I’ve been reading about the plan to delay the digital television delay by four months, from February 17 to June 12. We already know that the transition is likely going to be rough. Despite the best efforts of the industry to get the word out Nielsen estimates 6.5 million people aren’t ready and the government program offering discounted converter boxes is out of money. Even so, delaying the transition is a bad idea.
I hope the already tight 2009 budgets of local stations are not based on powering only one transmitter after February 17. I can’t imagine that running a 100 kilowatt analog transmitter is very cheap. Since digital transmitters tend to be in the 100 kilowatt range, I’d imagine that broadcasters would be eager to lower the electricity bill at least a little.
Over the last year, broadcasters have been making a huge investment of airtime and effort to educate people about the transition. Segments during the news, booths at community events, call centers, promos during shows, frequent tests, and just about everything short of actually turning the analog signal off has been tried. Four months of the same isn’t going to make a huge dent in the numbers of the unconverted. It’s just going to make us look bad. Every time the deadline approaches, congress extends the deadline. The original deadline was December 31, 2006. All the eggs are already in the February 17 basket. Nielsen actually moved back February sweeps into march to accommodate the transition. Let’s pick a date and stick with it.
Gun owners nervous about gun control being the first official act of the Obama presidency seem to have led to a surge in gun sales since the election. I’m not entirely convinced that an immediate rush is necessary, but I do have a black rifle just waiting to be delivered. Better safe than sorry. The most important thing to remember is that new gun control measures will not magically appear in the law books on January 20. The laws will have to be proposed, and we will have the chance to fight them.
I believe that little will be done in 2009.Any proposed gun control legislation is going to see fierce opposition from groups like the NRA, GOA, JPFO. State firearms groups like BFA, PAFOA and VCDL work on the state level to oppose gun control. If you aren’t a member of one of these organizations, you should give joining up serious consideration. I have a feeling that the last thing the Obama administration needs is a full scale battle royale over guns with an economic atom bomb ready to go off. Every gun owner needs to do their part to make sure we are ready to give them that fight. Gun control measures will probably start to crop up once the economy begins rebounding. Below are possible gun control measures and a measure of how likely I believe each to be on a ten point scale. Ten is most likely, one is least likely.
A renewal of the “Assault Weapons Ban” will be proposed. Some form of ban on the sale and transfer of mean looking black rifles will be proposed and given serious consideration. The 1994 ban classified guns as “assault rifles” based on features that made them look “mean.” I’ll be looking for some sort of similar ban in 2010 that does the same thing, along with restrictions on transferring banned guns purchased before the ban. How likely? 8
Restricting private sales of firearms. The “gun show loophole” as it is sometimes called allows private citizens to transfer firearms to one another without going through a dealer. The gun banners have been barking mad about this one for a long time. It’s a good bet that even the “pro gun” democrats will back this one. How likely? 9
Concealed Carry Ban. Obama comes from a state that allows no form carry, open or concealed. As a state senator, he supported legislation to ban concealed carry in all 50 states in the past. With 48 states allowing citizens to carry handguns in some form or another, It’s not clear if he would support or propose such a ban as President. The threat does still exist. How likely? 4
Mandating imaginary technology. Proposals to mandate microstamping firing pins and putting serial numbers on individual bullets have been proposed in quite a few states already. The fact that the technology to do these things does not exist in a way that is economical doesn’t matter to the people proposing it. They are proposals that sound reasonable to the common person, but will only succeed in punishing law abiding gun owners. How likely? 4
Restricting ammunition.Chris Rock put this one out there ten years ago. Tax the heck out of the bullets, and gun violence ends. Sounds foolproof to me. How likely? 6
Total ban. This is the most extreme idea. There are those out there that would love to see nothing less than a total ban on civilian ownership of firearms in the United States. The support for this kind of measure doesn’t seem widespread enough to succeed. The proposal of a total ban could however lead to a compromise that leads to other measures. How likely? 1
No matter how likely or unlikely any of these proposals happen to be, they are all unacceptable. Every single one of them infringes on our right to keep and bear arms, and each and every one of them needs to be stopped.
