Discussion and information about media in Wisconsin, concentrating on various forms of community media, PEG TV, low power radio, and hyperlocal web sites and blogs.
Rules have existed for several years now regarding closed captioning of television, largely enforced through the requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act or ADA. The implementation fo closed captioning varies wildly, from the careful captioning you will see on network television shows, to amusingly terrible, as you will see on live television in many cases.
So, a while back I wrote a little about our attempt to cut the cord on our TV. The ever-increasing price of cable (even on our wonderful telephone co-op service) had been becoming hard to bear, not to mention the fact that the company providing the cable service to the co-op seems to be a tad on the sloppy side. We have often found our local PBS channel only has one channel of stereo sound, and some other anomalies.
This is partly a test to see if I have fixed the caching problems for the audio player, and partly just because I love old Jack Benny shows. In this one, we go back to the "I Can't Stand Jack Benny" contest. In 1945 as the war was drawing to a close, the show ran a contest with big prizes where you entered by sending in a card explaining why you can't stand Jack Benny. This was seriously in tune with the self-deprecating humor of the show, and the continual jibes aimed at Jack.
In an era of virtual reality, artificial intelligence and ever-evolving media platforms, the biggest lesson for the future of journalism is that it’s time to get back to basics.
Progressive Talk Radio returned to Wisconsin yesterday.
Mike Crute, one of the hosts of Devil's Advocates, recently purchased 1510 AM in the Milwaukee area, changing the format from Spanish-Language Sports to all-talk progressive radio. The station has limited coverage in the state (mostly the Milwaukee area) but is available via live stream everywhere.
I am sad to say that NBC has decided to shut down Breaking News. I have come to rely on the Breaking News service to push important news updates to my cell phone, and have been overjoyed to have a service that actually gets the news first, gets it right (almost always) and actually has some normal sense of what "news" actually is. No breaking Kim Kardashian stories, no fake news, no partisan garbage of any type - just quick response to breaking news stories.
