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October 3, 2004 - October 9, 2004 Archives

October 3, 2004

LAGGING, JETWISE

Just got back. Uneventful trip- two celebrities on the plane, Donald Faison of TV's "Scrubs" (gray Knicks t-shirt, Walt Disney World shopping bag, traveling with some friends) and some guy from one of the home remodeling shows- maybe "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition," Fran was unclear on which- with a Fred Segal suit-bag. Reminder to self: Song Airlines is OK, but try to fly JetBlue in and out of Long Beach next time. And after that, too. If JetBlue doesn't fly where you need to go, take the bus.

I get to spend two days here, then it's off to San Diego for the NAB. Then I'll get home in time to spend a few more days here until they tent the house for termites and I have to go spend a couple more nights in hotels. It's getting old.

You want to know what I think about the campaigns and the Dodgers and stuff? Wait until I'm awake.


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October 4, 2004

YOU CAN EVEN SEE THE FLOP SWEAT ON DAN RATHER'S BROW

So I'm sitting there watching the huge Mitsubishi HDTV in my sister-in-law's living room in Tampa, and something's not right. The analog channels are stretched to fill the widescreen, but that's to be expected. What isn't expected is that the picture on the digital and HD channels looks, well, not right. Shows I know are in HD- some HBO movies, a football game- look stretched and fuzzy, too. And blocky with the occasional breakup. At best, it's distracting, at worst, unwatchable. I ask about it and I'm told there seem to be problems getting the set and the cable converter to work together, that there's a lot of breakup and that the set and the converter box seem to have their own ways of doing things.

This presents me with a challenge, which I proceed to meet by managing to wipe out all of the programmed channels. That's because, despite having some level of technical expertise and a thorough knowledge of HD, I couldn't get the TV set to stop downconverting everything to standard definition and then stretching it, even the HD widescreen programming. Imagine a football game, then imagine it being Silly-Puttied so that everything looks squashed and the score box is cropped neatly off so you can't tell the score. Yeah, like that. Anyway, my attempts at finding the format reset ended up wiping the channels. We restored them, eventually, but it wasn't easy. And silly me, I assumed the "Format" button would lead to being able to select the format of the programming. No such luck.

It's frustrating, really, because the digital picture is so much better than the analog version you get now. Say you're watching a football game- in analog, you really can't make out all the details. That quarterback's jersey is so blurry, you can make out the number 5 but the "MCNABB" above it is indistinct. Compare that with the HD signal, on which the name above the number is easy to read as "MRAIUHFKA." That's because the signal just dropped and the picture's breaking up. Better adjust the antenna. I'll stay here and tell you when you have the signal nailed. The ladder's in the garage.

So I came home to L.A. and was greeted by this:

    Today, FCC Chairman Michael K. Powell launched a multi-year, multi-phased consumer education and outreach campaign – “DTV – Get it!” - designed to inform the public about the digital television (DTV) transition and the availability of high-definition and other digital content and to provide resources for Americans interested in joining the DTV ranks.

    Powell recognized the significant advances made by the government and the industry over the last several years in increasing the availability of digital and high-definition programming available to the American public. He also cited the growing popularity of DTV, and acknowledged consumer confusion about the changing digital television landscape.

    “Although for the vast majority of American households, digital television may be uncharted territory, we will not let them go it alone,” Powell said. “If you have questions about digital television, the FCC is ready to serve as a primary resource for quick answers. Then we hope they will get DTV – get the set, get the connection, get the content,” he said.

Oh, yeah, Powell? Fix this.

I went and looked at the website they put up for this initiative, and I saw a lot of "what is DTV?" and "what's on DTV?" and other sales stuff, but not a word about HOW TO GET THE DAMN TV TO WORK. Not a word. Because you CAN'T, not without professional (and expensive) help, and a huge antenna, and a lot of money, and a lot of patience. And even then, you can get screwed. The HD set in Tampa is a nice one, and the thing was set up by the good folks at the Bright House Networks cable system, and it DOES NOT WORK. Oh, you can watch it, but it ain't high definition, not even the channels that are SUPPOSED to be in HD. And just try to get the signals without cable- Tampa's flat, their house is near the bayshore facing east towards the Riverview antenna farm with no obstructions, and the signals there just plain suck, analog and digital. They're a mess. Even the local signals on cable and DirecTV are ridden with interference.

