Gag alert! Rupert Murdoch - phone hacking scandal, and lowbrow, conservative divisiveness and all - was inducted into the Television Academy Hall Of Fame this week. On his 83^rd birthday.

Brian Lowry at Variety has a an interesting take. He acknowledges the, uh, contributions Murdoch has made to the industry via a “footprint” “simply too overwhelming to ignore.” But Lowry also notes the damage Murdoch has wrought along the way, comparing him to baseball Hall of Fame rejects:

In some respects Murdoch’s approach to programming and deal-making has at times felt like TV on steroids, exemplifying a win-at-all-costs attitude, throwing on provocative concepts and sorting out the damage later. For every “The Simpsons,” “24” or “American Idol,” there’s been a “How to Marry a Multimillionaire,” “Temptation Island” or “When Animals Attack,” which at the time prompted then-NBC chief Don Ohlmeyer to deride such fare as being “one step short of a snuff film.”

There’s no arguing that Fox has “revolutionized the television landscape with groundbreaking shows,” as the TV academy states. Yet one can make a case the network’s signature series broke less ground, and did less to change and define the medium, than did its programs that not only lowered the bar but coarsened the national debate, while exalting notoriety every bit as much as fame.

…Setting aside politics, Fox News has also been an especially divisive force. Conservative defenders will say the network represents a corrective tonic to a liberally skewed media, but the wider impact of Fox has been to help stratify news into cocooned-off echo chambers, fostering an entrenched us-vs.-them mentality that has essentially paralyzed the body politic. Moreover, as commentators such as David Frum have noted, measuring Fox News’ effect on the recent presidential election, the self-serving nature of the network and its need to reach a relatively small audience insures that Fox News thrives even if its success comes at the expense of its ideological allies.

All that before Lowry gets to the phone-hacking scandal.

Lowry concludes that Murdoch’s entry should bear an asterisk. We think it deserves a loud raspberry.

By the way, Murdoch was inducted along with Julia Louis Dreyfus and Jay Leno, among others.

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