Lately, I’ve been staying up late, burning the midnight oil and watching Fox News.
Tonight, I stumbled upon the most achingly insufferable show: Red Eye With Greg Gutfeld.
Like the Chicago Tribune‘s spin-off of the same name, it appears to be a half-hearted, schlocky attempt to condense Fox News’ “fair and balanced” journalistic style into easy-to-swallow news bites, stylized and sensationalized for a younger audience. I mean, just look at the edgy font! And the host– he has one of those “blogs” the kids are so fond of reading these days.
Alright already, I get it– Fox News is trying to garner a younger audience.
And there’s the genius of Rupert Murdoch: Young conservatives are an audience that is largely ignored. And they’re captive. The American Conservative movement has historically been rooted firmly in that good old standby, family values. Traditionally, colleges and universities have been bursting at the seams with tree-hugging, hippie liberals, rising against authority and demanding to be heard by their parents’ generation. But in the past eight years, America has experienced a revolutionary paradigm shift unlike any others we’ve seen in recent history. Younger generations are jumping on the conservative bandwagon, I suspect, largely because of the emergence of the new Religious Right, along with the steady incline of Neocons we’ve been seeing since the 80s, through the 90s, and climbing right on past the implementation of the Bush Doctrine in 2002. College Republicans are garnering more campus visibility with “awareness-raising activities” such as Catch an Illegal Immigrant Day and Affirmative Action Bake Sales. It should follow logically that their increased visibility would lead to media courtship.
But the folks at Camp Murdoch seem to be the only ones who have caught on to this emerging demographic.
While the rest of the media is busy capitalizing on recent trends and reminding us that green is, indeed, universal, Fox is working on painting the town Red.
