Plan B Forum

The caregiver who relieves me called out sick, so I’m on day 3 with my elderly lady client and reaching my threshold of tolerance for toxic FOX news - so while she was in the bathroom this morning (10am) I changed the channel to MSNBC.

She just noticed at 6pm.

She must only really pay attention to the evening shows...

Which (along with Fox and Friends in the morning) is the most Trump TV part of the FOX line up...

It is interesting that so many in their 80s and older were raised without television but have the thing on at full volume all day and night. Kind of like 50-somethings who can't get their nose out of their pocket-sized computers.

Long Run wrote:It is interesting that so many in their 80s and older were raised without television but have the thing on at full volume all day and night. Kind of like 50-somethings who can't get their nose out of their pocket-sized computers.

It's not too difficult to figure out.   She's the modern-day version of Mildred Montag (the fireman's wife) in Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451".

Many of these older people, like BSG's lady, live alone.  Nobody comes around; they've outlived most if not all of their old friends, there's no one to talk to or interact with (BSG notwithstanding); the TV is their sole companion so yeah, it's on all day — for background noise to drive away the loneliness if nothing else.  I saw it happening, to a lesser degree, to my own mother too; she had age-related macular degeneration and couldn't see the images on the screen clearly.  Instead of the all-day 'news' or weather channels, her thing was reruns of older TV shows — Golden Girls, M*A*S*H, Cheers, The Waltons — whose characters she could recognize by voice.

-"BB"-

Exactly; my client likes the TV on to lessen her anxiety - I've told her that FOX News isn't a good choice for this, and I'm beginning to whittle away at her addiction. When we're sitting playing gin for an hour or so at a time, she's agreed to either turn it off or let me tune in TCM, and she's enjoyed the old movies from her younger years. The other day when she figured out it was MSNBC, she left it on and watched the evening lineup for a while until we shut it off for PBS's Victoria that we'd recorded the evening before.

Two things I've noticed about FOX in my recent forced viewing; they consistently use loud urgent voices far more than any of the other news networks. I has to be a network policy, it can't be that it just happens every one of their anchors and guests is loudspoken. On MSNBC I usually have to lower the volume on Chris Matthews and Chris Hayes and the woman who comes on in the morning after Morning Joe (sorry I don't know her name, I don't watch her much because she is, sadly, shrill), but the rest of the anchors speak at normal volume/tone. FOX anchors are almost universally loudspoken/shrill.

Additionally, the FOX News makeup artist is terrible. Everyone is over made up, but especially the women, who all look like they're heading out to a night walking the Combat Zone (yes, I know it's gone). Many of the female anchors and regular contributor pundits are made up with FALSE EYELASHES! that are ridiculously overdone - like what you'd wear on stage to look good for an audience that sits many feet away, not what you should wear to be on people's large screen HD TVs. It's really gross, and it insults me as a woman to see them cake on the makeup on the female contributors and anchors like that. Also, lots of v-necks and cleavage.

FOX is clearly NOT about responsible news at all; it's about stoking fear and erections at the same time.

BoSoxGal wrote:FOX is clearly NOT about responsible news at all; it's about stoking fear and erections at the same time.

Thought 1: I didn't think those two things went together?

Thought 2: Given the average age of their viewers, I'm betying they're a lot more successful with one rather than the other.

Maybe they're just tapping into the memory of erections?

FOX anchors are almost universally loudspoken/shrill.

You may have hit on the reason why so many elderly, hard-of-hearing folks prefer Fox.