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Install Gentoo posted:
Along with all the churchy/televangalist AM radio that propagates the south. Drive through Alabama, Mississippi or Georgia with your AM dial on "scan" and every other station is a fire and brimstone sermon.
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Feb 23, 2013 06:06
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Zwabu posted:I suppose we'll just have to agree to disagree on this. I definitely felt radio programming that was more strongly influenced by local DJs was far preferable, warts and all. In my travels it definitely seemed that it was the mid to late 90s where the homogenization of playlists made stations sound identical anywhere in the country and more or less coincided to me stopping listening to the radio at all. It did seem like the Clear Channel takeover era had a lot to do with this. Once again, deregulation has a great deal to do with the fact that radio sucks as badly as it does these days. Used to be that you had to prove to the FCC you were a competent owner, had enough money to operate the station even at a loss for a period of time, and *GASP* even have a live body behind the controls at all times. Deregulation screwed all that up, and now you have stations that run either off of satellite automation 24/7, or in Clear Channels case, off of "Premium Choice" with everything sent to the local NexGen machine off of the WAN - voicetracked personalities and all. Just pray the EAS box is working properly in case of an emergency. Many radio execs want to do great local radio - but the Wall Street financial types won't let them hire or nurture talent to do so in many cases. The effects of deregulation have been harsh - time spent listening and cume are both down, and radio stations haven't seen revenues recover from the 2008 crash. Kinda hard to sell commercials when the programming sucks it seems. I can scan the iHeartRadio app and during the night/overnight hours almost all of the oldies stations are running off of the same playlist - scary how homogenized it is. Car trips used to be fun, listening to the local flavor of radio. Now? All sounds the same. And the listeners can tell - one station I worked at went BACK to local jocks and music because all the listeners ran away when the company tried to save money by using satellite. I worked at a station that was bought out by Clear Channel recently - first thing they did was fire as many union people as they could, regardless of age, salary level, or competence. All these cuts are to try and keep the bankruptcy off as long as possible - will Rush and the others on wingnut welfare be gone? I doubt it - Cumulus will be there waiting to sign him up if he does ditch CC, same with the rest of 'em. As long as there is a GoldLine, there will be Rush...
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Feb 23, 2013 06:43
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Yeah there's a lot of radio stations that frankly should just be put temporarily off air until there's money to be made again rather than made into carbon copies. But well, the owners refuse to risk mothballing so instead they go low effort as possible and wonder why there's no listeners, so they lower their effort again... If they had been TV stations, they'd have been wall to wall infomericals + the minimum mandatory E/I content years ago. Instead the radio equivalent is what you're hearing now. Nintendo Kid fucked around with this message at 06:49 on Feb 23, 2013 |
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Feb 23, 2013 06:46
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Wasn't CC in particular hosed by Bain? IIRC, they offered their "services," and promptly racked up tens of billions of dollars in debt. Paying Rush $400 mil has a price.
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Feb 23, 2013 07:11
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orangesampson posted:Rush Limbaugh is killing Clear Channel and he has a contract until 2016. Will Clear Channel survive? Will they keep cutting jobs and scaling back other shows to keep this guy on the radio? Prabably. It's not Rush killing Clear Channel. It's Bain Capital. And I feel darn good about it. Hey, Balor. Yes, it was. http://underthemountainbunker.com/2012/11/21/real-life-karma-bain-capital-acquired-clear-channel-and-loaded-it-with-massive-debt/
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Feb 23, 2013 12:33
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Tatum Girlparts posted:I've always been interested in where radio will go in the next ten or so years.
