Until recently, American voters have headed into every weekend—when many of them finally have the time to research and contemplate issues facing our nation—only to confront what former Federal Communications Commission chairman Newton Minnow referred to as the “vast wasteland” of television.
63 years ago this month—in May 1961—Minnow suggested in a speech that Americans parking themselves in front of TV sets “…will see a procession of game shows, violence, audience-participation shows formula comedies about totally unbelievable families, blood and thunder, mayhem, violence, sadism, murder, Western bad men, Western good men, private eyes, gangsters, more violence and cartoons. And, endlessly, commercials - many screaming, cajoling, and offending. And most of all, boredom.”
While not referring specifically to news broadcasts, Minnow today would surely agree that what laughingly passes as “journalism” in America makes his vast wasteland of programming look like a symposium of rare art on display in the Louvre. Especially on weekends, when anchors, producers, and editors should be arrested for loitering rather than drawing paychecks.
Weekend “news” in America consists mostly of substandard local broadcasts focusing on various shootings, stabbings, college sports, and charity “fun-run events.” On the networks, broadcasts feature agenda-driven programs with shamefully biased hosts like MSNBC’s Jen Psaki (yes, that Jen Psaki, onetime worst White House press secretary …that is, until someone dredged up Karrine Jean-Pierre, the inept word-mangler whose Beetlejuice hair style and freakish clothing choices are only outdone by her utter dependence on a huge binder from which she reads her by-rote answers) and notorious race-baiter the Reverend Al Sharpton. Or former Bill Clinton helper George Stephanopoulos who revels in being a partisan Democrat questioning the “ethics” of former Trump Administration officials. Pot, meet kettle.
The only thing worse than these—and many other—Democrats who have passed through the revolving door into cushy jobs in “news” is the lazy way they all feed off each other on weekends. FACE THE NATION on CBS features video clips from MEET THE PRESS (once revered until another Democratic partisan Chuck Todd vaporized its final semblance of objectivity) while CNN recycles segments from other programs, all of which attack Republicans, Donald Trump, and the GOP agenda in Congress.
Until now.
Enter THIS WEEK ON THE HILL, a weekly 1-hour news broadcast created by the Salem Media Group. It is hosted by Family Research Council president Tony Perkins and features weekly updates by the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Mike Johnson (R-LA.) The program is taped at the end of each legislative week, and is released Saturday mornings—a full 24 hours prior to the agenda-driven Sunday shows—giving Mike Johnson an opportunity to take his Congressional agenda directly to the American people. TWOTH (full disclosure: I serve as Executive Producer of the program) gives Speaker Johnson the rare opportunity to take his message directly to Americans without being edited or run through the deflavorizer of media gatekeepers like the Associated Press.
(AP, it will surprise nobody, took a pass on any news story about the premiere of “THIS WEEK ON THE HILL”…executives suggesting “it is not our policy to promote new programs on other networks.” As if having the guy who is literally TWO HEARTBEATS AWAY FROM THE PRESIDENCY doing a weekly broadcast about issues in Congress somehow equates to Mark Cuban having a new season on "Shark Tank” or ABC launching a cheap ratings stunt like “The Golden Bachelor.”)
Despite the predictable lack of interest by “journalists,” Speaker Johnson has now honed his communication skills on four separate weekly episodes of THIS WEEK ON THE HILL.
On May 4th—for example—Johnson tackles the doomed motion-to-vacate his Speakership by Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene. (Earlier this week, Democrats in the House announced they will vote to “table”—a/k/a kill—Greene’s motion when she presents it next week. Johnson says Greene is contributing to the “circuslike atmosphere” on Capitol Hill and dryly observes “I rarely think of her or mention her name.”
Other issues the Speaker addresses this weekend include Congress banning China’s Tik-Tok app; possible foreign funding of violent, pro-Hamas demonstrators on American college campuses, and legislation to preserve AM Radio in new vehicles being manufactured by automakers (some Electric Car companies had proposed eliminating AM Radio, which would cripple talk radio, sports, weather bulletins and other essential and entertaining programming Americans count of AM Radio to supply.)
In a logical and—don’t laugh—intelligent media world, THIS WEEK ON THE HILL would set the agenda for the weekend on other networks, as “correspondents” and their guests reacted to Speaker Johnson directly addressing the American people over their heads each Saturday on four separate platforms: the Salem Radio Network, Salem News Channel, the Salem Podcast Network and TOWNHALL.com.
But to the mainstream media, Speaker Mike Johnson and his weekly program are like the man upon the stair in poetry:
Yesterday upon the stair,
I saw a man who wasn’t there.
He wasn’t there again today,
I wish I wish he’d go away…
Unfortunately for the Associated Press, MSNBC, and other left-leaning media gatekeepers THIS WEEK ON THE HILL is not going away. In fact, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.
Tom Tradup is V.P./News & Talk Programming for Dallas-based Salem Radio Network and serves as Executive Director of THIS WEEK ON THE HILL.