Seth MacFarlane is a great writer of TV shows. My wife and I love The Orville.
As a political thinker, he’s not as great.
https://twitter.com/SethMacFarlane/status/1003102832092823552
Let me tell you how this will really go.
Nightly News Show:
Anchor: “Welcome to the evening news. For tonight’s smart and cultured take on what the Pesident has done, we invite Dr. Bob of Harvard to explain it.”
Liberal Commentator: “[Says some boilerplate Liberal bullshit]”
Anchor: “Thanks Dr. Bob. Now for tonight’s reactionary, white supremacist, neo-Nazi opinion on what the president did, we have some redneck idiot who runs a conspiracy theory website about how Jewish reptiles run the banks….
Remember, they had to present both sides for the same amount of time. They didn’t have to present them honestly or fairly, which is why it was a stupid policy to begin with.
We loved it right up to the “fix our baby” episode. Couldn’t finish watching that one, and kinda stopped after that. We really really don’t like being preached at.
Pity. We were really enjoying it.
There were not that many Opinion shows prior to the Fairness Doctrine. It was too much of a hassle so there was only one source for “news” and you don’t need to figure out how little info we were getting.
Yeah, back in the day, the propaganda was presented as news, and didn’t require providing airtime for a different opinion, “Sixty Minutes” and “Nightline” being the most egregious offenders, but all networks played the game the same way. If they did offer “equal time” is was sometime between Two and Five AM Sunday morning. In addition to demonizing the person making the rebuttal as a NAZI, KKK, Communist, or all three, they would pick the most inarticulate assclown with a room temperature IQ they could find.
I remember when Rush Limbaugh started. He was the (never broadcast) opinion of the other side.