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Feb 23, 2013 17:24
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FMguru posted:I suspect the spectrum will be largely re-purposed for various digital/wireless uses. A big, wide FM channel is much more useful carrying 100,000 smartphones than a top-40 broadcast earning a 0.2 listener share. The FM band is only 20 megahertz wide, approximately the bandwidth of 3 TV channels or one wifi hotspot. Common cell phone technology assigns about 25 mhz of spectrum for downlink and another 25 mhz for uplink in each band we use now. In contrast, when channels 52-69 (and now 51 effectively, since they're trying to move people off of it) were given up for other uses, that was 114 mhz of bandwidth, in addition to channels 70-83, a further 84 mhz of bandwidth that had been given up to public safety radio and mobile phones in the 80s. So essentially the current FM band has little to offer in other uses, especially sandwiched as it is between the lower half of VHF broadcast TV on the bottom and aviation radio at its top.
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Feb 23, 2013 17:41
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Install Gentoo posted:The FM band is only 20 megahertz wide, approximately the bandwidth of 3 TV channels or one wifi hotspot. Common cell phone technology assigns about 25 mhz of spectrum for downlink and another 25 mhz for uplink in each band we use now. In contrast, when channels 52-69 (and now 51 effectively, since they're trying to move people off of it) were given up for other uses, that was 114 mhz of bandwidth, in addition to channels 70-83, a further 84 mhz of bandwidth that had been given up to public safety radio and mobile phones in the 80s. That's not correct; CDMA voice needs a 1.25Mhz channel per link and you can get usable LTE bandwidth from 6Mhz (3x3). Sprints current nationwide deployment of LTE lives in 10Mhz (5x5). But your main point stands... You'd need to shut down at least half of the FM band to get a decent chunk of space, though frankly if they just depopulated half the band and converted that portion to digital radio you could get way, way more stations in the same space. Then maybe we could have actual low power regional FM, something the Bush FCC managed to kill rather effectively.
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Feb 24, 2013 01:40
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Ender.uNF posted:That's not correct; CDMA voice needs a 1.25Mhz channel per link and you can get usable LTE bandwidth from 6Mhz (3x3). Sprints current nationwide deployment of LTE lives in 10Mhz (5x5). Sprint's lives in 10 Mhz, but it's still got to have room on either side to ensure that it doesn't interfere with neighboring transmissions nor have them interfere with them. We already have about 4Mhz of the FM band reserved to "non-commercial educational" use in 88.1-91.9 Mhz, so there's 16 Mhz left that could reasonably carved out of.. it just doesn't fit. In the larger radio markets we couldn't fit everyone in using the digital subchannels without dropping to horrible quality and requiring competing broadcasters to share physical channels which is a whole messy kettle of worms right there. TV channel reduction worked because we always had way more channels open then were ever going to be used or ever were used. Not so much room for that on the FM band, especially with how very close in frequency stations can interfere with each other.
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Feb 24, 2013 02:00
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Ender.uNF posted:But your main point stands... You'd need to shut down at least half of the FM band to get a decent chunk of space, though frankly if they just depopulated half the band and converted that portion to digital radio you could get way, way more stations in the same space. Then maybe we could have actual low power regional FM, something the Bush FCC managed to kill rather effectively. IBOC (In Band On Channel) is the digital radio standard in the US - the NAB put up a big fight to make sure that their existing analog facilities wouldn't be rendered obsolete with a standard like DAB (and have to share transmitting facilities and be on equal footing signal wise). HD Radio has been a dog from the get go - expensive radios, dubious improvements in sound quality, and coverage that even at elevated power levels that doesn't match the analog signal. On AM, it cuts the analog audio quality down to 5 kHz from 10.2, and on FM if you have any multicast channels, the main HD-1 signal is 64kbps using a proprietary modified AAC format. It sucks, the equipment is expensive for both consumers and broadcasters, and will end up being the AM Stereo of the 21st century. The dial is congested enough as is in many places, so don't bet on any more stations going on the air with any decent coverage. The upside is that the FCC is so out of it that you could throw on a pirate, and as long as you don't make a plane fall out of the sky, you won't be bothered. Just ask the Caribbean pirates in and around NYC... Good news: latest 6+ Arbitrons has WBUR in Boston at a 4.4, with conservative talker WRKO-AM at a 2.3. In NYC, WNYC AM & FM has a combined 3.1 vs WABC with a 2.7. Thus begs the question:"If Rush Limbaugh is speaking, and nobody under 45 is listening, does he still matter?"
