In Kissimmee, FL, the Democratic Sheriff, and the ONLY Hispanic Sheriff in Florida, was arrested for being part of a gambling ring that operated two machine-based "casinos" in the Orlando area. They showed them on TV, with giant windows allowing a clear view of banks of colorful lighted machines, in full view of the main road through town. They also openly posted videos on Instagram. They even had all the proper corporate documentation properly filed with the state and local governments, as well as their lawyers' documentation. They didn't try to hide it at all. It seems pretty obvious that they THOUGHT their business was legal.

And yet, I watched the local news channel that "broke" the story, and was selling it hard so they'd get viewership credibility, clutching their pearls in gasping tones, about the horror of this "massive $20 million dollar a year gambling operation!"

And then they cut to a commercial...

An ad for the Hard Rock's MULTI-BILLION DOLLAR gambling operation, 45 minutes up the road.

But at least DeSantis got rid of the Hispanic Sheriff in the last Democratic stronghold in Florida, and replaced him with his hand-picked guy with years of immigration enforcement experience.

Arrrrrr!

holy fucking shit.. every day I get older the more I agree with Stallman on most everything

I've started to read instead of drinking from the content tap of TVs. Been much happier!

Mike 'The Prophet' Judge

I expect that not only will the current FCC decline to do anything about this, the complaint may have given Trump a new business idea.

Let's just cut the shit and admit that over-the-air broadcast television is effectively dead.

This is why Net Neutrality mattered, because the future isn't in old tech (radio broadcast) being consumed by DRM in desperate plays to stay relevant and/or profitable.

The future was always in things like YouTube, Netflix, and other online content delivery services. Which is why strict regulation of Net Neutrality and strict regulation of such services was and continues to be so important.

No, the infrastructure isn't "open" like broadcast airwaves, which technically anyone with a license and equipment can jump into using, whereas internet infrastructure is all privately owned wired networking. The fact that it is different isn't an excuse for any and all governments to have just effectively given up on regulation of those spaces when they're where the media-consuming public happen to be. That's why we needed legislation of these things instead of a back and forth wankery of the FCC changing how the internet is classified over and over again in between warring political factions.

I can almost guarantee you that nobody under the age of 30 gives a singly flying fuck about having an antenna on a television. They're probably watching more than half their media on their phone or tablet anyway.

The real reason that this kind of change is happening to over-the-air broadcasting is because it doesn't have enough viewers, and by extension, enough advertising, to sustain it as a model anymore.

I think the loss of over-the-air programming isn't the best thing, but I also think it's stupid to keep holding on to this idea like it matters very much in 2026 where if you asked a kid in their twenties if they even knew what an antenna for a television was they'd probably go "what the fuck are you even talking about?"

But I mean we can't even regulate shit like paid political speech online needing to say that it is paid political speech, so fat chance of any useful legislation coming anytime soon. US government in particular has been broken as fuck for three decades.

You know, for kids!