Device lets you out-Fox your TV

Device lets you out-Fox your TV
March 26, 2005, By Emily Fredrix
The Associated Press

It's not that Sam Kimery objects to the views
expressed on Fox News Channel. The creator of
the "Fox Blocker" contends the network is not
news at all.

Kimery says he has sold about 100 of the little silver
bits of metal that screw into the back of most
televisions, allowing people to filter Fox News from
their sets. The Tulsa, Okla., resident also has
received thousands of e-mails, both angry and
complimentary, as well as a few death threats since
the device debuted in August.

"Apparently the making of terroristic threats against
those who don't share your views is a high art form
among a certain core audience," said Kimery, 45.

Formerly a registered Republican, even a precinct
captain, Kimery became an independent in the 1990s
when he said the state party stopped taking input
from everyday members.


Sam Kimery is the creator of the "Fox Blocker."
Kimery now contends Fox News' top-level management
dictates a conservative journalistic bias, that
inaccuracies never are retracted, and what airs is
more opinion than news.

"I might as well be reading tabloids out of the
grocery store," he said. "Anything to get a rise out
of the viewer and to reinforce certain retrograde
notions."

A Fox spokeswoman at the station's New York
headquarters said the channel's ratings speak for
themselves. For the first three months of this year,
Fox has averaged 1.62 million viewers in prime-time,
compared with CNN's 805,000, according to Nielsen
Media Research.

Kimery's motives go deeper than preventing people from
watching the channel, which he acknowledges can be
done without the Blocker. But he likens his device to
burning a draft card, a tangible example of
disagreement.

And he's taking this message to the network's
advertisers. After buying the $8.95 device online,
would-be blockers are shown a letter that they can
send to advertisers via the Fox Blocker site.

"The point is not to block the channel or block free
speech but to raise awareness," said Kimery, who works
in the high-tech industry.

Kimery doesn't use the device; he occasionally feels
the need to tune into Fox News for something
"especially heinous."

Business could pick up since the blocker was alluded
to in a recent episode of the ABC drama "Boston Legal."
The show's original script mentioned Fox News, but ABC
removed the references.

The boisterous conversations on Fox News may be why
the station is so popular, said Matthew Felling,
media director for the Center for Media and Public
Affairs, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media watchdog group.
And despite a perception that Fox leans to the right,
Felling said, that doesn't mean people who lean left
should tune out.

"It's tough to engage in an argument when you're not
participating in it," Felling said. "It's just one
more layer in the wall that the right and the left
are building in between each other."

Copyright C 2005 The Seattle Times Company