PBS, Colbert, and Planned Parenthood

Gotterdammerung of the Karens

PBS/NPR, Colbert, and Planned Parenthood are all in the news for being shut down, mostly. A judge in Boston, Indira Talwani issued an order forbidding the new budget bill being enacted, as so far as it has cuts to Planned Parenthood: link here. Yes the woman’s parents are from India. Yes she is as ugly as you can imagine.

The Wall Street Journal (behind a paywall) has a long article on the decline of Planned Parenthood. It is a fairly old organization, dating back to 1916 and Margaret Sanger’s American Birth Control League, which offered contraception, and sex education. Starting in the 1970s, Planned Parenthood had a series of battles over what the organization would do: either provide health and health education services to women, especially poor women including but not limited to, birth control and abortion; or focus on advocacy and political agitation.

Guess which side won out?

Their centers that provide health services, mostly focus on abortion and the abortion pill only, along with transgender hormone blockers and surgeries, particularly aimed at children under 18. They are chronically understaffed, and under funded. Most were closing or considering such before Trump’s new budget, passed by both branches of Congress and signed into law. [Of course a district court Judge is God and overrules budgets because a Judge is God, Congress and the President mere mortals]. The power centers lie in "nice White ladies" who agitate for ever more Trump Resistance. And then act surprised when Trump cuts them out of federal funding. Planned Parenthood spends most of its money on do nothing staff and political stunts like Black Lives Matter and Free Palestine.

Chris Zander’s "and then what" remains a good notion. Planned Parenthood went the political agitation route as it could create a gaggle of AWFLs and non White versions, to agitate and hector and do other female oriented nagging, and get paid for it. No one ever thought that a dependency on government funds for all this stuff would put them at risk if enough GOP pols, and critically their backers, got ticked off enough to cut their budget. Unlike some big lobbyist organizations like the Defense Contractors, they did not take care to be bi partisan and have easy, cushy jobs for relatives of those in both parties. Only one. And so, they got cut, assuming the District Court Judge is not successful in asserting her Godhood. Which who knows at this point?

PBS and NPR made the same mistake. They did not do anything to avoid being just a make-work place for AWFLs, did not make sure to provide air time and access to lots of Republican pols as well as Democratic ones, so they could be assured that when it was time to cut, they would be safe. Instead they went full on Woke, with only defenders on the hard left. Significantly, Democrats did not go to the wall for PBS, as a lot of high donation Jewish Wall Street people shared David Mamet’s view that NPR might as well be called "National Palestinian Radio" and the Dog Not Barking was the failure of Schumer and Jeffries to try the scare tactics of Republicans killing Elmo (last seen praising Hitler in some hack) and the usual stuff.

Lastly there is the Colbert show being canceled. The media and his late night buddies like Kimmel, argue it was to appease Trump and get approval of the Skydance / Paramount merger. [South Park noted that in its lawsuits against Paramount, Skydance is already making decisions, the show is up for renewal and Parker/Stone are asking for $3 billion, ten year deal, Skydance wants less for a shorter contract. Implications being that Skydance for PSAs and other non monetary concessions has agreed to a far larger payment than the CBS $16 million pro-forma.]

Recall that when Johnny Carson retired in 1993, late night was profitable enough that when Letterman lost out to Jay Leno for Carson’s spot, he got his own Late Night Show on CBS, which until that time had none. Fox had late night shows with Joan Rivers, and Arsenio Hall. CBS even created its own late, late night show in 1995 with hosts (in order) Tom Snyder, Craig Kilbourne, Craig Ferguson, and James Corden. Corden’s show was canceled in 2023 and not renewed. Around the same time, NBC’s Seth Myers (following the slot after the Tonight Show’s Jimmy Fallon) lost his band. All the late night shows are now running only 4 days a week with new shows. Fridays is repeats.

The Wall Street Journal notes that Youtube, not any other streamer, is the dominant streaming service. It outpaces even Disney+, ESPN/ABC and all the other Disney owned channels combined by a large margin. The CBS Late Show (and others) show short clips on Youtube, but the ad money does not replace the decline of Over the Air / Cable ad money.

Colbert Canceled

Late-night shows have felt the decline acutely. In 2018, late-night shows on the major networks recorded $439 million in ad revenue, according to advertising-data company Guideline. Last year, that declined to $220 million.

That is a nearly 50% decline in ad revenues. The WSJ reported (behind a paywall) that the Colbert Show was losing $40 million a year. Colbert was making roughly $17 million a year. Supposedly his staff exceeds 100 people.

