Media-crity

note: I’ve been writing this over several long, sleepless nights so pay no attention to the posting date as that just represents when I got around to finishing it.

I’ve struggled with insomnia since I was a child. I can remember being six years old and counting the cars that passed on a distant street. I had this fear of being the last one awake. When no one in my house was awake, I felt the most alone I had ever felt in my six years. That feeling still lingers, I can call it up if I think hard enough.

At some point I got permission to listen to the radio at night. It changed everything. The DJs of 101.1 WCBS-FM out of New York City put me to sleep every night. Somehow, just as I had irrationally feared being the only one awake, voices coming from across the river irrationally soothed me. I’m not a psychologist and this isn’t a psychology blog, but somehow that connection to someone else who was awake was enough to relax me to sleep.

On Friday, June 5, 2005, WCBS-FM 101.1 went Jack FM without any warning. Long-renowned DJs were unceremoniously let go. Here’s the wikipedia account of “the day the music died”:

In a shocking and controversial move, at 5:00 PM Eastern Daylight Time on Friday, June 3, 2005, WCBS-FM 101.1 flipped formats from Oldies to the new “Jack FM,” and is self-identifying under that term. After playing the Frank Sinatra song “Summer Wind,” WCBS-FM listeners heard 30 minutes of stunting with movie liners, clips of various songs, sound effects, Frank Sinatra’s version of “Theme from New York, New York”, and more sound effects including songs with the name “Jack” (such as “Hit The Road Jack”) and having the “Jack” faded out. Then at 5PM a voice came on stating “Why don’t we just play what we want? I mean, there’s a whole world of music out there.” Then a little introduction was played which was followed by the announcing of the new station name. “Welcome to the NEW 101.1 Jack FM, playing what we want.” After that, the Beastie Boys’ “Fight for Your Right” was played, becoming the first song played under the new “Jack” format.

There are many reasons to get angry about this “Jack” format. Decades of loyal listeners cast aside in the name of the almighty advertising dollar. The old song and dance: scores of listeners are great, when they’re the right demographic. The top companies want that golden demographic and the oldies format just wasn’t cutting it. A family of DJ’s and listeners cast away with the flick of a switch. 101.1 mainstay “Cousin” Brucie Morrow likened the change to “replacing Yankee Stadium with a fruit stand.”

But on long nights like this, all I feel is sadness. I think about a little girl with messy brown hair and blue eyes curled up in her bed with a portable radio, scanning the dial for companionship to get her through. All she’ll find soon is a signal programmed in Texas and bounced around the country with no human involvement whatsoever. She goes back to counting cars and struggling against fear in silence.

There’s been an interesting shift in the media coverage of MySpace over the past week or so.

MySpace leapt onto the front pages of local (the Hartford Courant had two stories as part of a larger “expose” after Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal launched an investigation into complaints of sexual misconduct between adults and the children they lured into compromising positions via MySpace: A Social Life on the Cyber Edge and Risky Spaces) and national (The Nightly News with Brian Williams covered it, as did Dateline) news.

The response from the blogging world was largely that these equally clueless reporters and parents were making mountains out of molehills as, a) this has always been a problem, b) the responsibility falls to the parents to know what their kids are doing online (this was addressed by many of the newsreports), and c) Get the kids the hell off MySpace, it wasn’t created for them and it can’t do much more than it is to protect them. This little diatribe here talks about how people just need to use common sense before they put information online. There’s an interesting take on musicians and groupies and their presence on MySpace here, with a comment below calling out the media for its scare tactics and incorrect information.

Now, the shift. I’ve seen some positive articles popping up pointing to what MySpace was really about in the beginning: A way for bands and fans to find each other. Bands get their name out there without money-grubbing labels getting their meathooks all up in the band’s kitchens, and fans get access to the latest news and tunes. It’s nice to see, and will hopefully balance out all of the negative coverage before all MySpace users are denounced as pedophiles. However, would all this coverage have come about if MySpace hadn’t been bought by Rupert Murdoch’s NewsCorp? Something to consider.

Valentine’s Day: Cute and fun or Commercialized crap?

Love is in the air across all forms of media today. Articles about puppy love in the paper, romantic movies on TV, love song countdowns on the radio, and … commercials for Hallmark and 1-800-FLOWERS everywhere. Right.