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Feb 24, 2013 06:41
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Now I know why there's so many right wing seniors on scooters who don't really need them: 80% of the people with scooter store scooters actually did not meet the medicare requirements for the scooter. The FBI has raided the offices of the scooter store HQ regarding a massive case of medicare fraud. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgRBjS3mdP8 The scooter store has been billing the government for these through medicare so the people have been getting them for free through the company harassing physicians and others to approve them. They overbilled medicare by over 100 million dollars until the Obama administration and the FBI cracked down on them - the scooter store has been raided by the FBI. Another fun fact: The guy who put the fundraiser together where Romney made that "47%" remark? He owns part of the scooter store - and through that fundraiser, had been trying to get Romney to get rid of the affordable care act and de-regulate the health care industry, to allow scam artists like the scooter store to operate with impunity to funnel more $$$ into his pocket. Spacedad fucked around with this message at 07:31 on Feb 24, 2013 |
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Feb 24, 2013 07:12
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Spacedad posted:the Obama administration and the FBI cracked down on them - the scooter store has been raided by the FBI. So it begins, RAHOWA CW2!
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Feb 24, 2013 07:28
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eggsovereasy posted:So it begins, RAHOWA CW2! Haha. More details, including some words from former employees on how the scam was working: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJq5hXC6t-o I'm hoping other financial/business crooks days are numbered as well with all this.
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Feb 24, 2013 07:31
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Man I'm pretty sure I've seen the Scooter Store(TM) commercial so many times, but didn't think any ill of it.
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Feb 24, 2013 08:34
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Yeah, the scooters are a huge scam. They cost like $1100 retail if you're not on Medicare, but if you buy them through Medicare they charge the federal gov't like $4300 a pop.
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Feb 24, 2013 08:36
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Sadly, it'll just be used as proof that medicare needs to be cut.
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Feb 24, 2013 10:16
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Nationalize scooter production, make everyone who says they need a scooter go before a "Scooter Panel" which will decide their fitness. Let's give the people what they fear.
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Feb 24, 2013 10:25
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Glenn Beck's mind is a scary thing. Beck claims that hardcore libertarians are not accepting to newcomers to the movement asking, “Were you born libertarian?” “What do you say right now, you put away your sanctimonious, holier than thou, see I was right since I was 2–and when somebody wakes up you say, brother we’ve been waiting for you”, Beck said during one portion of the program. Glenn Beck apologizes, critiques and reaches out to Libertarians VIDEO http://www.theglobaldispatch.com/glenn-beck-apologizes-critiques-and-reaches-out-to-libertarians-video-51681/ Also, WWE, the wrestling group, has called him out to go into the ring after he calls people who watch wrestling, stupid or something. Glenn Beck declined to "go into there".
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Feb 24, 2013 11:36
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I'm seriously starting to think that the Republican Party is going to go the way of the Whig Party very soon. The mood of the country today seems very similar to the 1850s. In 1854, after the Kansas-Nebraska Act and the introduction of popular sovereignty, it became very difficult for the two dominant parties to keep the middle ground. The more conservative of the two parties, the Whigs, had lost a lot of ground in recent elections and split up due to the slavery issue. On one side, you had the reactionary Know Nothing Party. They were a bunch of anti-immigrants who didn't give a drat about slavery, but were quite racist even for the time, so they probably didn't mind if it spread to the new states. The rest of the Whigs also split up, the southern ones mostly became Democrats, while the northern ones, who were largely anti-slavery and pro-industrialization, formed the Republican Party by forming a coalition with abolitionist Democrats and Free Soilers. They quickly became the new dominant party to replace the Whigs. It took awhile for a Republican president to get elected, but we all know what happened when one finally did in 1860. Now let's compare that to today. You have two dominant parties, and the more conservative of the two, the Republicans, has been steadily losing ground in recent elections. It's increasingly difficult for both parties to maintain the middle ground, and the Republicans have become mostly reactionary and very divided. On the one hand, you have the more libertarian tea party wing, and on the other you have the more traditional religious right wing. It's possible that if the Republican party continues to lose ground, it will split up, just like the Whigs did in 1854. And though it seems unlikely right now, it's possible the libertarian wing will find common ground with the occupy movement and form a new anti-crony-capitalist party (though it probably won't be called that). This will be very similar to when the conservative abolitionists (who were mostly former Whigs) formed a coalition with the Radical Abolitionists (who were mostly free soilers and former Democrats). Could we be in for another Civil War if that happens?