So it may or may not work, and you can't count on experts to get it right. And the sets aren't at all intuitive- the remotes resemble airplane cockpit controls, with several buttons helpfully labeled "*" or "#" or with triangles. But what if I take the plunge and buy a big flat plasma set for several thousand dollars- what can I expect here in my neighborhood? Well, the government website has a helpful link to the CheckHD.com website, into which I plugged my address and got this:

    WHAT YOU'LL GET WITH DTV

    No Stations Found

Great. But they do provide the names of several retailers where I can buy digital sets.

And I can always get cable, which will provide me with the ABC, CBS, NBC, and FOX affiliates. That'll cost me a minimum of $18.50 a month for those four channels- ten bucks for one converter and $8.50 for digital cable (plus forty five bucks for installation). Well, I don't need digital cable, because I have the dish, which will provide me with HBO and Showtime in HD for no additional cost, plus CBS and TNT. But I'd have to buy a new receiver for that, and if I want to keep the ability I have now to record stuff with the DVR, that'll be a cool thousand bucks for the receiver.

Or I can wait and watch TV the way I do now, no additional cost. I won't get the amazing HDTV picture, but, apparently, I can't get that too easily anyway. Bottom line: if you think you can just go to the store, buy a set, bring it home, plug it in, and watch HDTV, you're in for a surprise. Unless you're a big MRAIUHFKA fan.



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October 5, 2004

OFF TO SEE THE WIZARDS

The NAB Radio Show starts tomorrow, and I have to go. It's a suit convention- a throng of white guys in suits, and that includes the attendees who are female or people of color. Something about the convention drains the sexuality and ethnicity right out of people.

Needless to say (since I said it last year), this is not my most comfortable venue. It's been better, though, since I stopped going as an attendee and started going as a reporter. Covering the convebtion is exhausting, but it provides a measure of protection for me, since it means I really don't have to be as social, and therefore as lost as I used to be. I'm Jimmy Olsen, Cub Reporter, serious as anything and in no mood to be anything but all-business. Plus, it's someone else's responsibility to deal with the rubber chicken galas. (I'd rather sneak out for fish tacos, anyway)

So it's off to San Diego on the next leg of World Tour 2004. I'll let you know how it goes.


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October 6, 2004

NAB RADIO SHOW, PART I

11:45 am: Showed up in San Diego to find my room reservation screwed up- why should the hotel have it right wnen they had a mere FIVE MONTHS to get it right?- and the place crawling with White Guys in Cheap Suits.

OK, so I didn't expect anything else. It's still strange to me.

Time to go cover stuff. Talk to you later.


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NAB RADIO SHOW, PART II

Okay, so I caused a little trouble today. Sorry.

The first incident came at a panel on indecency. After listening to Bob and Tom's GM proudly talk about how his guys stay away from that troublesome material, and Mancow's GM tell about how his guy is really just a celebrity interviewer, and Lex and Terry's guy talk about how his guys do an advice shows (despite "drunk bitch Fridays"), I had to ask why, if this is all true, nobody is fighting to defend talent. I wanted to know why, instead of supporting the creative people in the business, the NAB and the group owners and GMs and PDs are just looking for ways to make the FCC and the politicians happy.

Answer: it's someone else's problem. We're publicly traded and we're not going to wave the flag and fight. Next question.

Emboldened by this (and the dirty stares from the panel and some of the audience), I went to the Programming Executive Supersession, where I waited through discussions of Howard Stern's move to Sirius (no opinions) and a large amount of self-congratulation over talent devlopment- why, we're all nurturing and coaching talent all the time!- and finally I could take no more and asked what they can tell new creative talent when anyone who's creative and talented will take one look at the one-strike-and-you're-out atmosphere in radio and see Stern and others bolting or fired, and how they can expect talent to work in radio anymore.

And the most amazing thing happened- John Dickey of Cumulus said that those people are, well, we throw the term "talent" around too loosely, they're NOT talent, they're salacious and not creative and they pick off "low-hanging fruit." And the guy from Clear Channel said, well, it's not our job to defend them, it's the voters' job to voice their displeasure, and we have Bob and Tom and they're very nice and acceptable.

If I worked on the air in terrestrial commercial radio, I'd be begging Sirius and XM for a job. Any job. I'd clean Handsome Dick Manitoba's toilet for free, just to get away from an industry that refuses to have my back when things get tough.

And nobody's asked these questions before, yet Howard Stern leaves the business to go where they'll leave him alone and they're shocked.

What a business.


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October 7, 2004

NAB RADIO SHOW, PART III

There's no getting around it- the Manchester Grand Hyatt in San Diego stinks. Literally. I'm not kidding. There are parts of the building that have the distinct redolence of Eau de Portapotty. Nobody seems to mind. Maybe because they're all radio people, and that ship's been taking on water so long they're used to the pong of stagnancy.

