Planting Liberally

Earlier this week, MSNBC announced that Rachel Maddow would get her own show in the nightly line-up, replacing Dan Abrams. The announcement was a victory for progressives in a number of ways. First, Maddow's show will strengthen the toe-hold that progressive voices like Keith Olbermann have on cable TV. Second, Maddow represents perhaps the first progressive voice to bubble up through the nascent progressive media machine and into traditional media. Finally, Maddow is the first woman with her own show representing progressives on one of the three major cable news channels.

As important a victory as Maddow's show is, we should not bask too long in the glow of victory. Now that corporate media has acknowledged the importance of attracting a progressive audience, it's time for the movement to flex its muscle still further.

In the short term, this means doing some of what we're already doing, only more often and more emphatically. Certainly, we should make sure to tune in to Maddow's show, and to promote it by embedding and spreading video clips of the show through blogs and social networks. On top of that, we should work to voice our support for Maddow to MSNBC management and advertisers. And once the show gets going, we should play the role of constructive critics, in order to improve and perfect it over time. Maddow has already proven her mettle as a commenter and as a replacement for Olbermann; and the progressive grassroots has already proven its enthusiasm for supporting her work, so this part of the job should be pretty easy.

The more difficult work will be in extending our victory outside of Maddow's show. The combination of Maddow and Olbermann on MSNBC should mark the network as the unofficial liberal cable news channel, but the network still plays host to more than enough conservative viewpoints; replacing voices like Joe Scarborough with new progressive voices will help clear up any confusion viewers might have about who is and who isn't a progressive on the channel. The slow rightward drift of CNN needs to be halted and reversed. And perhaps most importantly, we need a genuine progressive cable news channel, not one like MSNBC. As Cable News Confidential vividly depicts, it's not wise to entrust progressive voices to large corporations with decidedly unprogressive interests, like GE, and management which doesn't understand niche programming, like MSNBC's.

Of course, it's one thing to lay these goals out, and quite another to achieve them. Fortunately, there is already some progress on these fronts. Without a major scandal, like the one which took Don Imus off of MSNBC and CBS, it's hard to remove a show from the air and make room for a new progressive show. On the other hand, it should be possible to push more progressives into positions as commentators, replacement hosts, or even co-hosts. A number of high-profile liberal bloggers have already made the leap into one-time commentator gigs. Perhaps it's time to cultivate more of those gigs, provide training to those bloggers, and assemble grassroots support for those individuals. In particular, the coalition that was assembled for Stephanie Miller as a potential replacement for Don Imus on MSNBC should be rekindled and prepared to support a bid for her to take any potential opportunities that might open up.

Establishing a genuinely progressive nationwide cable news channel will be even harder. Fortunately, there are a few fledgling efforts, like Link TV, The Real News and Free Speech TV. Currently programming from these channels is available in a limited number of markets and via satellite TV. We should work to expand the reach of these channels, perhaps starting with leasing time on existing, struggling channels, or by cross-promoting these channels with existing progressive radio shows. In addition, we should work to integrate the programming from these channels, as well as material from existing web-based progressive political shows like The Young Turks, into other progressive media, in order to build popular demand for the channels.

On top of the efforts we can make to drive popular demand for this kind of programming to be available on cable, we can also work to create a potential supply of sponsorship or advertising. Certainly, there are plenty of big- budget advertisers who should have at least latent interest in reaching a niche progressive audience on TV - think of Toyota advertising for the Prius, Miramax advertising a Michael Moore film, or Apple trying to reach a creative and largely progressive audience. Moreover, as Spot.us and similar TV advertising resellers have demonstrated, it's possible to aggregate large blocks of advertising spots in order to make localized, on-the-cheap advertising available to the kinds of mom-and-pop retailers that progressives love to frequent - bookstores, coffee shops, and independent movie theaters. It's not yet clear how this kind of latent advertising demand can be organized and leveraged into the kind of start-up funding needed to credibly build a nationwide progressive cable TV channel, but it is clear that many of the raw materials are in place.

None of this will be particularly easy, nor do I imagine that we'll be successful on all fronts. It took conservatives the better part of a decade to start making inroads with CNN, and quite a lot of money to establish Fox News. At the same time, I think we have reached an important moment to build momentum and to develop a strategy to permanently transform cable news.

