The national media didn't get the message when Donald Trump was elected president, didn't get it when National Football League television ratings and attendance fell last season, and apparently didn't get the message when the Academy Awards telecast plummeted to its lowest ratings since records were kept on Sunday night.
Americans are tired of politics as usual and don't tune in to have politics shoved in their faces.
The Academy Awards show was filled with just what viewers would expect these days from Hollywood - jabs at Trump, Vice President Mike Pence, Fox News, promotion of illegal immigrants, song lyrics about the recent Florida shooting and the National Rifle Association, and praise for the #MeToo movement.
All that followed opening remarks by host Jimmy Kimmel, who said the show should be "a night of positivity."
Promises, promises.
"The Tinseltown elite genuinely hate the people they expect will pay to see their movies and watch their TV shows," Media Research Center Vice President Dan Gainor said on Fox News. "Why do we support them?"
But, as with Trump and the NFL, the left always has an excuse for its partisans. The low ratings, says Vanity Fair, are no surprise because viewers are no longer tuning in to award shows the way they used to. They have so many more viewing options and platforms.
That's true, as far as it goes. But the ratings were down 20 percent - just over 2017. And it was the first time the telecast drew fewer than 30 million viewers (26.5 million) since Nielsen starting checking the numbers in 1974.
And, as is often the case, the most popular movies aren't always Oscar winners. Indeed, only two Best Picture nominees, "Dunkirk" (the true story of a World War II battle) and "Get Out," were among the highest-grossing films in 2017, according to Box Office Mojo.
So viewers wouldn't have expected to tune in to see awards heaped on "Spider-Man: Homecoming." No, there was more to the ratings drop than the left would admit.
Ratings for the Grammy Awards show, which was similarly political (including a prerecorded skit in which 2016 presidential second-place finisher Hillary Clinton mocked Trump), were down 24 percent. Super Bowl ratings were down 7 percent, their lowest since 2009.
Hollywood stars, music celebrities and NFL stars are as welcome to their opinions as any of the rest of us. But they're learning, if they haven't gotten the message already, that there is a time and place for those opinions. And it's not when people tune in to hear movies, music and football celebrated and played.