Letters to the Editor
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@RMP
Take a fresh look at the issue of media "mediation."
In other words, how the air time is managed traditionally.
C-Span presents, for the most part, un-mediated public events. They set up cameras at a college lecture, or a book event, and it's the presenter - the lecturer, or author - and the audience. The announcer announces the event and then goes away.
The commercial "time clock," within which content exists, is sacrosanct. But this does not mean it can't be re-imagined.
Take sports coverage.
What if you were, in the comfort of your living room, able to see your beloved Bears march down field and score on a drive that had palpable momentum, that required staying with it, during time outs and all. In other words, if a director, in the moment, saw that the drama was really building, and had the authority to stay with it until the Bears scored or were forced to punt or kick a field goal, wouldn't you enjoy that?
But they break it up and break it up and break it up.
Not only does the viewer lose the emotional edge; the players have to stand around until the commercials are over and the ref blows the whistle to resume play. The pros are used to the interruption, but how would their rhythm work within an uninterrupted flow?
This is an example of media managed time at the expense of actual participants and fans, or, the audience.
The money machine can be rejiggered to get back to more unmediated viewing and participation.
I don't care what Les Moonves says.
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On polls being wrong
“The polls that had showed Barack Obama well ahead of Clinton were not so much wrong as misleading -- or at least badly interpreted by journalists too eager to write Clinton's political obituary.” Joe Conason today on Salon.
Considering that the polls stopped on Sunday and that they consistently showed about the same percentage of voters for Obama as the voting ended up, I blame the interpreters of the polls far more than the polls. I also blame the influence of the polls and pundits on causing voters to decide based on them.
We have a healthier and longer nomination process as a result of what happened in NH and that is to the good regardless of whom you are supporting in either party. Other than self-policing which isn’t likely to happen, our only choice as viewers and readers is to do what Glenn does so well and expose their deficiencies and manipulations to as many people as we can.
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@jebbie
You're dead on.
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Jim White:
Speaking of Zogby
-- Jim White
Rule or piece of advice number one for a pundit, for a regular person or for politician going onto a talk show: Do not TRY to be funny.
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@jebbie
I second that dead on.
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Kit
They might be surprised at how often we laugh at them being Serious only it is usually a laugh of derision.
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@WT - A missile punch at bullet prices
It's a bargain at double the price!
Dahlgren demonstrates electromagnetic rail gun
Normally, new weaponry tends to make defense more expensive. But the Navy likes to say its new railgun delivers the punch of a missile at bullet prices.
A demonstration of the futuristic and comparatively inexpensive weapon yesterday at the Naval Surface Warfare Center at Dahlgren had Navy brass smiling...
http://fredericksburg.com/News/FLS/2007/012007/01172007/251373
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RMP
The masses particularly those without cable might surprise the networks on what they would like and hey those rich CEOs might consider it a public service and do it even if the ratings were low
It will be interesting to see what the end of analog TV on Feb 17, 2009 will do to cable.
People will have to go out and buy either new TV sets or HDTV tuners for their old ones to continue getting on air TV reception.
I suspect it may hurt the cable channels since on air reception will be considerably better on the HDTV channels than analog ones.
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Sure enough about the uncertainty principle
Don't let Quantum mechanics fool you.
Even uncertainty can be taken to the bank.
Chaos on the other hand......
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HRH
People are hooked on choices, like me with c-span although I can get it on the Internet, the number of specialty channels will continue to increase as will the movie choices and many now get their Internet through cable, so I don't think the change will affect those who are presently hooked. Those who don't have cable and are hooked on TV mostly can't afford cable.
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-- Aycharaych
The digital requirement has very little (if anything) to do with HDTV. I doubt if cable will be affected much at all since most cable companies have changed over to digital or are in the process of doing so. Their customers won't notice the law going into effect since the cable boxes (and satelite tuners also) automatically convert the signal so a pre-digital (analog) receiver can "read" it. Satelite signals are already digital.
If you receive Teevee over the air, then you'll have to either get an inexpensive converter (the feds will contribute money toward it) or purchase a new TV....but it doesn't have to be a HDTV receiver - just digital capable. I believe all receivers manufacturered since 2007 are digital.
Finally, if there is a connection between the digital signals and HDTV, it is only because HDTV requires a digital input signal but if you don't want to pay for HDTV, you won't have to convert if you use satelite or cable.
Don't be mislead.
http://www.fcc.gov/cgb/consumerfacts/digitaltv.html
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@everybody
But they break it up and break it up and break it up.
Not only does the viewer lose the emotional edge; the players have to stand around until the commercials are over and the ref blows the whistle to resume play. The pros are used to the interruption, but how would their rhythm work within an uninterrupted flow?
Isn't this a product of the fact that to the guys in the [positional adjective] office, it's all the same thing anyway?
(sorry, but I never know whether the board and C-class employees are in the front office, the back office or what). The news (or show) segments are accomplishing business objectives for the corporation, the advertisement segments are accomplishing... Chris Matthews is marketing the network's brand, the gecko is marketing the advertiser's brand. That's so paramount important, together with maximizing productivity with digital segments, that no risk is ever going to be taken on all the great experiments you, RMP, and everybody else is coming up with. They expect us, the diamond-in-the-rough bloggers and the YouTubers (bad coinage, sounds like a sweet potato) to come up with the next thing, which they swoop in and buy for a million or two, only after it already has been proven to work. News enslaved to the Microsoft model for corporate growth.
Only now the people are in revolt because the whole thing has gotten so bad everybody is gagging on all the marketing. True to form Gail Collins basically put down the little people, the voters, for complaining about the media screw job, and put down Hillary for crying, voters for empathizing with her, and implied that the proper campaign platform for how to run the country should be judged by whether or not it was (I'm not making this up) 'sexy'. The whole anti-media revolt needs to be stepped on much harder than the Chamber of Commerce is going to bite the ass of the anti-corporate revolt.
It's one thing to be anti-Republican or anti-Clinton. How dare the voters be anti-corporate media. Who the hell do they think they are?
On a quieter note, many thanks Dirigo, we can't understand all this without your behind the scenes analysis. I just wish Joyce Carol Oates could teach some of the bewildered scientists on Science Friday how to grab the mike a bit. They end up off the air, make room for the next guy, when they're still warming up.
Yes, teach more science and philosophy. More art and literature too. And history, civics, and music. And wonder. It's all useless without wonder.
The weirdest story about the tunnel diode (the device that works because of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle) is that when Leo Esaki got the Nobel Prize for it in 1973, he told a reporter he wanted to concentrate on and extend his research. Sony let him go because he wasn't focussed enough on creating products.