to do us more harm than good in the long run. Despite his charisma and his stunningly good looks he wasn’t spotlight material, simply because he didn’t know when it was the right time for him to shut up. It was a nasty piece of work, but I eventually managed to convince him that it would be best to remove him from the TV screen. The first step in that direction was our acquisition of WTFU, the TV station from Huntsville that had originally aired The Vox . Like most of the stations we were on, WTFU was a small and reasonably, albeit not extremely, successful broadcaster catering for a small to medium sized market, and its buying price was relatively cheap. Mr Maddock initially rejected the idea of buying the station, like he initially rejected all ideas that weren’t his own, because he usually failed to see the bigger picture.
“Just think about it,” I said to him. “Right now you have two hours of airtime per week. You have two hours in a 168-hour week to get your message across, and you have absolutely no control over the remaining 166 hours. How can you compete with 166 hours of cheap and ludicrous programming that actively seeks to appeal to the lowest of human instincts? You’re a beautiful flower, but you’re surrounded by dirt and rocks. You can’t flourish in an environment like that. You can’t flourish in a wasteland. What you need is fertile soil, a mild climate, warm rain, and soft sunbeams. Imagine what you could do with 168 hours of programming every week. Imagine you could mould a whole TV station to fit your narrative.”
“I’d like that,” he said.
Of course he would. It was an idea that played directly into his vanity.
He took the bait. We bought WTFU for a handful of dollars, repackaged it, rebranded it to T-Vox, and the rest is history. A year later Mr Maddock made his last appearance as a TV preacher before he started concentrating on his new job as CEO of the newly formed Maddock Media Corporation.
Today MMC is present in media markets in over 120 countries. We own and operate hundreds of TV and radio stations and newspapers, and in recent years we’ve been increasingly active in the new media with our acquisitions of cellphone and Internet service providers. Our flagship brands are T-Vox for general programming, and our around-the-clock news channel MMC News24. We are often accused of pursuing an extremely ultra-conservative, right wing agenda. I won’t even deny that. What I will deny, however, is the notion that this is a bad thing per se. We are catering for a market that has existed long before us and that will always exist, and that market is huge.
There are very many people out there who, when they turn on the news, don’t want the world explained to them in a fair and balanced way. They want their existing worldview mollycoddled and comforted. They want their beliefs validated and vindicated. They want to hear what they think they already know.
The world can be a terribly terrifying place, and throughout history people have done horrendous things to other people at any given time. I can perfectly understand if some people would rather not hear about it. The average human mind is not equipped to deal with all the atrocities, the suffering, the injustice, and all the horrors that have been a part of our history from the very first day. It takes superhuman mental strength to look at the unvarnished truth about life, the universe, and everything without going insane. Most people simply do not possess that kind of strength, so how do you expect them to cope with reality?
Everyone has the right to view the world through a filter, a shield that protects them from having to deal with what they’re incapable of dealing with. Everyone has the right to protect whatever little amount of sanity they have left. Thomas Huxley once said that the greatest tragedy of science was the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact. That doesn’t just apply to science and scientists;
“Just think about it,” I said to him. “Right now you have two hours of airtime per week. You have two hours in a 168-hour week to get your message across, and you have absolutely no control over the remaining 166 hours. How can you compete with 166 hours of cheap and ludicrous programming that actively seeks to appeal to the lowest of human instincts? You’re a beautiful flower, but you’re surrounded by dirt and rocks. You can’t flourish in an environment like that. You can’t flourish in a wasteland. What you need is fertile soil, a mild climate, warm rain, and soft sunbeams. Imagine what you could do with 168 hours of programming every week. Imagine you could mould a whole TV station to fit your narrative.”
“I’d like that,” he said.
Of course he would. It was an idea that played directly into his vanity.
He took the bait. We bought WTFU for a handful of dollars, repackaged it, rebranded it to T-Vox, and the rest is history. A year later Mr Maddock made his last appearance as a TV preacher before he started concentrating on his new job as CEO of the newly formed Maddock Media Corporation.
Today MMC is present in media markets in over 120 countries. We own and operate hundreds of TV and radio stations and newspapers, and in recent years we’ve been increasingly active in the new media with our acquisitions of cellphone and Internet service providers. Our flagship brands are T-Vox for general programming, and our around-the-clock news channel MMC News24. We are often accused of pursuing an extremely ultra-conservative, right wing agenda. I won’t even deny that. What I will deny, however, is the notion that this is a bad thing per se. We are catering for a market that has existed long before us and that will always exist, and that market is huge.
There are very many people out there who, when they turn on the news, don’t want the world explained to them in a fair and balanced way. They want their existing worldview mollycoddled and comforted. They want their beliefs validated and vindicated. They want to hear what they think they already know.
The world can be a terribly terrifying place, and throughout history people have done horrendous things to other people at any given time. I can perfectly understand if some people would rather not hear about it. The average human mind is not equipped to deal with all the atrocities, the suffering, the injustice, and all the horrors that have been a part of our history from the very first day. It takes superhuman mental strength to look at the unvarnished truth about life, the universe, and everything without going insane. Most people simply do not possess that kind of strength, so how do you expect them to cope with reality?
Everyone has the right to view the world through a filter, a shield that protects them from having to deal with what they’re incapable of dealing with. Everyone has the right to protect whatever little amount of sanity they have left. Thomas Huxley once said that the greatest tragedy of science was the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact. That doesn’t just apply to science and scientists;
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