Hunting for Fox: Device blacks out Fox News

It started when Joshua Montgomery and Sam Kimery went to a showing last summer of "Outfoxed" in Tulsa. Liberal filmmaker Robert Greenwald's unflattering portrait of the Fox News Channel as a conservative propaganda outlet stirred them to action. "Josh and I decided in the first 15 minutes of the show that we kind of have to do something," says Kimery, a 44-year-old technical writer who runs a small electronics company. "It was very obvious that there was something very wrong with calling what Fox does news." Adds Montgomery, a 27-year-old aerospace engineer: "The problem is they really misrepresent themselves as `Fair and Balanced.'" So the partners created a strategy and a company. And if their product with the catchy name -- the FOXBlocker -- hasn't exactly become a household word, it has inspired a small group of activists opposing Fox News Channel to launch a unique boycott that may end up causing headaches for some cable operators. The operation began by selling the FOXBlocker -- a metal device about the size of a C battery that screws into the back of the TV set and that can filter out the Fox News Channel -- for $8.95. Montgomery says he and Kimery managed to move about 100 of the items by the end of last month. But selling the device for that sum was a flawed business model. [more]