used to sell products or to popularize PETA, but are not indignant about the Food Network, a bunch of thieves, conning them into using the First Lady to promote a scam? Disgraceful. Cablevision should not give the Food Network one red cent.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 4,373— for Israel.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 8:22 PM