news corp

On January 9, we removed nearly 3 seasons of full episodes of ''It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.'' We did this at the request of the content owner. Despite Hulu's opinion and position on such content removals (which we share liberally with all of our content partners), these things do happen and will continue to happen on the Hulu service with regards to some television series. As power users of Hulu have seen, we've added a large amount of content to the library each month, and every once in a while we are required to remove some content as well.

Like most reddit fans of the show, hulu is how I heard of it. Now I'll have to wait for the season DVDs to come out and Netflix them. Or find some other way to watch the show.

In an analysis released last week, Pew reports that during a three month period (Dec. 13-March 13, 2008), only 2% of front page stories at the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal focused either on the environment or science/technology. The finding is troubling on a number of fronts.

First, the NY Times and the Wall Street Journal are the papers of record for the country. The stories that they run on the front page are typically the lead stories across other news organizations including public radio, weekly magazines, regional newspapers and TV and cable news. If our highest quality news outlets are not drawing audience attention to important news about science or the environment, you can bet other news organizations aren't either.

Second, as experts at news gathering, we rely on editors and journalists to guide our attention to what they consider to be the most important issues facing society. A vital governing function of the press is to sort through the complexities of the news stream and to alert citizens and policymakers to what's important in public affairs. As I have detailed in several studies, the leading news organizations both shape and reflect the policy agenda. Few decisions in Washington, DC are made that are not at least partially in reaction to news attention.

Sweetney blogger Tracey Gaughran-Perez and her husband were surprised to see a photo of their dog, Truman, appear in Fox's "Happy Holiday" ticker during a football game. According to Gaughran-Perez, someone from Fox yanked a photo (far left) of Truman in a Santa suit from her blog or Flickr stream, Photoshopped in a hat, and inserted the image (left) into their holiday promotion graphic rotation.

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I also had to endure the endless tape-loop of FOX's NFL copyright warnings, which seemed to repeat every five minutes or so. Hilariously enough, FOX Broadcasting and the NFL are apparently very, very concerned about legal rights to their telecasts and rebroadcasts of their telecasts. They're concerned about -- ho ho, it's rich -- PEOPLE STEALING THEIR SHIT. But as far as them stealing other people's shit goes? Errm, not so much.