Media

There are 262 posts filed in Media (this is page 17 of 27).

Little Raleigh Radio kicks off its donation campaign!

Little Raleigh Radio


Little Raleigh Radio, the LPFM station I’m helping launch, has gone live with its Kickstarter donation campaign! After just one day it’s already reached 1/3rd of its goal of $10,000!

Help bring really local radio to Raleigh! Donate today!

We are building a community radio station and we need equipment so we can start broadcasting.

We are doing this. We are starting a community radio station in downtown Raleigh and we are doing it legit.

This studio will launch our internet broadcast stream and it will also prepare us to be on the air with a low-power FM signal in 2013. We need to populate the studio with more hardware than a couple of laptops and microphones borrowed from our volunteers. We are using Kickstarter to raise $10,000 to purchase gear including soundboards, CD players, turntables, microphones, speakers, cables and supportive equipment. We need your help. We believe in the value of community and we want our volunteers to be able to create community through radio.

via Little Raleigh Radio // We'll do it live! by Little Raleigh Radio — Kickstarter.

Great coverage of the Duke Energy – Progress coup

I’ve really been impressed with the coverage of the Duke Energy merger fiasco done by the N&O’s John Murawski, such as today’s story on Jim Rogers’s talk with Progress employees. Murawski’s been churning out story after story on this and has even managed to write an especially colorful feature on the Eno River festival in between.

I also enjoyed today’s commentary by N&O editor Dan Barkin, who all-but-laughs at the lame excuses Duke CEO Jim Rogers gave to the N.C. Utilities Commission on Tuesday. If after all the merger’s due diligence Duke was somehow surprised by Bill Johnson’s leadership style and the sad shape of the Crystal River plant then it ain’t Johnson who needs to needs to be shown the door. No, the only ones who got taken for a ride here are the ratepayers and the justifiably-angry commissioners at the NCUC.

This is why I still subscribe to newspapers. Keep it up, boys!

HD radio online

Yesterday I got curious about HD Radio so I pulled up the Wikipedia page on it. It turns out HD Radio a proprietary mess. Standard-owner iBiquity could’ve used one of the dozens of openly-available CODECs to create HD Radio (and the FCC could’ve mandated it) but instead it hacked the MPEG4-AAC standard into something proprietary. In the long run, this will set back American radio innovation as compared to Europe’s open standards-based approach. What a shame.

The end result is that radio manufacturers have to pay a royalty to make HD radio receivers. Station owners pay a large fee for the encoder and sign away 3% of their net profits. All of this is for a digital format with a nascent, unproven audience.

Looking to Raleigh’s leader in broadcast advancements, Capitol Broadcasting, I clicked on WRAL-FM’s homepage and found a link to listen online to the station’s HD broadcast. An Adobe Flash-based player instantly launched, streaming a nice mix of music with apparently no commercials. Quite nice!
Continue reading →

Perdue “false letters” controversy

Today’s News and Observer brought word in big type that Governor Perdue’s staff drafted two “false letters” that misrepresented the views of the NCDOT’s chief operating officer Jim Trogdon regarding two road projects. I read and reread the article, confused about where the controversy was that prompted the bombastic headline, “Perdue Staff Altered Letters.”

From what I can gather, Trogdon was out of town, the governor’s office asked Trogdon’s office for help in responding to concerns of two legislators, Trogdon’s staff worked with Perdue’s staff to craft the letters, and the letters were sent to the legislators in time for the budget meeting.

Trogden’s assistant takes full responsibility for the changes, since she approved them. To me, this is simply a breakdown in communication, not the conspiracy the N&O makes it out to be.

Betsy Muse has a bigger breakdown on the issue here.

Fake “morgue shooting” headline

"17 remain dead in morgue shooting spree"


A blurry image shared by the George Takei Facebook page showed an edition of the News and Observer that had a story headlined “17 remain dead in morgue shooting spree.” It looked fishy, so I went hunting for the source.

Turns out, Andy Bechtel already did the legwork:

So where did the fake N&O page come from? A Facebook friend points to the Brunching Shuttlecocks, a defunct comedy website, as the source of this image. If you happen to know more, please add a comment on this post.

Good job, Andy!

(For those who are curious, here’s the real front page appeared on September 7, 2001. [PDF] )

Don’t Mean To Be Alarmist, But The TV Business May Be Starting To Collapse

This is right on the money. Business Insider is proving what I’ve been saying for years about the television business: it must change or die.

Today’s “cord cutters” might be considered the “early adopters” (if there is such a thing when people skip a service) but soon the masses will begin eschewing traditional television and then TV as we know it will collapse.

