The Doors’ follow-up to their #3 hit “Touch Me” was “Wishful Sinful”. It’s a moodily lovely Baroque Pop record that failed to crack the top 40, stalling at #44 on Billboard. In hindsight, it deserved better.
TV ’74
From Kolchak: The Night Stalker, S1:E1, September 13, 1974. Nobody at the network said, “Hey, put a top on that girl”?
The complete 20-episode series on DVD, minus the two earlier TV movies, is only $11.55 on Amazon. Video quality is very good, compared to the copies MeTV has shown.
https://www.amazon.com/Kolchak-Night-Stalker-Darren-McGavin/dp/B01IP2X718/
O.T.A. R.I.P.
Since canceling Fios TV and the Verizon DVR I had downstairs, I cling tenaciously to broadcast TV and the TiVo DVR on the porch. Anyone who has used a $30 Roku or Fire TV stick on a good broadband Internet service knows why cable television is doomed. The end of free broadcast TV may come sooner than that.
The first wave of cord-cutters thought of antenna TV as complementing Internet streaming. ATSC 3.0, aka NextGen TV, was supposed to ensure local network affiliates and independent stations would carry on as the primary outlets for news and sports programming.
An important technical feature of ATSC 3.0 is improved signal quality, thanks to OFDM modulation. 8VSB modulation in ATSC 1.0 is susceptible to reception interference, especially on the UHF band, which is favored over VHF frequencies for digital broadcasting.
NextGen TV offers more than improved signal quality. Broadcasters see it as a way to be exactly like streaming stations, except carried over the medium of the free public airwaves. Channels can be encrypted and, therefore, no longer be free.
The transition from ATSC 1.0 to 3.0 has been bungled by the FCC to such an extent, I won’t be surprised if some stations resort to turning off their transmitters to become broadband streaming services. That would open up over-the-air frequencies for the cellular networks to exploit. Lon offers more details about this than you probably want to know.
When will ATSC 1.0 broadcasting end? It’s a question that takes me to the actual point of this post. TiVo is out of the DVR hardware business.
https://www.pcmag.com/news/times-up-for-a-timeshifting-trailblazer-tivo-discontinues-its-standalone
I’d been hoping TiVo was waiting for the ATSC 3.0 confusion to be cleared up before announcing a new OTA DVR. Now I’m wondering if my TiVo OTA Roamio will stop getting programming guide updates before the hardware dies, or before the end of ATSC 1.0.
The Girls Are Back in Town!
Karen Damen, Kathleen Aerts, and Kristel Verbeke*. Beloved superstars in Belgium and Holland, the ladies are on a reunion tour.
Yes King
From “woke” PBS, a documentary about King Records, the Cincinnati label that launched the career of soul music’s James Brown.
Voting Your Conscience
Today, I attended a town hall meeting with my Congressman, Jim McGovern. If there were any Trumpers in the audience, they remained silent.
I didn’t get in line to ask a question, but at the close of the session I expressed my concern about the economy to McGovern. Trump has Scott Bessent as Treasury Secretary, he’s compromising confidence in the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and he will certainly take control of the Federal Reserve. If we’re lucky, when combined with the tariffs, the economic damage will result in a strong midterm election for Democrats. That’s assuming the election is held, and McGovern is concerned it won’t be.
McGovern said he doesn’t respect Republican politicians who aren’t voting their conscience, out of fear that Trump will put a challenger up against them in their next primary. I’m voting my conscience today, by unsubscribing from comedian Louis C.K.’s mailing list.
I was willing to reserve judgment about Louis for his admitted sexual misbehaviors. The accusations against him came about when the #metoo movement refused to allow any nuance in discussions regarding the most complex aspect of human relationships. Propositions were viewed as precursors to assaults.
But now, I’m done with Louis C.K. He is trying to introduce nuance where I see no wiggle room for it. Saudi Arabia’s follow-up to sportswashing is jokewashing. No matter how you cut it with a bone saw, it’s blood money.