THe NAB's Eddie Fritts gave his annual opening remarks this morning, and he was pretty upbeat for a guy whose organization is, to put it charitably, getting its clock cleaned on a regular basis.

    I don't know about you, but I get the sense that there is a terrific buzz surrounding this convention.

I don't know about you, but that buzz is the air conditioning. And the sound of thousands of radio personalities calling their agents desperate for a job at Sirius.

    For example, we have thus far been successful in protecting against additional interference from low power FM radio.

I'll get back to this one in a little bit. Don't go away.

    We've helped establish a stable regulatory framework that protects your licenses and allows you to better serve listeners.

I have no idea what this means.

    Local radio has its pulse on the community, most graphically demonstrated by the onslaught of hurricanes that recently ravaged Florida and neighboring states.

    We received countless reports of continuous coverage stations undertook under horrendous circumstances.

    Station employees rarely had time to consider their own personal circumstances - and in some instances saw their own homes destroyed.

    But they stayed on the air, and listeners attributed broadcasters' efforts to saving lives.

    Even now, these stations are raising funds for victims, spearheading food drives, and continuing service to their communities.

    That's what local radio is all about.

This is what the radio industry is all about- congratulating itself for DOING ITS JOB. Radio stations in Florida provided hurricane coverage and raised relief funds? That's what they're EXPECTED to do. It's when they DON'T that it's remarkable. That's like a plumber fishing for special compliments for fixing the leak in your toilet for $65. an hour.

    So where does radio stand in 2004 - with the combined explosion in technology and competition?

    As we look at new challenges, our answer is to compete technically and with compelling content. Radio is combining the new digital technology of HD Radio with its bedrock of localism - to do what satellite services, iPods, and other MP3s cannot do.

    I think the time is now for HD Radio.

There you go. Radio's losing audience, it's perceived as uncool, it's driving talent like the most famous, successful personality in its history, Howard Stern, to satellite radio, and the solution is to switch the same crap programming to digital delivery. EGBOK, everyone, everything's gonna be OK.

    This industry has always been a business filled with risk-takers.

There are risk takers, but the vast majority of managers in radio are risk-averse. You get one risk taker and, if the risk pays off, a hundred copycats grateful that they didn't put their own asses on the line and can still reap the reward (and take credit).

    But in my view, the real risk is for those unwilling to embrace the promise of HD Radio.

Yes, it DOESN'T MATTER WHAT CRAP YOU PUT ON THE AIR, AS LONG AS IT'S DIGITAL CRAP.

    Today, because of e-mail, anyone can easily file comments or complaints at the FCC. Interest groups are routinely generating thousands of comments at the Commission.

    And this is an FCC that is paying close attention to those comments. There are currently numerous FCC proceedings under consideration.

    One of those is the so-called localism inquiry, wherein the FCC is asking whether or not stations are adequately serving their communities.

"So-called"? It's a localism inquiry. What else would you call it?

    The activist groups are seizing this opportunity to change the rules and set new standards by which we are judged at renewal time.

    It is vital that every broadcaster take this opportunity to tell your community service story by filing comments at the FCC.

    The deadline is November 1.

    Here's the best part: you don't need an expensive DC lawyer to file on your behalf. NAB is making it easy for you to submit your own thoughts right on our NAB Web site - www.nab.org - which will be automatically submitted to the FCC.

Here's what I'd like to see- there are two stations licensed to the South Bay area of Los Angeles County where I live, KZAB in Redondo Beach and KFOX in Torrance. I'd love to see them tell the FCC what service they provided to the South Bay. You know what? I'll help: none. KFOX is all-Korean aimed at Los Angeles. KZAB spent most of the last few years simulcasting a Spanish music format aimed at Los Angeles and is now hip-hop aimed at Los Angeles. The South Bay is not Los Angeles. The radio industry abandoned the South Bay.

And it abandoned Orange County, too. But hold on, we'll get to that.

    It's your business we're talking about here, and this is serious business. Citizen activism is alive and well across America, and at the FCC.

Oh, NO! Citizens are active! We must stop this before they start demanding things like public service!

    We need broadcaster activism to be alive and well, also.

    Licensing renewal stability that broadcasters have gained can be quickly lost.

Those automatic renewals no matter whether you lived up to your license obligations? Endangered.

