MSNBC Tops Itself

So, if you've watched MSNBC at all this weekend, you know it's been providing wall to wall coverage of the Casey Anthony trial.

All of the huge news stories that have happened over various weekends and it stuck with its prison documentaries, but this prompts them to drop its regularly scheduled programming.

Now, obviously, this is pretty cheap programming, but they still have hosts anchoring the coverage and analysts on set to discuss it.

MSNBC is obviously not in the business of providing its audience with news. That's been obvious for a long time.

But, here's the best part. In the prosecution's rebuttal closing, they played a tape of a phone call Casey made from jail.

And she says fuck, fucking, shit, etc., about 100 times in the phone call. And it all goes out over the air.

Finally they cut back to the studio where the anchor apologizes for the language and says they're going to, "put us on a seven second delay."

Then they go back to the court room. In the first sentence, Casey drops another F-bomb. MSNBC doesn't bleep it.

A couple of curse words later and MSNBC finally comes back to the studio until the tape of the phone call is done playing.

Nice job MSNBC.

 

I see your point, but it's a murder trial in which a decomposing child's body and allegations of sexual abuse have been openly discussed. A few F-bombs aren't going to damage anyone beyond repair ...

 

This is the same network where the word "dick" not getting dumped a couple of days ago set off a firestorm.

Now, some of that was because it was disrespectful to the President, but a lot of it was the word itself going out over the air.

If they had dumped "dick" that would not have been nearly as big a deal.

In today's case, they obviously didn't mean to allow these words to go out over the air. They broke in to apologize for it and tried to set up a seven second delay.

It leads to a couple of questions. Is anyone at MSNBC even listening to/watching their own coverage? Do they not have an engineer/production assistant who can set up a seven second delay?

 

Fuckfuckfuck, YF, don't be such a dick.

 

Serious non-political question: what are the FCC implications of putting out so many Fs? Anything because its cable?

 

Same with FNC.

 

None. It's cable.

And like I mentioned on the Halperin thread, going to a 7 second delay isn't as easy as people think. I don't know if MSNBC uses one routinely, but if they don't -- and they probably don't -- it's generally not a matter of just flipping a switch. Our engineers tried to set one up for a special once, and I think cold fusion would have been easier.

 

It did not go out over the air. It's cable.

 

What if you're watching on DirecTV?

 

Doesn't matter. The FCC only has jurisdiction over broadcast content - not satellite or cable.

 

I'll never understand why this case drew so much attention. But every step of the way seems to have been like cable cat nip. Missing young white girl, young mom, easy moral lines with enough "doubt" to give the case legs. A messy family situation and then the cherry on top - live trial coverage on weekends with the case wrapping up on Fourth of July weekend when there is nothing else going on.

 

They'd pay good money in Thailand to watch MSNBC top itself; you can watch the donkey shows only so much