• by Barry Friedman , Op-Ed Contributor, August 15, 2008

Surrounded by oxygen tanks, nurses, and homemade frozen Ensure popsicles, my father-in-law lies in bed these days. Before, though, when the pulmonary fibrosis was just an annoyance, he used to sit, along with his wife, in the living room, watching FOX News -- like Archie and Edith, but she in the better chair.

 Damon and Elena would watch all day. All day.

They might switch away for a sporting event involving their beloved University of Oklahoma; otherwise, Murdoch had them.

They loved it, but they didn't like it: Shepard Smith ("too soft"); Bill O'Reilly ("too hard"); Dick Morris ("too untrustworthy"); all the blondes ("too trashy").

"Would you look at that!?" asked Elena on more than one occasion, pointing to two low-cut dresses and four well-defined calves and thighs on the 48" Samsung HD. "I call this 'The Legs and Cleavage' Channel.' I've written letters."

She never sent them.

Still, like many of its soldiers, they saw FOX News as not only the antidote to the liberal media, but the stick with which to clobber it.

"Fair and Balanced," Damon would say, smiling, because he knew it bothered me.

"Yeah, I know. We report. You decide."

I reminded him of the story (probably apocryphal) of Bloomingdale's chief Marvin Traub telling Rupert Murdoch that he wouldn't advertise in the New York Post, "Because, Rupert, your readers are our shoplifters."

Damon chuckled. Liberals are so anecdotal.

He didn't just watch FOX News; he defended it.

Not anymore, though. He's had it -- not with the network so much, as with news itself. He doesn't have the strength to assign blame for all the housing foreclosures, explain the changing electoral map, or care about John Edwards' girlfriend. Television is now a palliative -- Olympics and Golf on the bedroom's 19" Magnavox. During the recent PGA Championship, though, he turned his back to the screen.

"Don't you want to watch?" asked Elena, thinking he was in pain.

"Tell her," he whispered to me.

"Sergio's doing well," I say. "Damon can't stand it."

And while he doesn't like Woods, either, he thinks the PGA or the networks should issue advertisers a rebate now that it's a Tiger-free season.

His instincts are right. According to CBS, this year's PGA Championship numbers from the final round were down 55% from last year's event.

The new television paradigm: we're all programmers, news directors, and media buyers now.

And still... viewers. During that Visa commercial featuring Olympian Derrick Redmond pulling up lame during an Olympic race in 1992, and finishing the race with the help of his father, Damon and I were on opposite sides of the bedroom, the television between us.

He watched. And I watched. He watched me. And I watched him. And we watched each other watching.

A father. A son. But not father and son.

Market share.