07:48 – Costco run and dinner with Mary and Paul yesterday. Barbara is headed back to work this morning. Colin’s had a full week of Barbara being gone followed by a weekend with her home, so it may take him a day or two to get used to being back in the routine.
Stock on the CK01B chemistry kits is running low, so I need to build another batch.
10:44 – I just got another big purchase order issued, which should be the last big one I need to do until probably October or November. I wanted to get stocked up before the West Coast dockworkers’ contract expires at the end of this month. There are likely to be major disruptions on products from countries that ship to the West Coast. A lot of the components we use in kits are sourced from India whenever possible and otherwise China. But all of the stuff I’ve ordered was in-stock, and once it arrives we’ll have the components we need to build several hundred more kits.
Why — in a radio commercial for Jeep — do I need to be informed that “Jeep is a registered trademark of Chrysler Group LLC”?
And who are they kidding? It’s a Fiat any way you look at it.
Am I the only one losing all faith in government scientists (or government funded scientists) when you see articles like this?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/10916086/The-scandal-of-fiddled-global-warming-data.html
I have no idea of whom to believe but I am very suspicious of manipulated results when ones funding comes from government grants from governmental agencies looking to regulate more and more of our daily lives.
https://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2014/06/23/noaa-and-nasa-data-alterations-are-global/
As an engineer, I think that data is sacred, no matter what. I was a test engineer for a number of years and we stood by our data, no matter what.
Why is NASA still funded?
Data are sacred to both engineers and scientists, which is how this whole AGW alarmism thing got a foothold in the first place. Any scientist or engineer is loathe to believe that any other scientist or engineer would knowingly fudge the data. When this whole thing started to hit the headlines, I took it at face value simply because I couldn’t believe that so many scientists were, for all practical purposes, making up their data. When the first questions started to appear, my first thought was that the scientists in question were honest but mathematically incompetent (which is unfortunately common). The release of those emails finally convinced me that there’s no science there.
“I just got another big purchase order issued…”
I assume you have room for all this new stuff, as well as what you already have… 🙂
“Why is NASA still funded?”
Your tax dollars NOT at work enough.
The Hildebeest continues to put her foot in her mouth. Now she squees shes not as well off as she should be. lol $100million is not enough. Remember when Obummer was crowing about “just how much should people make.” Apparently Billary is not on board with that.
And the Spawn of Hildebeest adds:
“I was curious if I could care about (money) on some fundamental level, and I couldn’t,” she told UK’s The Telegraph, explaining why she gave up lucrative gigs to join her family’s philanthropic foundation.
When you make $600,000 for doing nothing because of your name, you are totally clueless about money. She’ll never want for anything or have to do anything to get it. I wonder what the “Foundation” pays her. Plenty of perks, too, I bet.
The Heroine of Tripoli and Benghazi has very serious medical issues, including an arrhythmic haht; a thyroid problem; and recurring blood clots all over, including between her brain and skull which could cause a stroke, with frequent fainting spells.
She’s not gonna make it; and she got millions in the advance for her shitty book that is tanking badly as she continues to blather spoiled rich-girl nonsense. Can’t pin this exclusively on Billary and their spawn, though; the Bush clans also are totally outta touch about money like the rest of us have to be; Bush Senior never carried cash on him and his SS minders would have to pony up theirs for his shopping trips to antique stores or the ice cream stand in Kennebunkport. Doubt if he ever paid them back, either; money just does not occur to these people at all; it’s like the air they breathe, always there.
Only difference is the Clintons are trash and think nothing of bleating about stuff like this or chiseling on their taxes; we won’t hear Shrub or his spawn whining about money anytime soon.
You do realize that that characterization is insulting to the many decent people who live in manufactured homes, right?
Where did I mention a manufactured home?
The Clintons are simply trash. Period. Has nada to do with manufactured homes. We think we know where Billy Jeff came from and the Oxford-Yale thing doesn’t change that or the record of his boorish and assaultive behavior over the decades. Lady MacBeth of Little Rock’s background is well-known but her behavior and ethics are likewise trashy, and have been from the earliest days, as we will know more about shortly in regard to her young-lawyer aggressive defense of a child rapist, who she brags about having got off. That is part and parcel of the record of her legal and political career; she and Bill will throw whomever out of the sleigh and run over anybody to get what they want and they’ve proven this many times.
