Out Foxed?

There was plenty of discussion yesterday in the noise breaks between the waves of traffic. One fellow protester, Penny, was showing off her new car. Somehow the topic got onto Fox"News".

We all know how many televisions in public places are tuned to their channel. We've heard that Fox pays for their channel to be broadcast, and that channels are impossible - or at least greatly difficult - to change. Maybe there's a fix for that. When Penny walked into the 1st car dealership fully intent on buying one of their new models, she was directed to wait for an available salesman in a room with Fox on its TV. After inquiring whether the TV could be changed and getting a negative response, she walked out and over to a competing brand's sales room and drove off in their new car!

By the way, that dealership's TV was tuned to the Home & Garden network.

I've been noticing some changes lately. My cardiologist used to have Fox on its waiting room TV. Now it shows CBS. As Penny asked yesterday, would it even be possible to get an accurate blood pressure reading from anybody after 20 minutes of Fox, regardless of which political side you're on?

Penny also has an ailing husband in a care facility, whom she visits daily. The TVs in the facility are set to turn on to Fox, no matter where the set was tuned to when it shut off. The staff there are aware, and very helpful at showing visitors that they need to point the remote at the plug in the wall instead of the TV to have any control over the TV whatsoever, even as simple as turning it on and off. Of course, many of the residents at the care facility are infrequently capable of pointing a remote at anything, much less at some tiny wall outlet they might not even see.

I offered her the services of my son, should they be desired, to at least go and see if the main router can be de-programmed from the Fox start-up. There's got to be some default setting more soothing for the patients, right? Almost anything else should do. Maybe a trip down memory lane watching old westerns like Gunsmoke? Animal Planet? The Weather Channel? Somebody's old family vacation slideshow? Anything at all?