So ITTL, Ted Turner, who of course owns CNN, also owns CBS, so I'm thinking about what a joint CBS-CNN news operation - which I'm nicknaming "Columbia News" after the (eventual) name of the parent company for Turner's media holdings - might look like by the 1990s:
The two "Columbia News" brands...
possible excerpt from a netlog (OTL blog) post about daytime network television ITTL:
In the Spring of 1986, Ted Turner's CBS bought Merv Griffith Enterprises, and with it two of America's most popular game shows in Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy. At the time, Wheel of Fortune had two versions...
Sears becomes the first major retailer to offer online shopping starting in the mid-1990s, basically bringing their long-standing mail order catalog to the Internet. With their prestige in retail, a wide variety of products available, plus their large chain of nationwide stores doubling as...
I’m not even an anime fan and I’m furious at this stupid and arbitrary rule for their exports
They really believed that “We’re too good to be confined to home video/DVD” despite knowing anime was (and, outside of a select few shows/franchises, still is to an extent) a niche product in the West...
About 5 years ago a anonymous, disgruntled ex-Channel Awesome employee compiled and released a massive Google Doc describing in detail multiple serious allegations of employee mistreatment and sexual misconduct by both management and content creators at the platform.
After the bombshell expose...
Alternately once web browsing cookies become a thing, a cookie tracks all your activity online and sends it back to some bureaucrat somewhere who reviews everything as mentioned above
My theory on why social media doesn’t really take off ITTL is that the U.S. (and possibly other major countries), still fully embracing both their “protect the kids by any means necessary” and War on Terror attitudes, put in place a bunch of checks on the then-upstart social media industry...
Not to mention I can easily see all the restrictive laws currently being proposed and passed IOTL as part of the conservative backlash to LGBTQ rights (“bathroom bills”, gender-affirming care bans, “Don’t Say Gay” in schools, schools forced to out suspected queer students to their parents, etc.)...
And assuming technology advances at the same rate it did IOTL, such efforts are likely to coincide with the rise of major social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube in the late 2000s and early 2010s, likely amplifying many of the problems with political/social radicalization...
What about the potential fallout on society of having a bunch of young adults who already have serious criminal records thanks to all the overzealous enforcement and prosecution of school misbehavior?
American society tends to look down very heavily on those with (felony) criminal records, so...
Thank you @Geekhis Khan for this incredible work. This is truly one of this site's Gold Standards of pop culture TLs. I wish you all the best in whatever you do next.
Given the current writers' strike in Hollywood, I thought about what could happen if the 2007-2008 writers' strike lasted significantly longer ITTL (let's say 6 months instead of OTL's 3 months),
For starters, the major broadcast and cable networks would likely consider the 2007-2008 TV season...
Baseball was in a rough patch with regards to broadcast rights by the mid 1990s due to some bad/poorly executed deals, so if either UPN or the WB were aggressive enough and (importantly, IMO) promised MLB a Primetime Game of the Week (similar to Monday Night Football for the NFL), they could...