The Obamas are even worse.
I’m sorry. I thought I remembered you referring to HC as “trailer trash”.
The Obamas are even worse.
This all in preparation for the Mooch becoming Pres. Sadly, I think that it is going to happen.
Joke I heard:
What do you get if you cross a crooked lawyer with a corrupt politician?
Chelsea Clinton.
Data are sacred to both engineers and scientists, which is how this whole AGW alarmism thing got a foothold in the first place. Any scientist or engineer is loathe to believe that any other scientist or engineer would knowingly fudge the data. When this whole thing started to hit the headlines, I took it at face value simply because I couldn’t believe that so many scientists were, for all practical purposes, making up their data. When the first questions started to appear, my first thought was that the scientists in question were honest but mathematically incompetent (which is unfortunately common). The release of those emails finally convinced me that there’s no science there.
Thanks, I’ve been thinking that I was losing my mind. I cannot believe that so many “scientists” are compromising themselves over grant money. But, that is the only explanation given that there is no science there.
I think that the new CO2 emission rules will amazingly change our lives here in the USA and not for the better. Manufacturing jobs have been coming back to the USA, that will cease soon.
Manufacturing is only coming back because we are lowering wages and making people poorer faster than any other western country.
I was taught in a college economics class that is considered normal progression of an economy to go from agricultural, to industrial/manufacturing, to information/services. Consequently, most of the manufacturing jobs going away are never coming back and those people should find entirely new sectors of the economy to work in rather than waiting around for some megacorp to open or re-open a factory in their town.
Manufacturing is only coming back because we are lowering wages and making people poorer faster than any other western country.
Nope. The price of energy has radically dropped by 60% since 2008 for businesses using natural gas. The price of grunt labor is only down 10 to 20% if that much.
Businesses using liquid fuels (diesel, gasoline, propane) are struggling.
“… I thought I remembered you referring to HC as “trailer trash”.”
It’s possible, I suppose, but I’ve never thought of them as “trailer trash,” per se; just trash. Trashy behavior, morals, ethics, etc. And Barry and the Mooch make them look like Sunday-best paragons of virtue. How low can we go? At this rate maybe the next President and First Lady will come from the ranks of all those mafiosi in Italy that the Pope has “excommunicated.”
I’d think of Billy Jeff as more of a trailer-type trash person than HILLARY! Her daddy was a big lawyer and she went to wonderful Wellesley. Another great nickname for her that I stole from Billy Beck is “Field Marshal Rodham.”
“…those people should find entirely new sectors of the economy to work in…”
Easier said than done; esp. when they’re told on the one hand to do that and on the other hand the better-paying information/service jobs are being offshored anyway. So all that’s left is cashier at Wall-Mutt, or going on the dole, while the kidz do the night-shift stockboy work at Wall-Mutt, join the Army or open a meth lab. A guy who’s been toiling for a quarter-century at the chip fab shop in a moon suit at IBM under them amber lights probably doesn’t have the skillz or knowledge to simply identify and locate a spiffy new gig in another sector of the economy and/or leave their family behind at the drop of a hat to move to another town a thousand miles away.
We’re also being told that it’s tough twinkies; in order to make a new economic omelet for whatever “new world order,” and all this wonderful globalization that has done so much for us, we gotta break a few eggs. Sadly, some folks just ain’t gonna make it. Tough twinkies. Write them off.
As it is, if the Hurt ever kicks in good and hard in this country like it has in Greece, Argentina, Ukraine, etc., many millions will be de facto ‘written off.’
This line about the economy being uncontrollable is just not true, IMO. The Germans have an appreciating currency, increasing labor costs, but are still exporting more year over year, because they do not have the super-rich mooches who are the root cause of us losing manufacturing. We let the Mitt Romneys and Carl Icahns of the world disassemble manufacturing and sell it off piece-by-piece for more than they paid for it, and the result is not necessarily their intentional move of manufacturing elsewhere, but the China’s, Vietnam’s, Malaysia’s, Thailand’s, and others with cheap labor, just stepping in to fill the void. If we have to build up manufacturing from scratch, we cannot do it as cost-effectively as others can, but we are more than happy to send our engineers and QC people abroad to show them how we did it. And that has worked!