It's about time: after months of speculation, it appears that Rachel Maddow will replace Dan Abrams in the MSNBC lineup. The move will shift the lineup emphatically to the left, and finally gives progressives a regularly-appearing female voice on one of the three major cable news channels.

Maddows' ascension comes after a somewhat convoluted path that began with a radio show on Air America, continued with her role as a frequent commentator during MSNBC election coverage, and, perhaps most significantly, her occasional stints as a replacement for Keith Olbermann on Countdown. In other words, this is perhaps the first example in recent memory of a progressive commentator "bubbling up" from the new progressie media machine into traditional corporate media, and as such it's an important milestone. It would be nice to see this kind of thing happen more frequently, and perhaps, if Maddow's show receives good ratings, CNN might take notice. Olbermann's diary on DailyKos suggested that both he and Maddow's grassroots supporters helped make the show a reality, but, unfortunately we don't have much of a roadmap for the next progressive cable TV coup.

Last year, when it appeared that Tucker Carlson's show was in jeopardy, I wrote that replacing Carlson with a second progressive voice in the MSNBC lineup should be a short-term goal for the progressive movement. Now that we've achieved that goal (or half of it), it's worth looking farther down the road. What should be the next milestone that the nascent progressive media machine strives for, when it comes to Cable TV? Here are a few that come to mind:

• Establishing more avowedly progressive talk shows on MSNBC or CNN
• Getting more progressive commentators to appear on MSNBC or CNN
• Expanding the racial and gender diversity on cable talk shows
• Establishing a fourth, and genuinely progressive, cable news channel
• Expanding the reach and programming of fledgling progressive networks like Link TV, Free Speech TV, or Real News Network
• Indirectly altering cable news through regulatory reform - e.g., a la carte retail cable

Any others? And more importantly - what can we do to reach these goals? I'd love to hear your thoughts.

This week CNN launched iReport, a video sharing citizen journalism site where users have a chance to upload reports which might be picked up and used on-air at CNN. The launch builds on previous experiments by CNN to incorporate citizen journalism into its reporting. The site is technically in beta now, and is slated for launch in March. I should also mention that CNN is hardly the first network to stumble across the idea of citizen journalism: The Real News, a non-profit progressive TV news show, has been supporting citizen journalism through their community website The Real News Junkies for several months now, with a significantly lower budget.

iReport is, as might be expected, far from perfect. TechCrunch has already taken it to task for failing to compensate contributors and for relatively lackluster content. In many ways, iReport is really just a shadow of YouTube, with the main difference being that iReport submissions have the chance to be picked up by a large international TV network. CNN does provide a few helpful hints on the type of video that has a better chance at getting on air: stories about presidential candidate sitings, salutes to the troops, and severe weather. At least they're not setting the bar too high.

I'm curious to see whether this site could become an entrypoint for progressives to push news coverage on CNN further to the left. I'm under no illusions that Bill Bennett will have his racist keister ejected from election night coverage, nor that Lou Dobbs will join a mariachi band and issue a teary-eyed apology for his hate-mongering past. I'm fairly positive that CNN will start off by deciding which stories it wants to run, and occasionally turning to iReport for cheap footage that reinforces their predefined point of view. But eventually, I'd like to hope, a deluge of reports with a leftist bent - hearings on global warming, let's say, or personal testimonials that indict the health care system - will encourage story editors to adopt a more progressive slant. Such a deluge would be an incentive for the network to offer substantive, progressive news by lowering the cost of doing so.

Or, we could watch stories about ketchup.

I had a lot of fun reading Alternet's report of trouble at Fox News today. As the main cheerleader for the Bush presidency and the war in Iraq, this channel has a lot of blood on its hands, and I'm glad to see they're having trouble keeping their dominance of the cable ratings wars. I also think the fact that the channel's bad fortunes are coinciding with a generally lackluster Republican presidential primary speaks to a deeper, more general distaste for conservatism as a whole, and that's great.

Then again, I don't think it's all over for the channel, or for the conservative movement. The movement is still incredibly well-funded and savvy at using new media, and is fully capable of launching some pretty nasty attacks. We have yet to see how Republicans will do at the congressional level, or at the local and statewide levels. In some ways under-the-radar electoral wins are more dangerous than big-enchilada wins, and a kinda sorta victory at the presidential level should not leave progressives the least bit complicit at other levels.

