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Comment by natesm | Hacker News Reader

The TV studios are all behind SOPA as well, so canceling cable in general isn't a bad idea. As a side benefit you no longer have to watch TV. :)

Maybe that's a "young person thing" though. My parents watch a decent amount of TV, the only channel that appeals to me out of the hundreds that they get[1] is Comedy Central... for one hour a day. After going to college and being without TV, I really have no stomach for commercial breaks anymore.

[1] not actually sure about this, Comedy Central is 600-something, I guess they might not all be used though. Still probably hundreds.

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I didn't even think of TV. I don't have a TV. Comcast provides my Internet and there isn't an alternative in my area (besides dialup). My parents have FiOS. I wish it were available to me. How do you get your Internet?

Comedy Central is owned by Viacom.

You shouldn't support The Daily Show or Colbert, either. What those programs usually do is omit or distort key facts that make their victims seem hypocritical or otherwise unreasonable and then mock them for it. Much less funny and I got tired of having to worry about whether my opinion about some situation was based only on some misunderstanding I'd received from those shows. Given how sanctimonious Stewart is when it comes to lampooning the media, I have a hard time not concluding that he's an asshole.

Edit: Sorry guys, you're right. Stewart/Colbert 2012! Morons...

Well, I'm glad you see the method of comedy news shows; though I'm sorry you don't see the point of comedy news shows.

Or, maybe I misunderstand you, in which case, happy trolling. Try harder :)

I don't understand the comedy shows presenting themselves as news. Watch Colbert and then watch, say, PBS News Hour. (Actually it's been a year or more since I've seen either.)

Part of me suspects that Colbert turns off some of the same higher functions of the brain that O'Reilly does.

Then you're just not getting the joke. They are comedy shows that mock cable news shows. Stewart and Colbert are very clear that they aren't news. Try watching Fox News for an hour and compare that to the PBS News Hour... then you'll get the joke.

They are sometimes clear. As long as its still funny with that clear.

As if PBS News Hour is somehow the standard of impartial journalism....

I didn't say it was impartial, but that it's categorically different in some interesting way.

From what hear, the S&C are the primary source of "news" for a lot of the younger crowd.

The Daily Show is much worse than other comedy news shows. The tradition Carson/Leno/Letterman format is to present the News story and then say something funny about it. The daily show formula is to misrepresent the facts in a manner that makes them amenable to mocking the intended victim. To the point that most bits aren't very funny if you know the real backstory.

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