Other economies are waging a fight against huge monopolistic conglomerates, but they are losing, because we — still the most influential economy in the world — bow down and worship bigness wherever it is found. Including on people’s bodies.
One good thing about our adventures in Nam, is that there are now nice little Vietnamese restaurants around me serving some of the best (and hottest) food on the planet. And my heart doc has 2 Vietnamese partners in his practice of 12 guys and 1 gal.
Winehq.com says Winamp works (all audio — video and visualizations not tested) with standard WINE on Trusty (which is my Mint 17), with no special tweaks. I will be trying that, hopefully yet this week. WINE is supposed to be standard on Mint 17, but I see it is not on my installation. I’ll fix that now.
Still getting 2-a-day updates for Mint 17.
What we need to understand is that most of those classified as “scientists”, aren’t.
Kinda’ like the religion “Christian Science”, a contradiction in terms.
At the advent of our nation 93% were farming the land. Subsequently, the percentage reversed. Fortunately, the industrial revolution which demolished the farm jobs provided manufacturing jobs. Why would one think that those should not also be transitory.
Can you believe that typesetting was taught in my high school three score years ago.
We’d moved up from typesetting to the Modern Era, Slim, by my time; manual typewriters and mimeograph machines. I do recall, however, being in some shop class or other, I forget where and with whom, but yeah, they showed us how typesetting was done. I remember actually doing hands-on with it and rolling the ink and giving it a whirl, so that would only be two-score and ten years.
re Steven Goddard pointing out that NOAA and NASA have no clothes, the warmingists are on the case, or rather his case: he’s not a climate scientist, therefore his pointing out the data fudging doesn’t count.
I suppose that by the same reasoning, I’m not an accountant, so it didn’t count when I spotted fraud when I was working on several accounting databases.
Also by that same sort of logic I wasn’t an IT security admin at two job sites over the years when I pointed out how easily their systems could be breached and was thus ignored. Naturally their systems were breached and naturally I was still the asshole messenger who brought the PHB manglers the bad nooz in the first place.
It also didn’t count, the many years of actual hands-on security patching, firewall building at the corporate level, and previous law enforcement and military experience when I didn’t get an IT security admin job at the same place I’d worked for two years. The guys who interviewed me were “looking at people with more experience,” and this job was allegedly close to entry-level and they had two slots. I’d like to see the people with more experience.
Back to the VA appointments this week, more house and yard chores, and waiting for Mrs. OFD to get paid so we can then turn it over to bills and the IRS per usual.
We gotta get us some fun this next week or two somehow.
Also about to knock this Windows system from 8.1 Pro to simply 8.0 with zero updates.
Has anyone run into weird choppy sound and videos on an upgrade from 8 to 8.1 or 8.1 Pro? Anyone run into weird issues using a wireless mouse?
It may well be the case with machines purchased that come loaded with Windows 8 that that is what it was designed to work with, period. Updates and upgrades are gonna be a problem or trying to put Linux on it ditto, although I have done that successfully with one machine, using Fedora 20.
Yep, been there on the job front, OFD. I’ve been turned down for contracts because I hadn’t officially done the job before, even though I’d been doing it for years. As we all know, to the bureaucratic mindset, all that matters is the paper trail, not actual ability or experience. Interestingly, my current contract has a comparatively lofty job title but most of what I’ll be doing is simple Java coding. The position title is one reason I took this contract, so I’d be “qualified” for the next senior developer gig that comes along.
And I’ve been the guy who brought unwanted news to a “leader”, and been held responsible for the problem existing. I pointed out to one “leader” that punishing the messenger was a good way to ensure that the next problem would not be reported in time to do anything about it. Good job, retard. (I left that last part out, though I was probably thinking it loudly enough that it was picked up even without super-cool telepathic powers.)
