FOX To Host New Cosmos 206
twocows writes "FOX is set to make a new season of Carl Sagan's 'Cosmos: A Personal Voyage,' hosted by Neil Degrasse Tyson and written by none other than Ann Druyan (Carl Sagan's widow). Let's hope they don't screw it up like every other good show they've aired in the past decade."
How long? (Score:2, Insightful)
How long will it survive the flood of complaint calls about forcing evolution into peoples houses?
We just have to trust NDT (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How long? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:10 - No! (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, then I suppose my spouse must have been a lucky man, since we watched every episode together, purchased and read the book, and sought out Sagan's various works of science fiction. Our children were a little young to have benefitted from the original airing of the series, and I don't recall whether they ever saw it in reruns. But both of them read and enjoyed our small collection of books by Sagan. And I'd have to assert that we weren't the only young couple watching and enjoying the series together.
Sagan was a confirmed atheist, and there's no way I can see that Fox will be able to do an honest job of this. I hope Ann Druyan is maintaining some sort of control.
As for me, my husband died last month. I take a great deal of comfort in Sagan's assertion, which I can still hear clearly in my memory, that "we are made of star-stuff."
ITS FOX not FOX NEWS (Score:5, Insightful)
Fox != Fox News (Score:4, Insightful)
Fox is not Fox News channel. Knee-jerk anyone? BTW, Fox News channel exists because people want to fucking hear what they say. Love it or hate it, you have to share the planet with people that watch it and enjoy it too.
Carl Sagan's Cosmos is a great show and I'm sure any attempt to recreate some of that brand of awesome will be commendable. You know, Carl Sagan wrote in his book "The Demon-Haunted World" that people shouldn't be silenced just because you don't agree with them. Use reason, not emotion. We are all humans, let's start to prove it.
Re:We just have to trust NDT (Score:5, Insightful)
Probably like most people here, my initial reaction was to wonder why the hell an organization that hates science and rational thought is hosting Cosmos, and more importantly, whether they'll turn it into a soapbox for god-knows-what. If Neil Degrasse Tyson is on board though, I'm a little less worried. That man doesn't take any bullshit, and if Fox tries to muscle him into anything, he's going to walk away. That can be your canary in the coal mine to see if the show is worth watching.
Like someone else mentioned, the Fox that airs Family Guy, The Simpsons and formerly Married with Children is not the same as FoxNews that airs Bill O'reilly, Sean Hannity and formerly Glenn Beck. I guess it's true that ignorance is the base bigotry. The sad part is, you don't even know who to hate.
You are like General Custer hating Gandhi because he was an Indian.
Re:How long? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Fox != Fox News (Score:3, Insightful)
I know you cannot rationalize this.... but I am a huge Carl Sagan -Cosmos fan and a Fox News Fan.
I get plenty of left wing media from traditional sources.... Fox gives us diversity.
I can be conservative and agnostic, love science and fiscal responsibility and capitalism.
Glad to hear it will be on fox (Score:4, Insightful)
If it was on PBS, I'd be worried that it would be biased.....
I give up even trying to watch charlie rose on pbs these days....... whenever reporters are brought in to discuss current events, there are always 2 from the editorial wing of the new york times, and 3 from other left leaning news outlets and the conversation always goes around to complaining about tea partiers.
I used to watch frontline, newshour, and other shows on pbs and the BBC....haven't been able to for the last 10 years, especially as even the science shows are no longer willing to consider all sides of an argument, and the bias is as much in what issues are covered as in the content and who they consult as experts. Pretty much ever since gore lost the election, and the AP decided that that fair fact based reporting wasn't informing voters properly, the closest I've found to fair reporting is the wall street journal (assuming you skip the editorial pages) and focus just on the news.
Fox also isn't that bad in the sense that they actually are open about their biases.....CNN/etc not so much.
Re:How long? Settle down there... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Fox != Fox News (Score:3, Insightful)
This is not correct, and Sagan would not agree. Sagan spent his whole life trying to fight the forces of superstition and disinformation. In recent years, Fox News has caused "Fair and Balanced" to come to mean bowing to treat conservative viewpoints as equal even when their arguments can be proved factually wrong. Sagan not only wouldn't have approved of Fox News, but many people would be surprised as he would likely be very terse on that issue. We do not need to sugar coat the truth. Fox News is an Orwellian attempt to control public discourse, it is not a fair and balanced viewpoint. Sagan would have had much stronger words than this.
Re:Fox != Fox News (Score:2, Insightful)
I think the concern is less about politics and more about dumbing it down, fucking it up, or cancelling it. Have you seen network television lately?
MacFarlane talks about that aspect of Fox (Score:4, Insightful)
On one of the Family Guy DVD extras, he answers a fan question about the politics of the show and Fox. He explains that Fox Broadcasting and Fox News are run very separate, and that Fox in total is a massive company. So massive that he, one of their rather big name creators, has never met Murdoch. He said that in the entertainment division, what they care about is people watching a show. If the show gets viewers and sells ads, that's all that matters there are not concerns with the political content.
Makes sense too. Fox News is what it is because people want to hear that narrative. They have to maintain their slant because that is precisely why they have the viewers they do. They have people who desire to hear that and (sometimes I think even more) people who listen to make themselves angry at what "the other guy" is saying. So they do it for ratings.
Well their entertainment branch, the regular Fox stations, are the same, except they don't have a narrative because it is entertainment. They want to give people what they want, which for the entertainment side is often very different. It is a different set of viewers for different programs.
Hence they are fine with MacFarlane. His show brings in viewers, probably not the same ones as Fox News but that doesn't matter. Even better for that matter, the Fox News viewers can watch that while the Family guy viewers watch that and Fox gets more money.
Re:We just have to trust NDT (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:We just have to trust NDT (Score:2, Insightful)
I think the original argument stands. Politics aside, FOX is still the network responsible for hack documentaries such as "Alien Autopsies" and that moon landing hoax nonsense which was bad enough to compelled NASA to issue a public statement to the contrary. I find it very unlikely that NDT will see eye to eye with the network executives on this endeavor and will leave the project screaming bloody murder sooner rather than later.
Re:How long? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, NDT will be good. He's an ass kicker. He'd probably quickly point out that they Martian temp rise has been attributed to a slight increase in radiation (sunlight) on a mostly CO2 atmosphere (heat trapping) that has led to a great increase in dust clouds (making the atmosphere denser and more heat absorbing) and at the same time the soil left behind after the dust is kicked up is darker, which means that it's also more heat absorbing. So the mechanism is entirely different. The minor increase in solar radiation just wouldn't have that effect on the Earth — not without massive deforestation and a huge outpouring of CO2 (even more massive than what we've done already).
No, how Fox will screw this up is by ordering 13 episodes, airing them out of order (so that ape-like creatures evolve from liberals, perhaps) and then only airing about eight or so before canceling the series. But then it has the rights and no one else can show them.
Or beams, maybe. (Score:4, Insightful)
If you ask me, I think it's rays.
The same rays that has guys hating Transformers and loving Little Ponies.
Fire the orbital friendship cannon! Set weapons to "tolerate!"