Paxety Pages

More on Cheap Channel's destruction of broadcasting - from the Lyin' Atlanta Newspaper (thanks for the link to Daniel Taylor).

Alice says Jacksonville is a bizarre TV market. It's more bizarre than she knows - here's a brief history. (And to avoid some confusion, I'll use channel numbers rather than call letters):

Until the mid-50s, Jacksonville had one TV station - Channel 4. It was a CBS affiliate (eventually owned by Post-Newsweek). Then Channel 12 signed on as an NBC affiliate (eventually to be owned by Gannett). Ten years later, the FCC authorized new UHF licenses across the country and Jacksonville got Channel 17 in 1966. It was an ABC affiliate. ABC was the third rated network nationally by far.

In 1976, ABC carried the Summer Olympics and heavily promoted it's fall TV schedule. ABC had strong shows that year and rose to prominence. As a result of it's better ratings, ABC was able to switch to stronger stations - and in Jacksonville, ABC switched to Channel 12. NBC and Channel 17 were kind of stuck with each other. (I won't go into engineering details, but in the days before cable saturation, a VHF station (channels 2-13) was much more desirable than a UHF station (channels 14-69).

Things stayed stable until the late 80s. By then, NBC had ridden The Cosby Show, and others, to top ratings, so NBC was the desirable network. Channel 12 switched back to NBC, leaving ABC and Channel 17 stuck with each other.

In the meantime, Channels 30 and 47 signed on as independents. Channel 30 (now owned by Clear Channel Communications, aka Cheap Channel) became a FOX affiliate and by 1991, the general manager decided he wanted news on his station. He lacked the budget or the space for a news department, so he contracted with Channel 17 to provide a 10PM newscast. That meant you could watch "First Coast News" - same people, many of the same stories - on both 17 and 30.

But Media General, the owner of Channel 17, refused to put necessary money into the station, and ratings fell steadily. By 1996, ABC was fed up - it made a deal with Albritton (another large owner of TV stations) to create a new ABC station in Jacksonville. ABC told Channel 17 that it would not renew their affiliation agreement that would expire in mid-1997. Albritton began plans to put a new station, Channel 25, on the air.

In the meantime, Channel 47 went bankrupt. New owners made an agreement with Cheap Channel to manage and program the station. It became a UPN affiliate.

Channel 17 announced that it would become a WB affiliate and that it would shut down it's news department in December, 1997.

The folks at Channel 30 had found news profitable, so in less than 3 months, it put together a news department - both staff and equipment - and went on the air with it's newscast the day after Channel 17 shut down news. About 70 people were now crammed into a building that previously held about 30.

A couple of months later, Channel 25 got on the air and did a 7PM newscast from leased space in an old shopping mall.

By August 1997, Cheap Channel completed a move to a new, much larger building, combining the operations of Channels 30 and 47. A 6:30PM newscast was added on 47. At about the same time, Cheap Channel announced it had bought several radio stations in Jacksonville (I think 6 or 7) and that it would eventually move them into the building with the TV stations.

About a month later, 25 completed it's new building and came on the air with newscasts throughout the day. Albritton spent a lot of money on a fancy building, a helicopter, fancy graphics, live trucks, sat trucks, anchors from big markets. But it never achieved ratings success.

In 2000, the FCC changed the rules to allow a company to own more than one TV station in a market. Clear Channel bought 47 - no surprise there as it was operating the station, along with it's own 30. But then Gannett announced that it was buying 25 from Albritton. It merged the station with it's own Channel 12, and a bunch of people lost jobs. And to add to confusion, the new 12/25 newscasts began using 17's old name, "First Coast News."

Through all of these changes there was one constant - Channel 4 was always CBS. It even boasts the longest continuous anchor team in the nation - about 20 years. Now Post Newsweek has told CBS to take a hike. Channel 4 will become an independent because independents can now make more money than network affiliates.

Oh, the changes in broadcasting. I'm glad I'm out of it.

April 4

WJXT-TV4 drops the dime on CBS. After about 50 years as a CBS affiliate, WJXT told the network it would not renew it's affiliation. WJXT says it will become an independent. Worry around town seems to center on who will carry the Jacksonville Jaguars games next season.

Later - here's WJXT's side.

A look at post-modernism and the Nazis. Tracing facism from Nazi scientists and philosophers, to Yale, to present day Islamofacsists.

