Welcome to Kabletown, Population: Irony (Sort of)

If you've been watching 30 Rock this season, you might be familiar with Kabletown, the fictional media company that is in the process of purchasing NBC on the show. If you've been paying attention to media news recently, you might be familiar with Comcast, the real media company that is in the process of purchasing NBC in real life. Art imitates life! Even when life is in a Brave New World state controlled by media monopolies! In an added twist, NBC has launched a Kabletown website that contains some jokes that are so over-the-top they would be hilarious, if they weren't describing a dismal media future that is all too imminent for NBC/Comcast. Looks like a fake website is covering a real merger in a more effective way than most news outlets. Thanks, Tina Fey?

From Josh Stearns of Stop Big Media:

The [Kabletown] site exhibits classic “30 Rock” satire, but what is haunting is how close the biting humor comes to the real world. For example, in a nod to the anti-competitive nature of this deal, the site proclaims, “We at Kabletown know that the landscape of television is changing. Our goal is to evolve and adapt along with it, offering new ways for our customers to get their content. This acquisition will give Kabletown customers access to NBC content, plus content from the network’s cable properties.” Obviously, lacking here is content from any competitors.

Kabletown may be a funny joke about an NBC takeover, but our mass media reality is a lot less hilarious. Still, it's nice to see that when news organizations like MSNBC are choosing to gloss over what could be the largest media merger in history, we can always count on a sitcom to give it to us straight. Kind of.