Moreover, the election is just the beginning of the story. Will a Democratic President and Congress be able to enact progressive laws, or will we have a reprise of the disastrous 1993-94 legislative session? I was just coming of political age back then, and I can easily remember how chillingly effective the vicious conservative media machine - which was still then in nascency - was at stopping progressive reform.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, this piece serves as a warning for progressive TV programmers. Tying our fortunes up too tightly with our favored elected officials opens us up to the dangers of losing audience share if those officials ever lose favor. We shouldn't be the sycophantic cheerleaders Fox News has been. We want progressive TV to be progressive first, and partisan second.

 

Update: Fox won this year's State of the Union coverage, but the margin between Fox and CNN is shrinking.

Over the past few months, I've written a few pieces on the feasibility of establishing a progressive cable news channel. I've written about opportunities to push MSNBC in a leftward direction for the short-term, as well as a long-term strategy for piecing together a new national network using leased cable access in a number of major metropolitan areas. Today, I'll discuss the work of The Real News, an up-and-coming non-profit progressive news channel based in Canada, which has a fascinating long-term plan for establishing a national presence for progressive TV news. If you're unfamiliar with The Real News, this interview with CEO Paul Jay gives a great overview to the channel's understanding of how to deliver high-quality journalism in today's environment.

I recently spoke with Geraldine Cahill, the director of social media for The Real News, about the channel's plans for 2008 and beyond. The Real News has a lot of interesting plans for the future, and many of them are, I think, very much on the right track. This is an exciting example of a new up-and-coming progressive institution which "gets it" in many ways, and I think it deserves a lot of support from the blogosphere. Cahill and I spoke about the channel's plans for more content, more widespread distribution, better fundraising, and increased engagement of grassroots supporters and donors. Much more across the flip.

A key to proving the viability of a new channel is the amount of high quality, frequently-updated content the channel can produce on a regular basis. The Real News began steadily increasing the number of videos it produces since June of 2007, with a noticeable bump in August 2007. Within the next 2 - 3 months, The Real News believes it can create about 3 - 4 short pieces a day, 2 - 3 longer pieces every week, and a few occasional special feature-length pieces. Current staffing levels are sufficient to support that level of production.

The Real News hopes that the 2008 elections will boost interest in progressive news, and give the channel an opportunity to produce still more content. A key element to capturing this opportunity is the channel's plan to build a Washington, DC bureau and a New York studio. (Most production efforts are currently based in Toronto.) Fundraising is currently underway to support these projects. As someone who finds campaign coverage woefully vapid and horserace-focused, I find the prospect of a steady stream of progressive, policy-oriented, substantive campaign coverage extremely exciting. It'll be very interesting to see this coverage take shape.

If the Real News can manage to produce a one hour nightly news show, it will still need a distribution channel for its content. That means finding a cable provider that has space for such a show. Currently The Real News has a relationship with LinkTV for satellite distribution, and Vision TV for cable distribution in Canada. There are a few providers in other parts of the world, such as EUX TV in Europe and a few providers in India. The Real News is also looking into distribution as an on-demand video service with Comcast. In the US, there are efforts underway to place The Real News programming on public access TV, and RNN TV in New York. Currently, the Real News is primarily distributed online, and the hopes are to distribute the videos on cable and satellite by Summer 2008.

All of these plans, however, depend on the channel's financial viability. While the channel's initial funding came from a few foundational grants and large individual donors, and it plans to continue using those funding streams into the near future, The Real News is pursuing a long-term strategy for financial stability founded mostly on small individual donors. This plan, though, has a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem: small donors don't want to jump into something until it looks viable, but viability for a news channel (as I've mentioned above) requires regular production of fresh content, which requires a lot of up-front funding. The channel could be self-sustaining with a corps of 250,000 monthly subscribers, each contributing $10 / month. You can click here to subscribe today.

In a way, The Real News funding model is very similar to that of public television, but without corporate and government sponsorship. There's no space in The Real News funding formula for corporate advertising. That's an important distinction, and it will allow the channel to have a wide range of editorial freedom. Watching Paul Jay talk about the way that editorial freedom will lead to a higher quality of meaningful journalism is exciting, and it certainly makes me think that The Real News has a very good understanding of what's wrong in journalism today, especially in TV journalism.