We still consume some TV content, but we consume it when and where we want it, and we consume it deliberately: In other words, we don’t settle down in front of the TV and watch “what’s on.” And, again with the exception of live sports, we’ve gotten so used to watching shows and series without ads that ads now seem extraordinarily intrusive and annoying. Our kids see TV ads so rarely that they’re actually curious about and confused by them: “What is that? A commercial?”

via Don’t Mean To Be Alarmist, But The TV Business May Be Starting To Collapse – Business Insider.

Warren Buffett’s letter to his editors and publishers

Billionaire investor Warren Buffett wrote a wonderful letter to the newspaper editors who became his employees. He touted the value of local journalism.

I thought about his words this week when, as I was read the Raleigh News and Observer, I realized I had learned of 90% of its stories from other sources. That’s fine for a newspaper, actually, if (and only if) the newspaper brings me depth I cannot get from other sources.

I expect to get the full story from the paper, not just a “teaser” for which the TV news is infamous. If all you’re bringing me is an abridged version of a story I’ve already read online, you’re not bringing me any value.

Though the economics of the business have drastically changed since our purchase of The Buffalo News, I believe newspapers that intensively cover their communities will have a good future. It’s your job to make your paper indispensable to anyone who cares about what is going on in your city or town.

That will mean both maintaining your news hole — a newspaper that reduces its coverage of the news important to its community is certain to reduce its readership as well — and thoroughly covering all aspects of area life, particularly local sports. No one has ever stopped reading when half-way through a story that was about them or their neighbors.

via Warren Buffett’s letter to his editors and publishers | JIMROMENESKO.COM.

Gov. Perdue issues executive order creating fracking task force

The N&O’s John Frank is a great reporter and I always enjoy his stories. If I may be allowed to pick nits, though, I did have one quibble with this Dome blog post he wrote about Perdue’s fracking executive order (emphasis mine):

Perdue wants the group to include appointees from the Democrat and Republican leadership in the House and Senate. But her executive order appears to preempt — or at least compete with — legislative efforts to create an official oil and gas board to write regulations for energy exploration.

The proper term is “Democratic leadership” (such as it is, admittedly). Then again, I’m not won two talk about double-chicking mmy blag posts before postine them, am I? 🙂

via Gov. Perdue issues executive order creating fracking task force | newsobserver.com projects.

Raleigh to involve public sooner in parks planning

I was quoted in this morning’s Midtown Raleigh News on the new Public Participation Process for Raleigh Parks.

After a string of park projects beset by opposition battles and lengthy delays, the city’s parks and rec department will soon overhaul the way it works with the public during planning for future parks, ballfields and gyms.

The proposed guidelines, laid out in exhaustive detail in three documents totaling 89 pages, are intended to pinpoint areas of disagreement and bring together citizens groups to give suggestions, particularly when controversial projects are involved.

The idea is to resolve disputes early and not let them fester, said City Manager Russell Allen.

“The hope is that if you take time up front, you don’t get snagged later in the development of the project and run into an element of the public that never bought in,” Allen said.

via Raleigh to involve public sooner in parks planning – Raleigh – MidtownRaleighNews.com.

RTP reset

Yesterday there was yet another massive traffic jam on I-40 in RTP. Commutes that usually take 30 minutes took three times as long. I was fortunate that it was a day that I work from home, but thousands of others weren’t so lucky. I don’t know anything that could have better validated my earlier thoughts on RTP being doomed.

Today’s N&O editorial echoed my earlier thoughts, though I found a contradiction. The N&O says RTP seeks to urbanize, yet it’s still touting its “large amounts of green space.” You can’t have it both ways! You can’t have density and not have density. Right now RTP has little to no density and the odds of it achieving any are slim to none.

In short, RTP is a losing model. RTP may die a slow death, but it will die. After sixty years of service, it’s time for RTP to retire.

The park’s model has become an American classic – large, woodsy, campus-like settings where companies and agencies have plenty of elbow room. Its founders took advantage of the synergy derived from the surrounding constellation of major universities.

Chemicals, computers, pharmaceuticals, telecommunications, environmental sciences – these have been the park’s backbone, and its prosperity has driven growth throughout the Triangle, especially in North Raleigh, Cary and southern Durham.

But if companies like IBM, Nortel and Glaxo were the anchors, the park has had to adjust as those companies have evolved or (as in Nortel’s case) faded from the scene in the face of new technologies. And what used to be an attractive sense of isolation from hectic commercial corridors has become, in some people’s minds, more detriment than advantage.

via RTP reset – Editorials – NewsObserver.com.