Alright you primitive screwheads, listen up. See this? This is my BOOMstick! It’s a p2 2/3″ wide screen P2 fancycam. S-Mart’s top of the line. You can find this in the professional video department. That’s right, this sweet baby was made in Osaka, Japan. Retails for about $30,000. It’s got five P2 card slots, a frezzi top light, and a hair trigger. That’s right. Shop Smart. Shop S-Mart. GOT THAT?!
Last Sunday, the newsroom found that assignment editors are in short supply. With the regular sunday night occupant of the seat absent and the others unable to cover on such short notice, there was only one thing to do. It was time to turn the power of the Big Boy Chair over to a photog with very little clue about what he is doing.
You see a very different side of the news from way up high on the assignment desk. As a photog, my job is to be concerned about the stories that I happen to be working on directly, two or three on an average night. While playing assignment editor, I had to be familiar with every story that reporters and photogs were working on for the night. There were more phone calls than I can fathom. I was the point of contact between the newsroom and the field crews. At the same time, I had to be the ears of the newsroom, listening to the outside world.
The most difficult part of the night was listening to the scanners and filtering out the crap. So much information comes through on those little radios, and 99% of it is worthless to me. At first, I was a little shy about calling police dispatchers, but that faded quickly. I missed a shooting, heard another shooting, routed crews, and rerouted crews. Press releases came in, plans were made, and plans were changed.
All things considered, the experience gave me an insight into the job that I never had before. Would I do it again? Sure. Would I want to do it full time? Maybe, but not just yet. I still have some stories to tell. Is Jason still an ego-maniacal desk monkey that likes sending his lackeys all over town for his sick pleasure? You bet.
A. By building an even larger mountain of debt to distract you from the first pile.
Just like Major Payne takes the soldier’s mind off of getting shot by breaking his finger, the government seems to be trying to spend its way out of a problem that was caused by too much spending in the first place. This whole mess makes you think that maybe the crazy guy that lives in a shack on the mountain had it right all along.
After a long day of shooting news, there’s nothing quite like a long night of shooting noobs. I have no idea how I went on this streak, but it happened. I think I’ll go to bed now, it doesn’t get any better than that.
While on the job today, I experienced firsthand a social media beatdown. I’m the first to admit when we get our ass kicked on a story, and it happened in a big way today. Let’s review what happened.
11:30 AM- While browsing one of the forums/blogs I check frequently, I came across a link to Michelle Malkin’s blog detailing an instance of possible voter fraud in Ohio. Malkin in turn linked to her source, palestra.net. I watch the video, and figured since it was common enough knowledge to be linked around the interwebs, that my newsroom probably knows about it.
3:00 PM – I arrive at work, load up my gear, and help edit for the early shows.
4:30 PM – I receive my assignment for the day, and leave with a reporter to complete it.
6:30 PM – Reporter receives a frantic phone call about a story that both another station in town ran, and an article that the newspaper ran. It’s about the voter fraud story that palestra.net broke earlier. Our instructions are to essentially drop everything and get something together on the story.
11:00 PM – The story runs on our station, incredibly rushed and lacking many of the details that it could have had.
Not only did palestra.net run this information before us, they had more background about the group, more information, sound with a wider variety of people, they even had a followup to the story out before any other news outlet in town knew what was going on. That’s some fantastic work done by a group of college students working for a website. Come tomorrow, we’re still going to be playing catch up on this story.
Those of us in the traditional media world can take a few things away from this.
If you see something interesting on a forum/blog, pass it on to your desk. Even if you think it’s probably something they already have, it can’t hurt. If I had passed this on to my assignment desk when I first read about it, would have had six more hours to work on it.
Building on the first point, keep an eye on some local blogs and forums. You never know, you might pick up on an interesting story idea.
With the resources of an entire finely tuned machine of a newsroom behind us, is there something we could have done to advance the story instead of playing catch up?
How do we best utilize our newsroom resources to stay ahead of the curve and break the story instead of the story breaking us.