At the same time, I am a bit worried about the no-advertising model, because I think it both isolates progressive news from a huge chunk of economic life, and places obstacles in the face of progressive candidates wishing to reach a progressive audience. I think that the progressive movement and the economy as a whole benefit greatly when companies target and solicit progressive customers. Such targeting can yield money for progressive causes at the same time that it creates actual change, by forcing companies to adopt socially responsible policies. Moreover, it has the potential to lead to progressive social change - think, for example, of consumers who buy organic because they believe it's healthier, and eventually become more environmentally and socially aware as a result. Turning down corporate advertising means closing doors in the face of companies who want to reach progressives. So I am a little worried about the opportunities lost because the Real World is not soliciting advertising. But I can certainly understand the channel's genuine concern for editorial freedom.

What is most exciting about the Real News, I think, is its deep and broad understanding of the social media landscape, and its open embrace of crowdsourcing. Grassroots engagement means a lot of different things to the Real News, and the channel offers its supporters a whole range of options for involvement, including:

• The ability to support the channel through monthly donations
• The opportunity to host house parties to spread the word about the Real News, and to support other local events sponsored by The Real News
• The opportunity to provide citizen eye-witness video footage, which might get included or used in news reports
• Occasional chances to translate video content into other languages
• The ability to comment on and share video clips, both on the Real News YouTube channel and on its own internal social network

You can, of course, join the Real News volunteer email list to learn about new opportunities as they arise.

Cahill, who directs social media efforts for The Real News, appears to have exactly the right understanding of social media: give people a lot of different opportunities to engage, and hope that over time, they will eventually become more and more involved with the channel. While The Real News certainly is not bashful about asking people to become monthly subscribers, it certainly offers people a number of other ways to help out and be involved.

On the whole, I think the Real News is a remarkable operation, and it appears to have a very good grasp of how to operate a progressive news show in today's user-focused, grassroots-supported, social media environment. I think the channel deserves much more support from the progressive blogosphere, and I'll be excited to see it take off during the 2008 elections.

Yesterday I wrote about an important opportunity for making cable TV a bit more progressive - the possibility of replacing Tucker Carlson with a progressive on MSNBC. The comments on that post showed clearly that there are a lot of people thinking about how to make cable more progressive - ranging from a wide-ranging debate on who should represent progressives on cable TV, to a thoughtful post on how to schedule a progressive evening lineup, and more. I think this kind of energy is really valuable, and I hope that it's not wasted on MSNBC. While the channel does appear willing to experiment with progressive voices, it will never be a reliable progressive cable channel, and we shouldn't expect it to be. Instead, we should be planning to create our own progressive cable channel. Luckily, recent FCC rulings have just made that a little bit easier.

On Wednesday, the FCC slashed rates on leased cable access to 10 cents per subscriber per month. With leased access, independent programmers can pay to gain access to part of a cable carrier's lineup. Rates on leased access were about four times higher prior to Wednesday's decision.

Over the past couple of weeks, I've exchanged a few emails with Bob Fertik, President of Democrats.com, about the FCC's various efforts to regulate cable. We both agree that this decision opens a door for liberal entrepreneurs to begin laying the groundwork for a national progressive cable news channel. (And I should also give credit to a friend of Bob, who spoke to me about some of the broad outlines of a strategy for progressive cable, which I outline below.) The basic strategy is simple: line up prime time leased access on cable channels in a number of major media markets, and put progressive programming in that time. If that strategy can succeed with representation in many major markets, then we might be able to leverage it into a dedicated national channel. While the strategy is simple, it's certainly not easy. Over the flip, I'll have more on what we will need to pull together to get this idea to be successful, and opportunities for liberal entrepreneurs to make money while creating a national progressive cable network.

Costs and advertisers
As a simple back-of-the-envelope calculation, let's consider a cable channel like the Ohio News Network, which clearly covers an important area from an electoral point of view.  The ONN has about 1.5 million subscribers, in markets that include Cleveland, Cincinnati, and Columbus.  Under the new FCC regulations, leasing 24 hours of access to the channel will now cost about $150,000 / month.  Leasing two hours of prime time will cost significantly less - obviously not 1/12th the cost, but perhaps 1/6th the cost of a full day's access; we'll call it $25,000 / month.  What that means is that a progressive cable news channel will have to earn at least $25,000 / month in advertising - and probably considerably more, to cover the costs of programming, equipment, facilities, personnel, and so on.