Let’s see — last post 19:36, now 23:30. Only took 4 hours to get Winamp installed with WINE on the netbook. Then Audacity would not accept any input but the built-in mic on the laptop. That took about 2 hours. Audio in Linux is a complete and total abortion. Had to install a thing called pavucontrol, which is the mixer/volume control for Pulse Audio. In there, I had to go to the ‘Recording’ tab and switch the input from “Built-in Audio Analog Stereo” to “Monitor of Built-in Audio Analog Stereo”. Then and only then would Audacity see applications playing. Now get this: I also had to have the meter monitoring function of Audacity switched on (with a mouse click on the meter), or otherwise the ‘Recording’ tab was totally blank. Windows is a kindergartner’s paradise compared to Linux.
I must say however, that I plugged the netbook into the Henry Kloss speaker system, and it is putting out absoutely astounding audio. Managed to get Hans Zutphen’s Stereo Tool installed as a plug-in — which Winamp 5.666 Lite recognized without restarting — and this sounds better than most recording studios I have worked in. Gotta get my Bobware stereo expander in there and I might float away.
Honey Cone – One Monkey Don’t Stop No Show
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmAz0UalyvA
Hey Chuck, were you in the industry when this happened?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rural_purge
I wonder about the wisdom of chopping highly popular, highly profitable programs just because they appeal to the wrong demographic.
RBT wrote:
‘I’m sorry. I thought I remembered you referring to HC as “trailer trash”.’
That was probably SteveF, not OFD.
As we all know, to the bureaucratic mindset, all that matters is the paper trail, not actual ability or experience.
It is called credentialism and I am just as bad about it as anyone else. My calculation engine programmers must have a PhD in Chemical Engineering and know what the difference between aqueous liquid and hydrocarbon liquid is (you would be surprised in this day of bio-engineering and theoretical molecular engineering).
Today’s song of the day is “Shooting Star” by the great Paul Rodgers (was playing on the radio while I was in the shower this morning):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kEDa6bXnA8
or live:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YEmC6cTXKY
I bought “Straight Shooter” on cassette in 1975 at the local head shop and still love the song and the band. No bad songs by this band!
Definitely feel like a shooting star nowadays. I used to be able to write a thousand lines of C++ or Fortran code in a day. Good working code! I’m lucky if I can do a hundred lines of working code in a day now. Usually ten or twenty.
Hey OFD, there are still some awesome cops out there, “Raw Video: Richmond officer drags screaming woman from train track seconds before death”:
http://www.chron.com/neighborhood/fortbend/news/article/Richmond-officer-races-to-save-woman-sitting-on-5573419.php
This was out by my home. Trains move 50+ mph out here. That dude was bold!
“I used to be able to write a thousand lines of C++ or Fortran code in a day. Good working code! I’m lucky if I can do a hundred lines of working code in a day now. Usually ten or twenty.”
Yup. “Getting old is hell.” ™
It’s not impossible, I guess, but seems unlikely that I’d call them anything more mild than “Hillary Lying Bitch Clinton, her lying rapist beard, and their horse-faced, hectoring bitch of a daughter”.
Lynn, what you’re doing is credentialism. The state “workers” picking people for contracts are doing something else. Well, credetialism, too, in requiring a BS in “computer science or related field”, but the biggest issue is that they require, say, five years’ experience as a software architect. It doesn’t matter if the candidate has done architect work while having been on contract as a regular programmer. It certainly doesn’t matter whether or not the candidate can actually do a good job of software architecture. All that matters is having previously been contracted as a software architect for a total of at least 60 months. This is similar to credentialism, but isn’t quite the same.
This comes, of course, from the state “worker”s’ inability to identify good prospects versus bad. They replace judgment by the interviewer with arbitrary months of experience in technical areas that will apply to the contract. Often the required number of months are ridiculous, such as requiring 60 months’ experience with ToolX, which was released only 45 months ago. Another form of excess is requiring 3 years’ experience with TechnologyY, which is simple enough that if you haven’t learned to use it in six months, you’re never getting it.
And, because many of the requirements aren’t checkable, especially by incompetent state “workers”, this leads to a lot of lying, which results in a lot of the contractors being liars. Furthermore, it has resulted in an entire industry of consulting companies who groom their employees’ resumes and coach their employees in lying to get the contracts.
