When he interviewed people for his man-on-the-street segments, Fox News personality Jesse Watters typically only got to talk to them for 10 minutes at most. Now that he’s a primetime host, he has even less time to get into it with interview subjects. That fact inspired his new book “Get It Together: Troubling Tales from the Liberal Fringe” (Broadside Books, Tuesday).“I wasn’t getting close to the core: Why do people believe things? How did they end up with their worldviews? What gave them these radical ideas?” he writes.“I set out looking to interview out-of-the-mainstream Americans. Not debate them, just listen to their life stories. I’d listen for two hours, three hours, sometimes four. What I found was that their maverick ideology was rooted in personal struggle. I’d always assumed someone’s political belief system was based upon the books they’d read or the media they’d consumed. Not entirely. A big factor in a person’s policy preference or political identity? Formative experiences in their youth.”He writes that “many of the characters I interviewed for this project had experienced drugs and alcohol early” and “almost all of them had disastrous parents.”The resulting book is divided into 22 chapters, each focusing on a extreme leftist and looking at not just what they believe but how they came to believe it. Have a look at three in this excerpt: THE OPEN BORDERS PROFESSORJoe Carens, a political science professor at The University of Toronto, is described as “one of the world’s leading political philosophers on the issue” of immigration.
Planned Disney-Fox-WBD Bundle “Only Has A Subset Of Sports”, Paramount CEO Bob Bakish Says: “It’s Hard To Believe That’s Ideal”
29.02.2024 - 00:03 / deadline.com
Paramount Global CEO Bob Bakish derided a planned streaming venture backed by Disney, Fox Corp. and Warner Bros. Discovery for having “only a subset of sports.”
In his first public comments since the announcement of the service, which does not include any Paramount or NBCUniversal properties, Bakish noted several gaps it will have.
“There’s still a lot we don’t know about this service, things like price, packaging, consumer appetite,” he said on Paramount’s fourth-quarter earnings call. “To the consumer point, for the true sports fan, this product only has a subset of sports. It’s missing half the NFL, a lot of college, has virtually no soccer or golf, etc. It’s hard to believe that’s ideal, especially at the price points that have been speculated.”
Pricing was not mentioned by the companies when they rolled out the news, but Wall Street analysts and industry observers say the bundle of 14 linear networks will need to cost from $40 to $50 a month, or possibly more. Because of existing distribution commitments, the venture will not be able to undercut existing MVPDs and streaming packages. That dilemma leaves the bundle with uncertain prospects as it targets cord-nevers with a package costing quite a bit more than a typical subscription offering.
The venture partners have given limited comments about how Paramount and NBCU wound up on the outside looking in. Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch has said there were no discussions with any additional potential partners at this point.
As to Paramount’s general outlook on sports, Bakish said, “We see clear value to an integrated sports payment strategy, true both for CBS and Paramount+.” Among viewers who come to Paramount+ for sports, “90% of their engagement is with non-sports,” the
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