This is the first problem which liberal entrepreneurs hoping to create a progressive cable news channel have to solve: finding monthly advertising.  Fortunately, there's not a lot of competition.  There are only a handful of shows where an advertiser looking to reach a targeted progressive cable audience can go.  The existing progressive satellite TV channels (Link TV, Real News and Free Speech TV) are all non-profit and don't take advertising.  Progressive shows like Countdown are not particularly well-marketed to progressive audiences by their corporate parents, and I suspect that the marketing flubs are mirrored in a similar inability to attract advertisers who want to reach a progressive audience.  I believe that there is an opportunity to get considerable advertising from companies who are reaching a progressive audience.  What's more, as the 2008 election picks up steam, there will be more and more money available from Democratic candidates to advertise on progressive TV.  (Whether the candidates wise up and take advantage of the opportunity to reach a geographically and politically segmented audience is another matter.)

I think it'd be interesting to see a liberal entrepreneur create a cable television advertising representation company to sell prospective advertising spots on a progressive cable news channel.  Such a company would focus on market research, would identify the demographics of those likely to watch such a channel, would identify products and services which would likely be popular among those demographics, and would make a case to businesses that advertising on such a channel would be good for the bottom line.  Naturally, it would be difficult to sell advertising on a channel that doesn't yet exist, but if such a company could succeed in lining up potential advertisers, we could solve an important piece of the puzzle.

Programming and Marketing/Adoption
Lining up programming for progressive cable is a challenging but fun problem to solve.  Fortunately, there are already a few solutions on offer - in particular, the lineups for satellite networks Link TV, Real News, and Free Speech TV.  The comments on yesterday's blog post also brought to the surface a whole flurry of suggestions for potential progressive media figures who could become talk show hosts and cable pundits, and some pretty interesting thoughts about structuring the lineup to maximize audience flow.

Unfortunately, programming is only half of the problem.  The other half of the problem - and what appears to be the reason that Donahue floundered on MSNBC - is marketing the programming to a progressive audience, and/or organic adoption of the programming.  Back in 2003, Donahue didn't have executives willing to market his program to a targeted progressive audience; the progressive blogosphere was not yet strong enough to drive organic adoption; and YouTube was nowhere to be found.  He simply could not find an audience. (Update: An alert reader points me to an interview posted at Media Matters - conducted on Hannity and Colmes, of all places - which points out that Donahue's numbers were higher than anyone else's at MSNBC in early 2003. Execs just didn't like the fact that he was so liberal. Yet another reason why we shouldn't trust MSNBC to be a progressive standard-bearer, and should form our own network.)

Nowadays, the progressive blogosphere and other elements of the netroots, like DFA and Drinking Liberally, are plenty strong enough to drive organic adoption of a cable lineup.  Indeed, we are already doing just that for Countdown, the Daily Show, and the Colbert Report.  What I find a bit surprising is that we are not really doing the same for the three progressive satellite TV channels which are already up and running.  I'm not entirely sure why that is, although I have some guesses.  For example, it's possible that the channels aren't widely enough distributed (they each reach about 20-30 million households); or that their programming does not really relate to the kinds of topics we tend to talk about in the progressive blogosphere; or that they don't do enough to post their shows to YouTube.

This question is important, because if a progressive cable channel will succeed, it will require either a hefty marketing budget, or broad organic adoption of its programming through YouTube and blogosphere embeds.  Since a hefty marketing budget for progressive cable isn't likely to appear out of thin air, we'll have to build the audience for progressive cable through cost-effective blogosphere advertising and word-of-mouth embeds.

Yesterday's comments, incidentally, provided an interesting idea which could both generate new programming, and help drive organic adoption: a YouTube-driven, American Idol-style competition for talk show hosts.  (Full disclosure, this idea was provided by my Drinking Liberally co-host.)  I could easily see this idea turning into a fantastic website, focused on building a fan base for a variety of progressive media personalities, who would eventually become hosts, guests and pundits for a progressive cable channel.  It would be easy enough to monetize a site like that with advertising or ticket sales and other merchandise related to real-world appearances by those media figures.  (My guess is that some of the next generation of TV pundits will come from progressive comedians.)