Recently, Adam Carolla was asked about the failure of Season 5 of the Man Show:

It was a top rated show. Kimmel went to ABC to do a late night show of his own, after four seasons. [He was actually even funny for a while before he went all woke after dating Sarah Silverman.] Carolla was part of the staff on Kimmel’s ABC late night show for a year or two (likely why it was funny). The replacements for Kimmel and Carolla were Joe Rogan (you might have heard of him) and Doug Stanhope.

Per Carolla, the reason for the success of the Man Show for its first four seasons is the same as the reason for its failure and cancelation by Comedy Central in Season 5. Only a few people did any actual work. Executive producers got paid for doing nothing, and that was sustainable when it had Carolla (who had done sketch comedy in the Groundlings for years and knew how to do that SNL stuff), and Kimmel who had done radio comedy on local radio station KROQ for years, imitating Mike Tyson and Moses Malone. They had a few talented writers who also created funny sketch comedy, who left with Carolla to work on Kimmel’s ABC show. That left all the staff who did nothing but collect paychecks, and Rogan and Stanhope who had a stand up background and could not do sketch comedy.

He compares the ease of which he can do podcasts (also on YT) and how cheap it is, how little staff he needs, compared to the Comedy Central model.

If PBS/NPR and Planned Parenthood were done in by not planning for enough Republicans to eliminate them for their failure to spread the graft/grift around, Colbert and the CBS model are getting eaten alive by Youtube as a platform for all sorts of other content.

Colbert’s audience when took over from David Letterman in 2015, was an average age of 60. That age is now 68. No matter how you slice it, he was a failure in growing the audience, a failure in getting it younger for higher ad rates, and a failure to even keep the decline manageable. His guest when he announced basically the show being canceled was Adam Schiff. A man now under investigation and likely indictment for mortgage fraud. [Like NY AG Letitia James, he claimed his out of state residence to be his primary home to gain lower mortgage rates and tax exemptions, which is incompatible with residency requirements to represent his state in Congress.]

Colbert’s show was basically as others noted, a MSNBC Variety Show with mostly Democratic Politicians. And it was expensive, he had a staff of writers who were not funny, and failed to do any funny jokes about Biden being senile, Dr. Jill being stupid and running things, Hunter being a conniving crack head, all the things he could have done to balance Trump jokes and get a broader audience. He had to double down like it was 1983 and there were only three networks, not much cable alternatives, and no internet. He and his staff could see the weekly ratings reports from Nielsen. They could understand week after week, he was losing his audience he inherited from Letterman who in turn was far down from his peak. He could see his Prime Time / Local News lead in was evaporating faster every week as their own ratings plummeted. He could see he lost Trump voters, and supporters, and still either thought that CBS would run a deficit on the show indefinitely just to get in good with Karens in the bureaucracy, or that CBS would never get sold as it lost money, or look at Shari Redstone and realize she would sell out, sooner than later, or realize his legacy would be as a deeply unfunny moral lecturer for Woke.

More than sixty years after his death, Ernie Kovacs is still considered a comedy god: "smoking" underwater, wearing a suit made out of alka-seltzers and climbing into a tank of water, weird fake credits between commercials, and so on. He is still remembered. No one will remember Colbert. And he knows it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernie_Kovacs

What we can draw from this is that we are approaching the Gotterdammerung of the Karens. Either by design or just by being stupid, they are setting on fire their own realms, and wanting to drag everyone else with them down into the Rhine. In no way were they prepared or willing to take any steps to appeal to a broad swath of people even for their own preservation. NPR chose Stalinist AWFL agit-prop, instead of allowing respectful access to both sides of the aisle to get multiple defenders. Planned Parenthood went all in on AWFL agitation and bird-hand female hectoring:

And the Colbert Show made sure it was nothing more than MSNBC shows with a band.

We can therefore conclude that our enemies are stupid, as they did not take even obvious steps to preserve themselves. They are also ideologically and emotionally driven by being the pure and good fighters for morality, one Soy Latte at a time. And that finally, like Brunnhilde, they will set themselves and everyone else they can on fire if they do not get their way. Compromise, rationality, and common sense are not even in the same zip code as these true believers and everyone in their organizations.

If we draw these examples out to the Democratic Party at large, Judges and the lawyers, large parts of the federal, state, and local bureaucracy, we can see fast approaching, a Gotterdammerung. But one of the Karens, not the Gods.

It is shaping up to be a Hot Summer, and a Fall of protest / stupid attempts to overthrow Trump in a desperate attempt by Karens to return to 1993. And it will all be done by people selected for cronyism, not any real ability.

Remember, our enemies are powerful in that they control much/most of the bureaucracy and judicial system and NGOistan. But they are also, profoundly stupid in a way that the above illustrates, over and over again.