Another deconstructionist disciple of Heidegger's, Michel Foucault, swooned that Ayotollah Khomeini was "a kind of mystic saint." Foucault welcomed the Ayatollah's "political spirituality" which would take Iran back to its natural roots, overthrowing the modernizing forces of global capitalism. In this regard, the Ayatollah's program for Iran was quite similar to Hitler's program for Germany.

And:

Just as Heidegger wanted the German people to return to a foggy, medieval, blood and soil collectivism purged of the corruptions of modernity, and just as Pol Pot wanted Cambodia to return to the Year Zero, so does Osama dream of returning his world to the imagined purity of seventh century Islam. And just as Fanon argued that revolution can never accomplish its goals through negotiation or peaceful reform, so does Osama regard terror as good in itself, a therapeutic act, quite apart from any concrete aim. The willingness to kill is proof of one's purity.

Read it.

April 3

Wait a minute. U.S. soldiers are in Saudi Arabia, the country containing the Muslim holy city of Mecca. Being in the country is such an outrage that bin Laden declares war on the west - but somehow it's OK for Muslim terrotists to seek shelter inside the church that was Jesus' birthplace. How will the liberals spin this?

April 2

Boston Globe columnist Alex Beam takes on the blogosphere - with a traditional, old media, snide column. It's the same attitude I saw many times in news departments - the viewer (reader) is an idiot and we have to tell him what to think, and be negative while doing it. One of Beam's subjects it James Lileks, who warned us of the coming column then discussed newspapers vs. blogs in his Bleat today. Go read them both - then tell me who is the more interesting writer. (BTW- Beam doesn't even catch on that Bjorn Staerk's brilliant parody  website is just what a reasonably intelligent person would expect on April 1st - an April Fool's Day joke.)

Abu Zubaydah, captured over the weekend in Pakistan, has previously been identified as the mastermind behind the U.S.S. Cole attack. From the Washington Post on January 14th -

One man of urgent concern to intelligence officials in the United States is Abu Zubaydah, a 30-year-old Palestinian who is believed to have served as field commander for the October 2000 bombing of the USS Cole and to have been responsible for screening recruits to the training camps in Afghanistan.

I don't see the major media reporting this. Why not? Maybe they're too busy writing snide columns about bloggers.

April 1 

Everyone watching a news program Sunday saw those peace activists in Ramallah carrying white flags of truce and walking by Israeli troops isolating Yassah Arafat. A little later in the day, we saw these same peace activists greeting Arafat with hugs and kisses. Now we learn that as the peace activists left Arafat's headquarters, they tried to smuggle out Palestinians wanted by the Israelis.

They didn't get away with it. The Israelis placed the peace activists under arrest.

The war against Iraq is coming in September - so say the Brits.

Are you one of the folks who always wanted to be a rock star but were too lazy to pick up a guitar? Here's the answer, a plug-in named Ta!ent.

March 31

How's this for TV promo of the week? It comes from the department I've heard described as Kiddy News - FOX30 - WAWS.

Another day, another suicide bombing in the Middle East. We'll have more at 10.

How can anyone put such a thing on the air? It's moronic, stupid, banal - but most of all it's flippant about death. It shows the use of cliche rather than thought.

Thomas Friedman of the New York Times is in a slight way responsible for the latest suicide bombings - he's the reporter who first wrote about the supposed Saudi peace plan. By writing his story (and by the Western press quickly accepting it as actually workable) he led some Palestinians to conclude that the bombings were working - and would drive Israel into the sea. Friedman finally gets it:

The outcome of the war now under way between the Israelis and Palestinians is vital to the security of every American, and indeed, I believe, to all of civilization. Why? Quite simply because Palestinians are testing out a whole new form of warfare, using suicide bombers — strapped with dynamite and dressed as Israelis — to achieve their political aims. And it is working.

Israelis are terrified. And Palestinians, although this strategy has wrecked their society, feel a rising sense of empowerment. They feel they finally have a weapon that creates a balance of power with Israel, and maybe, in their fantasies, can defeat Israel. As Ismail Haniya, a Hamas leader, said in The Washington Post, Palestinians have Israelis on the run now because they have found their weak spot. Jews, he said, "love life more than any other people, and they prefer not to die." So Palestinian suicide bombers are ideal for dealing with them. That is really sick.

Yes, it is really sick Read it all here (link requires registration.) Now what do we do before we have bombers at our local malls? I can think of nothing other than destroying them before they destroy us.