Regardless of whether such an idea would actually fly, I believe it's important to tie together programming development with marketing/adoption concerns.  We now have a whole movement capable of driving organic adoption of progressive cable, and we should design programming and outreach efforts which take advantage of that.

Getting a foot in the door, and tying it all together
So far, I've focused on problems in progressive cable development with liberal entrepreneurs can directly address in a way which is sustainable and feasible without a significant investment of capital - things gathering prospective advertisers, building a prospective audience online, etc.  However, the success of all of this clearly hinges on the possibility of actually putting together blocks of leased access cable time in a variety of major metropolitan areas.  That means finding a string of existing cable channels for which we could actually lease prime time hours.  To return to my earlier example, while ONN might be an attractive network on which to lease access from an electoral point of view, the network isn't required to lease access.  Particularly for prime time, finding leased access availability is very difficult, because many cable channels already make lucrative use of that time.

The trick will almost certainly revolve around finding channels which are struggling, and cannot currently successfully compete with other channels in their market.  It will also probably require at least a few individuals with good connections in the world of cable TV, who will be able to guide an application for leased access to successful completion.

In this case, I think there is some room for progressive activists to join in the effort.  For example, crowdsourcing can help identify struggling cable channels throughout the country - identifiable as those channels which are already struggling to field successful and stable programs during prime-time, or even during off-hours.  To consider a more elaborate example, progressive activists can work together, perhaps using wikis or similar tools, to develop a sort of pro-forma business plan for a progressive cable channel in a single major media market; such a plan could be adapted and tweaked for a string of channels throughout the country, and could help facilitate successful leased access applications.  (h/t to Bob Fertik for this idea.)

At the end of the day, I believe that creating a national progressive cable channel will be a huge and complex undertaking, which will require overlapping efforts from a number of overlapping entrepreneurial ventures, as well as a stable of well-connected cable executives who can help facilitate the process of obtaining prime time leased access.  Nevertheless, the FCC's decision this week made the effort much more attainable, and we should make use of this golden opportunity.

Tucker Carlson's low ratings at MSNBC have put his show on the chopping block. Not long ago, MSNBC almost inked a deal to replace Carlson with Rosie O'Donnell. O'Donnell, while not exactly a movement progressive, is certainly left-of-center in a non-establishment way, and a marked improvement over Carlson.

This is a great opportunity for the progressive movement. If Carlson is replaced by a progressive, the MSNBC line up really will start to look like a bona fide progressive alternative to Fox. I'm the last person to trust that MSNBC will stay dedicated to that kind of lineup, or that they will appropriately market the lineup and do a good job of getting businesses to advertise. Still, this is about the shortest path we have towards a progressive alternative to Fox, and we should not ignore it. (Incidentally, there was an important FCC ruling earlier this week which does create another path, though much longer and more arduous, towards progressive cable -
more on that soon.)

And yet, we are having difficulty converting this opportunity into reality. For starters, MSNBC doesn't appear to have a viable replacement for Carlson. I'm not sure why that is, exactly. Certainly there are good progressives capable of hosting a good news and opinion talk show, like Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez, or Tavis Smiley. My last post on installing progressives at MSNBC offered up a few other interesting alternatives in the comments - including David Shuster, Rachel Maddow and Randi Rhodes. The problem could be a matter of availability, or it could be differences in editorial style (i.e., MSNBC might not be interested in giving Smiley a slot because they don't like his views/interview style/whatever.) Unfortunately, there doesn't appear to be an organized progressive effort to get behind a replacement for Carlson, while conservatives are rallying to keep the show on the air (see savetucker.org).

What should we be doing to find a viable progressive alternative to Tucker Carlson, and to convince MSNBC management to choose that alternative? I'd love to hear thoughts on this.

The FCC decided yesterday to postpone a vote on whether or not cable penetration has reached 70% of US households, meaning that the agency can impose regulations on the cable industry. However, the FCC did decide to slash rates on leased cable access TV, down to 10 cents per month per subscriber for 24 hours of access. This new decision opens a huge opportunity for liberal entrepreneurs to begin developing a framework for a national progressive cable TV channel.