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Feb 24, 2013 12:08
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The GOP isn't going away. Worst case scenario for them (or best case depending on who you ask) is they'll become a regional entity much like they were for a huge chunk of the 20th century. They've still got enough control at the state level through gerrymandering to keep congress filled with yahoos for the foreseeable future, and as far as actually accomplishing the things they want like outlawing abortion and forcing creationism in schools, they've had far more success holding governors' offices and state legislatures than they ever did at the federal level. Add in things like ALEC model bills and it's pretty obvious this is where the party's been heading for a while. When you think about the sneaky ratfuck poo poo they do best, they really are in their element working in the shadows, plus they have a compliant opposition party that'll go along with enough of what they want that they don't really need to be nominally in charge.
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Feb 24, 2013 13:41
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orangesampson posted:Also, WWE, the wrestling group, has called him out to go into the ring after he calls people who watch wrestling, stupid or something. Glenn Beck declined to "go into there".
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Feb 24, 2013 14:24
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watt par posted:The GOP isn't going away. Worst case scenario for them (or best case depending on who you ask) is they'll become a regional entity much like they were for a huge chunk of the 20th century. They've still got enough control at the state level through gerrymandering to keep congress filled with yahoos for the foreseeable future, and as far as actually accomplishing the things they want like outlawing abortion and forcing creationism in schools, they've had far more success holding governors' offices and state legislatures than they ever did at the federal level. Add in things like ALEC model bills and it's pretty obvious this is where the party's been heading for a while. When you think about the sneaky ratfuck poo poo they do best, they really are in their element working in the shadows, plus they have a compliant opposition party that'll go along with enough of what they want that they don't really need to be nominally in charge. This word just popped into my mind: wikipedia posted:Cruft: Somehow seems kind of analogous. Sorry for the OT post.
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Feb 24, 2013 14:32
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cheerfullydrab posted:Nationalize scooter production, make everyone who says they need a scooter go before a "Scooter Panel" which will decide their fitness. Let's give the people what they fear. So not only will grandma have to go before a death panel, but ten to fifteen years before that she'll have to go before a scooter panel. You monster.
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Feb 24, 2013 22:06
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Why do we need panels anyway? When everyone becomes too old to work we should just put them up against the wall and remove them from the social system  I wonder if there are any Republicans who actually believe this?
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Feb 24, 2013 23:31
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Cheapsteaks posted:Why do we need panels anyway? When everyone becomes too old to work we should just put them up against the wall and remove them from the social system As long as its a privately owned corporation doing the cleansing, I'm sure they won't mind. You see government death panels are bad, however our current system of private insurance companies denying you life saving treatments is the essence of freedom.
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Feb 24, 2013 23:50
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Guilty Spork posted:A friend sent me this video of the two guys in question. It's kind of interesting and amusing how they consciously break character (and turn off the green screen)to explain to Beck like the child he is that they're playing characters in a story and satirizing popular culture like usual. And they didn't just offer for him to come on; they offered him five uninterrupted minutes on national television to say whatever he wants. I can't bring myself to watch him anymore, but I'm guessing he left that part out? These guys got me good the other day. Someone posted one of their anti-immigration videos on face book and I commented on it as if it were real. Poe's Law is a total bitch.
