The Launch of the Tea Party TV Channel
Comcast and Kelsey Grammer are is among the big names backing RightNetwork, a new network that "focuses on entertainment with Pro-America, Pro-Business, Pro-Military sensibilities." They've even been embedded with the Tea Party in preparation for a launch this summer.
The trailers and launch materials, all sans-serif fonts and white space, manage to pack in many glib puns like "all that's Right with the world," and "there's wrong, and there's right." Grammer adds, in this PDF, that the network — which will launch with on-demand channels from Comcast, a website and mobile apps — will provide "a perspective we don't generally get from the media."
To air that long-suppressed perspective, they've spent some time with the Tea Party express. The following is not, apparently, satire. Right Network, says the host as part of a victimhood-reinforcing speech, is "for people who break their backs paying more than their fair share of taxes," more specifically those "that live in what they call flyover country and what we call America."
Recent reports say that Kelsey Grammer has (or had) homes in Malibu, California and Bridgehampton, New York. He's also been hunting for an apartment in Manhattan.
(Via Paul Krugman: "The nation's interior is supposedly a place of rugged individualists, unlike the spongers and whiners along the coasts. In reality, of course, rural states are heavily subsidized by urban states. New Jersey pays about $1.50 in federal taxes for every dollar it gets in return; Montana receives about $1.75 in federal spending for every dollar it pays in taxes.")
UPDATE: Comcast tell the New York Times' Brian Stelter that they are not affiliated with RightNetwork. A spokesperson for Comcast emailed us this statement:
The blog reports that Comcast is an investor in, or partner of the Right Network are inaccurate. We have no partnership with this venture and have no plans to launch or distribute the network. As we have done with hundreds of other content providers, we have met with the network's representatives. We do carry a number of independent networks on Comcast representing a wide variety of interests and diverse viewpoints.
Edward Snider chairman of the company's sports and venues division, is a personal investor in the project.