I don't have time to write up all of my thoughts just now; more will come on the weekend. However, I have three quick hits:

• A liberal entrepreneur could begin taking bids on potential advertising space on progressive prime-time cable TV in major metropolitan areas, in order to demonstrate feasibility of such a venture. The FCC's decision means that the amount of advertising needed to sustain this kind of venture is now much lower (perhaps 3 times lower) than it was recently.
• A liberal entrepreneur could undertake a data mining experiment to identify stations which might be most likely to grant leased access, and which have coverage of major metropolitan areas. For example, data mining could help uncover stations which are financially weak and struggling to find advertisers.
• Finally, an entrepreneur could try and solve one of the biggest problems in gaining leased access: finding connections with TV operators. This is a very tricky problem, an I'm not really sure how to solve it. But it occurs to me that some form of social networking activism would be helpful along these lines.

That's all I've got for now. More coming this weekend, here and at MyDD!

It looks like conservatives have set up a petition site to urge MSNBC to reconsider firing Tucker Carlson (http://savetucker.org/). Removing Tucker Carlson should be a top priority for liberal media activists in the next few weeks; this is a wonderful opportunity to push the traditional mass media to the left. We should be responding to this.

Earlier this week, the NYT noted that MSNBC is becoming a hub for left-wing talk on cable TV. The article's assertion that Chris Matthews counts as a liberal, or Joe Scarborough as a moderate, is a pretty big stretch. And the network's decision to replace Don Imus's racist and sexist morning talk show with Joe Scarborough several months ago hardly counts as a progressive programming decision. Nevertheless, Keith Olbermann calls MSNBC his home; Tucker Carlson's show is on the ropes; and until Wednesday, network executives were considering adding a talk show with Rosie O'Donnell to the mix. (The O'Donnell deal fell apart, apparently, because MSNBC wanted a longer commitment than O'Donnell was willing to make.) If Carlson does get the boot, and a new liberal talk show host akin to O'Donnell joins the MSNBC lineup, then the network will easily count as the most progressive of the three major cable news channels. The cable news industry - indeed, the entire cable TV industry - is in a very interesting position these days. Poor service and high prices have led to widespread dissatisfaction with cable carriers, especially Comcast. There's significant buyer dissatisfaction with the overall cable-purchasing model as well, as most cable subscribers clamor for a la carte channels. At the same time, there are signs that the FCC will almost certainly begin regulating the industry more heavily. The new FCC regulations, which appear to be focused on expanding access to cable news channels by liberalizing leased access rules, open up some interesting opportunities for bringing more progressive voices to cable news. For example, an entrepreneur could undertake an experiment to lease cable access in order to air a progressive talk show, like the Stephanie Miller show, at a time that competes with MSNBC's Scarborough morning show. (When MSNBC fired Don Imus a few months ago, Miller auditioned for the morning time slot; despite several well-received Miller shows and a spirited petition effort on the part of progressives, Scarborough got the slot.) If the entrepreneur coupled that move with a concerted strategy to market Miller's show to progressives - incorporating YouTube excerpts, blog and social network marketing, etc. - then Miller's show might gain audience share against Scarborough. If the experiment could be conducted in enough major markets to put a dent in Scarborough's ratings, MSNBC might eventually be persuaded to replace Scarborough with Miller. This kind of experiment would be novel. Most leased access shows are localized, and rely on local or regional advertising for revenue. Moreover, leased access is obtained through local cable providers, not on a national level, so it would be very difficult to string together leased access in enough markets to make a significant dent in the ratings of a national show. (For a good background piece on leased access, check out this Videomaker piece.) On the other hand, a liberal entrepreneur willing to try this out could crowdsource the process of obtaining leased access, by enlisting progressive netroots activists in the time-consuming effort of contacting and cajoling local cable offices. Moreover, because progressives are emphatically ignored on cable and broadcast TV, there's a large, untapped potential for capturing advertising dollars for products that are best marketed on TV and have a natural liberal audience - for example, progressive movies and documentaries. In other words, this kind of experiment would be massive and novel, but potentially very profitable. Ultimately, the viability of this kind of experiment depends on the FCC's new regulations. Hopefully, we will soon have many more opportunities to challenge cable carriers to carry more progressive networks, and to challenge existing cable news networks to carry more progressive programming. Liberal entrepreneurs interested in cable should stay on their toes for a potential opportunity to make money while making way for progressive voices on cable news.