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Feb 25, 2013 02:52
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keiran_helcyan posted:As long as its a privately owned corporation doing the cleansing, I'm sure they won't mind. We really need to outsource our death squads to save money. Thus capitalism will have reached its true peak.
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Feb 25, 2013 03:15
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bigtom posted:IBOC (In Band On Channel) is the digital radio standard in the US - the NAB put up a big fight to make sure that their existing analog facilities wouldn't be rendered obsolete with a standard like DAB (and have to share transmitting facilities and be on equal footing signal wise). HD Radio has been a dog from the get go - expensive radios, dubious improvements in sound quality, and coverage that even at elevated power levels that doesn't match the analog signal. Not only that, but 2 right wing talk stations in Boston (including one that Clear Channel started for the purpose of carrying Rush, Beck, Hannity and ilk) went belly-up recently. They've tried to put AM talk on FM recently because young people don't listen to AM radio anymore. Sports talk is working, but AM talk on FM isn't really doing it. Also, I think other companies are as bad as Clear Channel (i.e., WABC's owners Cumulus), but they don't get as much publicity because they're not Clear Channel. Also, with Barbara Streisand and Michelle Obama showing up at the Oscars tonight I think we're about to get some interesting material from people who don't like them.
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Feb 25, 2013 06:17
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Vertical Lime posted:Not only that, but 2 right wing talk stations in Boston (including one that Clear Channel started for the purpose of carrying Rush, Beck, Hannity and ilk) went belly-up recently. In large part that ends up being because more and more radio-equipped things these days will either not support AM radio at all, or will have AM radio support but using a tiny poo poo antenna that can't really receive anything. So you'll be on FM by default while older folks still have perfectly working AM receivers. Also yeah all the other major radio networks these days are awful! They've all pulled the same poo poo as Clear Channel and I really don't know why people give them a pass. Maybe it's just because Clear Channel is an awful name for a radio network that isn't actually for clear channel stations.
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Feb 25, 2013 06:34
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Vertical Lime posted:Not only that, but 2 right wing talk stations in Boston (including one that Clear Channel started for the purpose of carrying Rush, Beck, Hannity and ilk) went belly-up recently. WXKS (AM 1200) is a dog of a signal in Boston - only AM with full market coverage is WBZ. Even Rush couldn't get 1200 more than a 1.5 overall in the ratings. WPGB in Pittsburgh (conservative talker on FM) lags behind KDKA...only examples of AM to FM spoken word success stories are when it's straight up news (KCBS in San Francisco and WTOP in Washington DC). When its a conservative talker, results are mixed at best as far as lowering the demos. That gives me some hope that these may be the last few years for Rush and his ilk to pull down ridiculous sums of money while CC/Cumulus is sending out pink slips like candy to the rank and file. Cumulus is worse than CC in many respects, but because they aren't as big as CC, they can fly under the radar. WABC has almost zero local programming during the week outside of the 5A news hour, and on the weekends it's infomercials for krill oil and other crap. A far cry from the station that it was once a powerhouse top 40 station. Can't wait to hear what Rush has to say about Michelle & Babs at noon today...should be engrossing radio! bigtom fucked around with this message at 06:47 on Feb 25, 2013 |
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Feb 25, 2013 06:43
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Warchicken posted:We really need to outsource our death squads to save money. Thus capitalism will have reached its true peak. Iran-Contra, Been there, done that, had a trial, Oliver North got famous. They (Reagan and crew) were using the funds from the missiles they sold to Iran (for hostages) to fund the Salvadoran death squads. The holding corporation (non-governmental because they routed the whole scheme through Israel and who in their right mind wanted to be seen selling first-world weapons to revolutionary Iran anyw-oh wait) was outside government oversight because Congress told him to shove his plans up his old wandering rear end once they realized he wasn't just in another one of his ambulatory fugues and was honestly asking to go all Clear and Present Danger on Salvadoran popular-movement leftists because commies.