So here’s the Mediacrity Bottom Line on Valentine’s Day:
–It’s not just about romantic love. Do you have friends? Family? Pets? A favorite sweater? Then you have someone to share your love with. Take them out to dinner, to the park, to the dry cleaner.
–Don’t expect gifts, but appreciate the hell out of them if you do get them. If that special person doesn’t bring you roses or candy, that’s no reason for the silent treatment. But if they do, a big kiss would be appropriate. Or a firm handshake. Depends on the situation.
–We should show love and appreciation for each other all year ’round. Valentine’s Day is not the only day to say “I love you.” However, if you do all of that every other day of the year, then there’s nothing wrong with ramping it up a bit today.

So go out there and give your sister, your spouse, your puppy, or your Jimmy Choos a big old hug!

Lock up your daughters, it’s the blizzard of 06!

Okay, this has nothing to do with what this site is about, but holy snow, batman! We’re pretty much snowed in here with 19″. I’m sure I’ll be posting some more soon, as we spend our day with local TV anchors, the olympics, and DVDs.

In the meantime, stay safe, stay warm.

Award shows are much more entertaining when you can watch them with a group of people. Award shows also tend to run long and late into the evening, necessitating that one either be out late on a “school night,” or entertain guests. Enter technology. After a long day of recovering from a nasty migraine, I was able to sit on my couch and read several “live blogs” as well as trade snark with friends via email and instant messenger.

I love you, technology. You can’t replace spending time with other humans, but you can be an excellent substitute when the situation calls for it. Especially when it’s just too cold to want to venture outside unless absolutely necessary, and there’s a new episode of LOST on.

Grammy annoyance, though: What was up with putting the sponsor ads over “In the Midnight Hour.” Can’t you let them finish their Wilson Pickett tribute?? This is what really gets to me in our commercial consumerist culture: The sponsors needs start to eclipse the integrity of the main event. Getting Continental’s name out there becomes more important than letting the show finish. The advertisers logos become more important than the name of the event.

1. WFSB anchor Dennis House is wearing a jacket that appears to be embroidered with the Eyewitness News 3 logo on the lapel. I wonder if this is by choice.

2. In a story about the plea deal entered in the Station nightclub fire tragedy court case, they spoke to one of the victim’s mothers … and identified her as “victim of mother.” Yeah.

Dan Abrams, one of my favorite TV personalities (okay, I admit, I may have a small celebrity crush …) has a blog entry about the media as the scapegoat for defense lawyers. It’s so laughably common now. “My client didn’t kill that woman! He was … at church! Yeah! The media made him into a bad guy! Not all that damning evidence they have a right to report!”

The media is not perfect. It’s biased, it’s inaccurate, it’s shaded by government and advertising … but it can also manage to get some things right. It’s not in the business of condemning innocent people for sport. “Media bias” cannot become a reasonable defense.

Well, it may be too little, too late, but here were the final results, as promised. Looks like you can still vote in the poll and people still are. It’s currently at 59% Yes/41% No.

And, as predicted, the mouthbreathers have emerged from their cave and come up with three separate class-action lawsuits against the publishers. One is in LA, one in Seattle, one in Illinois. This handy little op-ed piece over at FindLaw breaks the suits down and opines on the validity (or lack thereof) of the suits. I’m still in awe of the audacity of people. It’s a book. You read it. Move on. I don’t know how many ways I can say this.

(I can understand how people can feel betrayed. I, personally, do not, but I got something different from the book than someone else may have. It’s hard, you let this guy into your hearts, and it kinda feels like he robbed you blind. It’s not you that I’m in awe of. It’s the people who are going to use this to profit. Who are going to get on the internet and cry and then happily dry their tears with their piece of the gubbmint pie. Err, well, the justice system’s pie.

Just so we’re all clear.)

Okay, so back to the lawsuits. The most interesting and potentially damaging of these lawsuits is the Seattle one. Attorney Michael David Meyers is looking to put together a class-action lawsuit on behalf of not only every resident of Washington that read the book, but every person that bought the book from a Washington vendor. That’s right, he’s lookin’ at you, amazon.com shoppers.

It doesn’t end there. He also wants Random House to not only pay up in the usual consumer class-action style, he’s seeking compensation for the amount of time each reader spent reading the book. He said: “I don’t think the purchasing price is enough for those people who really feel a sense of betrayal, who had real emotions created by this book. They wouldn’t have read it if they knew it wasn’t true.”

Like I said, mouthbreathers. So, where do I sign up to get back the time I spent watching Moulin Rouge, The Talented Mr. Ripley, and that live-action Flintstones movie? Who wants to represent me in a lawsuit against Alice Hoffman? Oh, I’m talking crazy talk? Mmhmm. Interesting.

Okay, lawyer bashing off. Tune in next time on Mediacrity where I will talk about my favorite lawyer of all time and some of the brilliant things he’s said. