Media Criticism

One of the great success stories in television over the last decade has been Seth MacFarlane’s Family Guy. I was an enormous fan of the show during its initial run on Fox in 2000 and was sad to see it go away in favor of the crappy sitcoms that Fox seems to favor. Family Guy has helped spawn a movement within the diehard TV community to protest the early cancellation of favorite shows. The success of the DVD sets of the first few Family Guy seasons helped bring the show back from the depths of television’s garbage pit.

The reason I bring up these points is that Fox’s recent announcement that they will produce new episodes of Family Guy without the input of executive producer/creator MacFarlane is a slap in the face to fans as well as writers. The final new episode of the acerbic series ran this past Sunday and the Writers’ Guild strike has now shut down material for new episodes. MacFarlane has criticized this move by Fox and has a long history of criticizing network television for its various faults.

I don’t understand why Fox is even bothering to try and create new episodes of the show without MacFarlane. After all, it seems that Fox should have a stash of great reality shows like Syphilis Island, Ted Danson’s Journey across America, and What is That? that do not require any creativity or structure. If Rupert Murdoch is so concerned about keeping Family Guy on the air, they should band with other studio executives to resolve the writer’s strike. I would say that Fox is trying to insult the intelligence of the average TV viewer but they already do this by putting shows like Back to You on the air.

I think that this move by Fox signifies a long strike ahead for writers, studios and TV fans. Family Guy may seem like a disorganized mess that relies on pop culture references to function but you need writers and producers to weave these elements together. Fox’s cartoon lineup requires animators and other creative types to make some of their most popular shows function. A Fox-created version of Family Guy will sound like the “wrong sounding� Muppets that were made a subject of a joke on the legitimate version of Family Guy.

The recent push by FOX’s Rupert Murdoch to purchase The Wall Street Journal has drawn great press attention. Columnists, bloggers and pundits have said that Murdoch’s ascension to the head of The Journal and Dow Jones will lead to the further watering down of the American press. To that, I say that we have reached maximum water level. American media can only go up at this point and I think Rupert Murdoch won’t have a great effect on The Wall Street Journal.

Murdoch has reached his level of prominence through shrewd business decisions. His Fox News Network may be conservative and play to the fears of Americans but the Fox TV Network is incredibly crass and liberal (i.e. The Simpsons, Family Guy). These polar opposites work on the airwaves because: a) there are thousands of television stations, b) their audiences overlap but do not completely align with one another and c) Murdoch only gets involved to the point where his brand name won’t get hurt.

The Columbia Journalism Review published a discussion about Murdoch’s push for The Journal on August 1st. Their analysis is well-reasoned because it tells everyone to calm down. Whether you agree or disagree with Murdoch’s personal politics, you have to see the forest for the trees. The Wall Street Journal will only improve with Murdoch at the helm because he will allow editors and newspaper people to do enough independent work to keep quality high.