It makes for an annoying workplace. In this geographic area, however, the state government pays IT people much better than any other employer; it comes of not having to make a profit, or even worry much about the economy having tanked. (Before taking this contract, I had very good interviews with two private companies who make things. They were each offering about 70% of what I’m currently making, and that was for salaried positions of some authority, rather than the 40-hour-per-week butt-in-seat programmer gig I have now. I was seriously tempted by them, just to get away from the state “workers” who surround me on the pointless web apps I develop, but my family is barely making ends meet as it is and I couldn’t afford the pay cut.)
Hey Chuck, were you in the industry when this happened?
Yup, I was there. Actually, I was not against all that change. They fail to mention Westerns. I was so fed up with Westerns, I could barf. And they just did not quit. As if 2 movies a year from John Wayne was not enough, Clint Eastwood went to Italy and they started cranking them out at twice the rate. Nine movies out of ten on television during my childhood were Westerns. Ugh!
Then along came Mike Nichols, who broke the spell by making The Graduate. Wayne retired, Eastwood started making cop movies, and that was the end of Westerns, thankfully!
As far as the network cancellations, many of those shows ended up in the local prime-time access slots, and went on for years after being cancelled by networks. We ran Gilligan’s Island every day after Walter Cronkite’s news for years. Did rather well for our ratings, in spite of CBS terminating it because of supposedly low ratings. Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy are in those slots these days — part of the late Merv Griffin’s empire.
And speaking of typesetting, one of the duties for my first several years in TV (while attending uni) was to set type every day to hot press in white type on black cards, the names of people in the news that night for the lower-third superimpositions. My station was a unique one. We had Ampex videotape machine serial #0005. The station owner, Jock Whitney, was married to CBS Prez Bill Paley’s sister, and we got machines manufactured for CBS, who was the first to utilize videotape after it was introduced. We also were the first station in the nation to get a character generator to do the lower-third titles. We had the prototype Chyron I that was built in somebody’s garage in New Jersey as proof of concept. What an improvement over hot pressing type! Although the storage gizmo gave us no end of troubles. Finally replaced with commercial dual 8” floppy drives, which were also problematic, probably because our company, grossing $35 million a year, was too damned cheap to buy enough floppy disks for the usage we were putting them to.
The small town-themed shows of the 60’s were all started by the movie Picnic, IMO. Picnic was a landmark movie on several levels, but it is seldom mentioned in film history chronicles. I played it for my kids not long ago, and they agreed it was an outstanding movie, but from an old-fashioned era that is so far removed from their lives, they think it was even before my time. Picnic was released when I was in the third grade, and I immediately fell for Susan Strasberg, who was much too old for me, of course. Of all the girl stars I wrote to as a kid, only Annette’s PR people sent back a response and picture. Very disappointing for a third grader not to hear anything back from Strasberg.
I wonder about the wisdom of chopping highly popular, highly profitable programs just because they appeal to the wrong demographic.
Awww, that’s just bullshit excuses. Most changes happen because new bosses (like Robert Wood did) want to make their mark and bring their friends into the fold. A local heritage radio station just canned a high-rated 22-year veteran morning drive news host whose ratings were going up, not down, and the vocal blowback from audiences is powerful. Won’t make a damned bit of difference. New chief executive (long time Indy country-western personality, who should know better) is determined to do it HIS way. Audiences can take the highway. They are announcing that they are purposely demanding super-conservative opinion to be interlaced within news stories, and the 22-year guy was not willing to do that.
My all-time favorite was CBS’ decision to cancel Mary Tyler Moore’s show when it fell to around a 14 share from being into the 20’s. I remember all the press from CBS at the time was that they would put in a show that would regain those super-high ratings. I followed that time slot for a couple decades. Not only did they never have a show in that time that reached a 14 share, they never had a show in there that got above a 4 share!
“…they are purposely demanding super-conservative opinion to be interlaced within news stories…”
“super-conservative”
Not sure what that means anymore. Is it country-club Repubs? Tea Party one-issue dolts? The Koch Brothers? Fox News Network? I’d guess any of those, probably, which I consider phony conservatives. Libtards figure “super-conservative” is anyone to the right of Fidel Castro and Che. To them now, Barry Soetero is conservative and of course the two Bush presidents were out-and-out fascists.