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Feb 25, 2013 06:46
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The Entire Universe posted:Iran-Contra, Been there, done that, had a trial, Oliver North got famous. Nicaraguan, not Salvadoran. The Contras were trying to overthrow Daniel Ortega.
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Feb 25, 2013 06:58
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Leave it to a fictional news commentator to voice fact-based truth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGAvwSp86hY Yeah I'm sure there are republicans who since the Nixon era onwards have been cringing and gritting their teeth watching as paranoid racist government-hating fuckheads took over their party.
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Feb 25, 2013 07:46
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Note: I'll move this to a different thread or anywhere else if there's a more appropriate place for this. I'm gonna need help re: Oil companies and the taxes they do or do not pay. Today I received a nearly year old article for "debate": quote:How much Tax does Big Oil Actually Pay? The only takeaway from this article that I was supposed to learn was, "Exxon paid $27B in taxes." I responded with the all-too-obvious, "Why are you quoting me stuff from a year ago about 2011 taxes? From OILPRICE.COM Deputy Editor Charles Kennedy? Should I not suspect any bias or agenda here? And I provided the following two links, which just, for me, obfuscate the whole matter. The above article claims Exxon paid this very very high effective tax rate, while the others below seem to say the opposite. I am not sophisticated enough to suss out the details. Can anyone point me in the right direction? I'm risking enough citing ThinkProgress with this guy, I need to understand this issue better with better sources to put in front of him (for him to ignore... hey, I'm just trying to do my due diligence here.) (Sorry for the huge quotations, just wanted to save you the trouble of browsing away.) quote:
Dr. Faustus fucked around with this message at 09:26 on Feb 25, 2013 |
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Feb 25, 2013 09:21
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The first thing I would suggest is that if their foreign tax burden is so onerous that it requires subsidies (which may or may not be a valid course of action), then why are their profits so huge? I would have thought that if that were the case, they'd be near break even?
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Feb 25, 2013 13:57
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"That goddamn socialist Obama's loves rich people too much!" 
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Feb 25, 2013 14:33
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No, Obama! Don't eat them that way.
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Feb 25, 2013 14:48
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bigtom posted:Cumulus is worse than CC in many respects, but because they aren't as big as CC, they can fly under the radar. WABC has almost zero local programming during the week outside of the 5A news hour, and on the weekends it's infomercials for krill oil and other crap. A far cry from the station that it was once a powerhouse top 40 station. I live in the NYC area and another message board killed WABC for having infomercials on a Saturday morning when parts of the area were getting a couple of feet of snow earlier this month. They might be in even bigger trouble now that Clear Channel recently brought another talk station and everyone is assuming Rush and such are gonna move there the first chance they get. On a related note, I heard their co-owned right wing talk station in DC was singled out by the company for under-performing even though they did make the FM switch. You can only put up with hearing the same viewpoints for so long. And how can I forget that Jane Fonda showed up last night too. That should reignite that incident from 40 years ago.
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Feb 25, 2013 15:32
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Guilty Spork posted:A friend sent me this video of the two guys in question. It's kind of interesting and amusing how they consciously break character (and turn off the green screen)to explain to Beck like the child he is that they're playing characters in a story and satirizing popular culture like usual. And they didn't just offer for him to come on; they offered him five uninterrupted minutes on national television to say whatever he wants. I can't bring myself to watch him anymore, but I'm guessing he left that part out? And if their butthurt wasn't already a known understanding, I find it funny that we have 30 years of the WWE propping stories on insensitive stereotypes and it's the Bagger story line that gets the pubbies butt hurt.
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Feb 25, 2013 17:16
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Vertical Lime posted:On a related note, I heard their co-owned right wing talk station in DC was singled out by the company for under-performing even though they did make the FM switch. You can only put up with hearing the same viewpoints for so long. Yep WMAL moved to a FM simulcast over a year ago and the ratings overall since then have gone DOWN. Maybe there's the slightest chance the demos improved but when the overall audience goes down when moving to a better signal and medium maybe they should reconsider what they're doing.
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Feb 25, 2013 17:18
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