{"id":6023,"date":"2009-08-07T18:44:05","date_gmt":"2009-08-07T18:44:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/gregladen\/2009\/08\/07\/an-open-letter-to-msnbc\/"},"modified":"2009-08-07T18:44:05","modified_gmt":"2009-08-07T18:44:05","slug":"an-open-letter-to-msnbc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/2009\/08\/07\/an-open-letter-to-msnbc\/","title":{"rendered":"An Open Letter to MSNBC"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Dear MSNBC Viewer Services,<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;<br \/>\n<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>I normally watch MSNBC.  I&#8217;m a writer and blogger, so I often have MSNBC on for a few hours during the day as I write, so I can pick up on the latest news.  I love Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann, and I often watch Hardball.<\/p>\n<p>But, I&#8217;ve got to tell you this:  Every time one of those &#8220;free credit report dot com&#8221; ads comes on, I turn you off.  Click.  MSNBC goes off for at least an hour or so, often until evening or maybe for the entire day.  I think I don&#8217;t often notice the ads if I&#8217;m in the other room or something, but man, they are very very obnoxious ads and when I do notice them it is a very unpleasant experience.<\/p>\n<p>These ads are discordant, loud, in your face, stupid, designed to annoy and good at it.  If being annoying was illegal, Free Credit Reports Dot Com would be a lifer in San Quentin.<\/p>\n<p>I hope other people feel the same way and I hope all the other people <a href=\"mailto:viewerservices@msnbc.com\">write you a letter using your handy email address telling you the same thing<\/a>. Free Credit Reports Dot Com is not selling much product with ads that make us want to turn off the TV, and your other advertisers are losing because, well, we turned off the TV and can&#8217;t see them.<\/p>\n<p>Sitting happily near turned-off TV,<\/p>\n<p>Greg Laden<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dear MSNBC Viewer Services, &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[5020],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5fhV1-1z9","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6023"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6023"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6023\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}