The BRAD BLOG : Occupying the Rose Parade's TV Audience With Anything but Occupy Wall Street Marchers

The BRAD BLOG : Occupying the Rose Parade's TV Audience With Anything but Occupy Wall Street Marchers

The parade would be covered on not one, but two local TV stations. NBC 4 would carry the live network feed hosted by Al Roker and Shaun Robinson, while the local KTLA 5 station (owned by the rightwing Tribune Media) would feature Bob Eubanks and Stephanie Edwards in their 30th year of parade coverage.

Today's parade was "crafted to help you dream about things you can imagine," Eubanks helpfully opened with to his TV audience. The parade's theme float, "'Just Imagine' sponsored by Wells Fargo" kicked things off, followed by a flyover of a U.S. Air Force B2 Stealth Bomber and then the U.S. Marine Corp color guard on horses followed by their marching band and a jaunty rendition of the Marines' Hymn.

The corporate banks and military industrial complex received premiere TV coverage right off the bat, prominently featured at the top of both corporate network and local television broadcasts.

...As they'd been granted a permit to march in the parade, after the last "official" float, of course, "after the real event was over", as the Tribune-owned Los Angeles Times sniffed in their coverage today, Occupy Wall Street demonstrators had worked for days on their signs and their Occupy Octopus float, described by LA Weekly on Friday as "70 Feet of Awesome", and a huge float made to look like the preamble of U.S. Constitution float with the words "We the People" on it. Another 250-foot mock-up of the same preamble led with "We the Corporation".

Nobody watching the corporate television coverage in Los Angeles or across the nation would be allowed to see the mock-ups of the U.S. Constitution, or decide for themselves how "awesome" the Occupy Octopus was.

The corporate media apparently owns the parades too. We're lucky they let us live here.