Search by name, company, title, location, etc.

Barry Friedman

Member since August 2013Contact Barry

Articles by Barry All articles by Barry

  • Belly-Busting Advertising -- Literally in TV Watch on 07/08/2022

    The fast-food industry spent approximately $4.5 billion on TV ads in 2019 telling us where to go. That figure is approximately what Americans spent actually eating fast food 50 years ago.

  • Crude TV in TV Watch on 07/07/2022

    The oil and gas industry has spent more than $3.6 billion in the last 30 years trying to gussy up its image on TV. Sixty percent of Americans already blame the oil and gas industry for global warming, according to "The Guardian."

  • What Would Jesus Watch? in TV Watch on 07/06/2022

    Since the first nationally televised religious broadcast in 1949, evangelists have aimed their messages, usually as sermons, at uber-religious TV audiences. Now the messenger isn't an evangelist -- but rather a politician.

  • Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down in TV Watch on 07/05/2022

    As of March, "Face the Nation," "Meet the Press" and "This Week" are all averaging 3 to 3.5 million viewers and have been for years, regardless of who is booked.

  • Reporter's Notebook: Trump On Tulsa Time in MediaDailyNews on 06/22/2020

    The marketing disaster of President Donald Trump's first post-COVID-19 event was still reverberating Sunday morning. It had failed every metric -- messaging, tone, excitement, pretty pictures -- exposing both the arrogance and incompetence of a campaign that has little room for error. If you're choreographing Trump 2020, and you can't make it in Oklahoma, you can't make it anywhere. Worse, from the governor of the state to the mayor of the host city to those who wanted to celebrate the end of slavery, to the souls of those who have been haunting the area around the arena for a century, nobody won Saturday night.

  • Let's Go Numb in Media Magazine on 04/16/2013

    The reality landscape is turning inward, a world within a world. TV reality producer Mark Burnett told "Esquire" he hates the term "reality television" and prefers "non-fiction programming." These shows -- even the best of them -- aren't reality. In the AAA ball of cable television, they are awkwardly choreographed worlds of manufactured tension, interspersed with soundtracks and cityscapes.

  • When TV Works ... in TV Watch on 08/15/2008

    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....

  • Have You Hugged Your Oil Company Today?  in TV Watch on 06/30/2008

    Here in Oklahoma, we have the OERB, the Oklahoma Energy Relations Board Its slogan -- the rather robust "Advancing our state. Empowering our nation" -- is part of its television campaign, where a spokesman talks of how the organization has gone into small Oklahoma towns, like Kingfisher, and cleaned up abandoned oil wells and drilling equipment. These spots show precious kids playing and seniors walking on land previously only inhabitable by EPA inspectors and lawyers who file class-action lawsuits. The message: without OERB, seniors and kids would be playing and walking in HAZMAT suits. Fair enough and the industry is doing work that should have been done years ago, but the spots are enough to give you diabetes.

  • Thank You, Good Night  in TV Watch on 06/26/2008

    After Rob Reiner directed "A Few Good Men," he was asked if he thought the country would now view him differently. Reiner replied, "Even if I do Hamlet, the reviews would read, 'Meathead does Shakespeare.'" George Carlin, who died Sunday, will first and foremost be remembered for the "Seven Words You Can Never Say On Television," which is also unfortunate, for his career was more than a benchmark for FCC fines, Janet Jackson and "Nipplegate," and nostalgic debates over dirty words.

  • Russert Redux, Part II in TV Watch on 06/23/2008

    The criticism of the coverage of Tim Russert's death was immediate and almost universally negative. From the Orlando Sentinel to The New York Times to Slate, the media was blasted for what TV Newser called " ... an orgy of mourning."

About Edit

You haven't told us anything about yourself! Surely you've got something to say. Tell us a little something.