Brad on Broadcast

How’s your station doing, economically speaking? Are sales above last year? If your station is like most other companies, times are probably tough.

For most Broadcast Engineering readers, these are the worst economic conditions they have ever experienced. Jobs have been lost, companies and offices closed, and savings decimated. While this has yet to become the economic depression our parents experienced, it still hurts.

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I’m typing with clinched teeth this morning as the news reports continue nonstop about the automotive industry’s demand that taxpayers bail out its poorly managed, high-union-labor-cost industry. One pundit called giving the automakers any bailout simply pouring bad money into a black hole. He continued by asking what do you get after $25 billion? His answer: the same bankrupt, inefficient, high-labor-cost industry, making cars people don’t want.

It seems to me that most of the industries clamoring for tax dollars are looking to be saved from their own greed. A recent example shows how one company responded when the government rode in to rescue it from its own bad decisions. The insurance giant, AIG, was called too big to let fail, so in early September, the government loaned AIG $85 billion.

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What will you be doing on the morning of Feb. 17, 2009?

I’m guessing a lot of Broadcast Engineering readers will be answering viewer telephone calls. Those callers will be asking, “Where’s your signal? Are you off the air?”

After you explain that the station is still transmitting, but only in digital, what do you say to, “What do I have to do in order to get your signal?”

A community-wide analog shutoff test was conducted two months ago in Wilmington, NC. The results showed that despite massive promotion, viewers were hardly ready for DTV.

Elon University’s associate dean of the School of Communications, Connie Book, initiated a research project where students documented the stations’ switchover and then collected demographic and DTV-relevant information from viewers who called the stations for help during the test.

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After enduring a 22-hour, door-to-door travel time getting home from IBC, I’m ready to endorse children-free airplanes. I was unfortunate enough to encounter several of the most ignorant, selfish parents with small children in all my years of flying.

In both legs of my return flight, there were multiple 3-year-old-something’s who were allowed to totally disrupt the flights with their screeching, screaming behavior. I watched (and was forced to listen) as these acoustic terrorists held all of us passengers hostage, in one case for nine hours. No one, including the kids’ parents, worked to temper the behavior of these obnoxious brats.

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I recently spent an entire day cleaning my basement. One result was a small mountain of old computers and electronics to be trashed. My first thought was to simply stack it on the curb on trash day. One call to the refuse company junked that idea.

They informed me that my community had an electronics recycling program. A call to the city told me that this was true, but the cost was $10 per computer or monitor and $25 per TV set. Man, what I considered trash was going to cost me a fortune to get rid of.

It seems that everyone must become a recycler these days. Actually, broadcasters were among the first to help eliminate dangerous chemicals from landfills.

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What’s your favorite comfort food? For a Midwesterner, it might be chicken fried steak and mashed potatoes. For a Bostonian, comfort food might be clam chowder. In San Francisco, comfort food could include an Italian specialty from North Beach or chocolate from Ghirardelli Square. The common element in each of these examples is that the dish provides something that the diner finds familiar, pleasing, easy to access and meets an emotional need.

Now, replace the word “food” with “technology.” What would you define as comfort technology?

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I love the Apple commercial with four gray-suited guys who represent the Vista operating system. One says, “Well, I’m pleased to say, I’ve been error-free for over a week. Well, I’m pleased to say, I’ve been error-free for over a week. Well, I’m pleased …” You get the idea.

Many of you may have already made the transition to Microsoft’s Vista and Office 2007. We at Broadcast Engineering are just now going through that process.

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