I know of the movie “Picnic” but haven’t seen it in its entirety. Also, of course, Cronkite, Huntley & Brinkley, McNeil-Lehrer, and the Clint Eastwood Empire.
Don’t even wanna get into the shitty job market hassles today and the utterly stupid screening and vetting processes; state and other gummint jobs are the worst for that, so far as I can see. Their online application processes even have templates that cover all the stuff SteveF mentions, down to number of months, years, etc. of experience with this or that bullshit that can be learned in days or a couple of weeks by anyone with a smidgeon of native intelligence.
I especially love the bastards who have a list they work off, of, say ten things they want you to have for an open position. You have eight or nine and could learn the other one or two very quickly. Nope. It gets tossed immediately. They would actually RATHER NOT FILL THE JOB than not meet all the conditions on their list.
But I said I don’t wanna talk about that today; too effin depressin.
Overcast all day here so fah and t-showers possible anytime now.
Finally got my RHEL 7 server registered and subscribed at RH but still can’t get updates so am badgering them again with the case. If you have one or more RH systems at, say, 6.5, and you upgrade them to 7.0 and expect your existing subscriptions to catch up you got another think coming. You have to un-attach the old ones and then attach them to the new system/s, a thankfully not too complicated process at their Customer Portal. But now RH Update is telling me the system is up to date and I know that’s a lie; 7.0 has been out long enough by now to have updates pending, just for security stuff alone, ’cause I’ve seen the email alerts I get.
Just about done backing up the 8.1 Pro Windows system to an external drive and going ahead later with bumping it back down to plain old Windows 8. And being henceforth very selective with Windows updates or maybe even none at all once I get everything working again the way it’s supposed to and the way we want it.
So, have you given any more thought to writing term papers?
Yup; but way busy right now with house chores, some of them overdue and critical, plus the ongoing IT job search, plus the Class III FFL paperwork and our IRS nightmares.
I’ll probably set up a web site at some point, with several “pages,” one of them dealing with term paper marketing.
I guess I have my own definitions for stuff that I somehow assume everyone else knows. To me super-conservative means right leaning with lots of truth-bending and outright lies together with screaming ad hominem attacks. This same radio group I mentioned as firing a very good guy, has a female talk host who originated from St. Louis, but just moved to Dallas. Dana Loesch is her name and listening is not pleasant. She is syndicated to a bunch of stations across the nation, including the Indy one. Unfortunately. If interested, I am sure you can stream her show.
Funny thing is that the top exec of this radio chain (who bought all the NBC radio stations when NBC radio dissolved) is not a conservative, but openly supports liberal causes around here. He is from Indy. Makes it so obvious this is a money grab attempt. Conservative radio talk has burned itself out and is on the decline. But he may have the timing just right for Hoosierdom; they are always 15 to 20 years behind the curve. We are so old-fashioned, many people take it for being on the cutting edge.
Talk shows of any kind bore me rigid. I keep switching ’till I find music I like. If I don’t I switch off.
@OFD: I hate to encourage this stuff, but I have had students post assignments on sites where people bid on one-off jobs to do. There are lots of these.
When I trip across one of my assignments on a site like this, I bid on it…with rather acerbic comments :-/
The only radio talk show host that I can stand is Rush Limbaugh. He is a superb performer and talks about many things of interest to me, a knower of much useless information. The old term for that was a gossip.
“…I have had students post assignments on sites where people bid on one-off jobs to do. There are lots of these.”
So that’s how it’s done nowadays; wow. I am so behind the times it’s pathetic.
As for talk radio, I don’t listen to it. My listening is roughly divided depending on time of day between classical, oldies and shortwave.
Classical and rock oldies — there are not many of us that smash those 2 together. When I am on-air at the radio project (only happens a few times a year when the owner is on vacation) I mix those as much as possible (format is known as “unpredictable”). Most people who like classical, cannot stand rock and vice-versa, but I have always loved both.