So I walked out of there and I thought, geez, did he really blow off the whole localism issue? I've been hot and heavy on that one, because, living in an area with no local radio, I'm a little sensitive to the issue. The very first edition of this column talked about a station that was doing the kind of local-yokel radio I remember from my youth, the kind that REALLY serves the public- high school football, remotes from the diner on Main Street, school lunch menus. And that went away not because people didn't want it but because any station with a rimshot signal to a larger market is automatically going to abandon Main Street and try to serve the bigger town, getting higher ad rates and getting valued at a higher dollar figure.

And that thought was still rattling in my head when I sat in on what the NAB optimistically called the "Group Heads Supersession." I had the heads of Clear Channel, Citadel, Greater Media (my former employer!), Access.1, and Entercom right there in front of me. And these are the kinds of companies who took advantage of deregulation to take stations that served their communities and moved them to serve other communities, leaving places like my hometown without any place to hear local news, without any station for the mom-and-pop stores to advertise.

So I listened as they congratulated themselves on hurricane coverage, listened as they blew off the loss of Howard Stern- why, Infinity and Joel Hollander are smart, they'll find someone even MORE compelling than Stern, Stern's had his day- and I got more irritated. How are they gonna find a more compelling talent than Stern and keep him or her in the business if they put a zero-tolerance, violate-a-rule-we-can't-explain-to-you-and-you're-unemployable-for-life condition on that "more compelling" person? And as they moved on quickly to congratulate themselves on reducing ad inventory- ignore how we ripped you advertisers off for decades, we're better now- I thought, geez, the head of the NAB was only able to cite one achievement for the year and it was to thwart local competition, he blew off the whole localism thing, and these people are congratulating themselves on being "local"? I gotta SAY something.

So for the third time at this conference, I did. I got up and asked a longwinded question that boils down to this:

1. Whole areas near big cities used to have local radio with news and stuff, and now they don't.
2. Companies like yours did that, abandoning those areas and abdicating the local responsibility.
3. Nobody can reverse that because the cost of entry requires service to the bigger city.
4. The NAB thwarted the only proposal for restoring local radio in those areas by fighting the questionable interference the low power FMs might cause.
5. So... would you, out of a sense of public service, accept limited interference to allow for additional radio service to those areas? And if the answer is no...
6. What do you tell people who can't get local radio because you won't let them have it?

The answer: Huh?

Then Clear Channel's Mark Mays said he'd tell the people to go buy a TV station. He later said it was intended as a joke. Let 'em eat cake! Ha ha, only kidding!

Then Greater Media's Peter Smyth said he owns stations in New Brunswick that really serve New Jersey, which is true except that it's because the signals don't reach New York.

Then David Field of Entercom said no way would they accept interference.

Then they stammered and changed the subject back to their wonderful new plan to cut ad clutter.

Localism? They're all for it, until it's time to actually implement it.

They all say that satellite won't hurt them because satellite can't be local. Then they do everything in their power to prevent anyone from actually being super-local. And then they congratulate themselves for doing something they shouldn't need to be congratulated for doing.

Can I go home yet? Please?


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October 8, 2004

QUICK-FRIED FOR A CRACKLY CRUNCH

My Lord, it's over. Some meetings today, then we bailed and hit the road north.

Just past La Jolla to just past Del Mar, then around Encinitas Blvd., then a stretch through San Clemente and Dana Point, then a long stretch around South Coast Plaza where we got to sit in front of Paul and Jan Crouch's Trinity Broadcasting Network headquarters (no longer sporting the "HAPPY BIRTHDAY JESUS" lights all year round), then in spots all along the rest of the way.

Ken Jennings?

"What are the places Fran and Perry got stuck in traffic on the way home today?"

That is correct.

"Perry's Thoughts on the Debate" for $100., please.

Not now, you self-satisfied jackass. Perry just got home and he's in no mood. Go get some sleep.


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October 9, 2004

HOT FOTOS OF RADIO HUNKS!

You thought I was kidding.

The NAB? White guys in suits!:

White guys in suits!:

The White Guy in a Suit on the left runs a household-name radio group. He's shown here relaxing, very much unlike how he appeared before Congress.

Whatever. It's over, and I'm home. And by popular request- okay, just one, by Joe, who sent me the new one, here are my Donovan McNabb bobbleheads, one old (standing in a toilet bowl... er, the Vet) and one new (standing in a bidet... er, the Linc).

And here they are with their friends Jim, Eric, and Pat.



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About October 2004

This page contains all entries posted to PMSimon.com in October 2004. They are listed from oldest to newest.

September 26, 2004 - October 2, 2004 is the previous archive.

October 10, 2004 - October 16, 2004 is the next archive.

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