Talk radio is failing everywhere, but like a huge ship, is slowly veering from politics to sports. Limbaugh’s ratings are actually close to a death spiral. If something does not happen soon to fix that, I look for LImbaugh to withdraw from radio before his show dies from cancellation death. IMO, Limbaugh has committed the similar sin that Arthur Godfrey did: he forgot that it was the ‘little people’ (listeners and viewers) that accounted for his success. In the beginning, Limbaugh was independent; he pushed for Perot; he condemned the Republican party and made it change directions. But, just like Godfrey, he became enamoured with the rich and famous. He, himself, turned into a jet-setter, ultimately becoming a mouthpiece and excuse-giver for failed Republican party policies and candidates. His biggest piece of disinformation is that term ‘low-information voter’. No electorate in the history of mankind is more informed than today’s voters. It is not low-information that turns people against Republican stands, Rush; it is the never-before available high information. What a super-obvious bit of irrationality!
I have not seen recent figures, but talk radio’s reputation is totally out-of-proportion to its actual reach. Just before I left Berlin, only 6% of all US radio listeners tuned to talk radio — and that includes Rush Limbaugh’s numbers in his heyday. All-news radio is generally near the top of big market ratings, but it does not do well outside the top 5 cities. The overwhelming majority of radio listeners choose music radio of one form or another.
The great bulk of radio and television owners make a basic and very serious mistake: they put sales people in charge of the operations. Those people firmly and truly believe that commercials constitute programming. They do not. And the all-pervasive interjection of commercials at unprecedented density levels is driving audiences away big-time. Any viewer or listener KNOWS a commercial is an interruption to the program content. But top-level broadcast management is not going to change their attitudes any time soon — even though we have a locally-owned group operation that covers Tiny Town, and they are proving that audiences grow when commercial interruptions are limited. None of these 7 minute blocks of commercials that the big operations run.
But overall, it looks like political talk is losing ground big-time with radio. Which is just fine with me.
Ditto; I never got into or listened to political talk radio and have the exact same, but probably meaner, opinion of Limburger.
I grew up with classical in the house and an aunt played classical piano quite well; but I also grew up during the Glorious Sixties and inhaled a bunch of that music, too.
“Classical and rock oldies — there are not many of us that smash those 2 together.”
You, me, Larry Coryell and Merle Haggard.
Limbaugh’s ratings are actually close to a death spiral. If something does not happen soon to fix that, I look for LImbaugh to withdraw from radio before his show dies from cancellation death.
Got documentation on that? He is still claiming 25 million listeners.
Google “rush limbaugh ratings”. First one alone of many:
Rush Limbaugh’s Ratings Are In a State Of Complete Collapse
http://www.politicususa.com/2014/05/01/rush-limbaughs-ratings-state-complete-collapse.html
Rush has been dropped by almost all of the nation’s biggest stations and has moved to much less influential and significantly lower-rated ones — including being kicked off his original originating station, WABC New York.
Broadcasting trade magazines have made much of this all year long. Rush’s run appears to be over. It was longer than Godfrey’s though. Godfrey had all of his shows cancelled shortly after he fired well-liked Julius LaRosa on-air. I was a little kid at the time, but I happened to be at my grandmother’s house watching Godfrey’s TV show at the time that happened. Godfrey belittled everyone in real life and some on-air. He made life a hell for a lot of people who worked for him, including his super-talented band leader, Archie Bleyer, who built a record industry around early pop artists like Andy Williams, the Everly Brothers, Johnny Tillotson, Lenny Welch and instrumentalist Don Shirley. Godfrey actually referred to those who worked for him and his listeners as “the little people” off-air, and “little Godfreys” on-air.
If Limbaugh is claiming 25 million listeners, that gives some idea of much he can be trusted.
Edit — Hmm. I had not read that article before writing any of the above, but it confirms my 2 points: Limbaugh is at the end of the line; and political talk is yielding to sports talk. Except for Cincinnati, talk radio has become irrelevant, just like the Republican party, which now appeals to practically no one under 35.
And soon the Dems won’t appeal to anyone under 35, either; only hordes of immigrants to whom they promise Heaven on Earth.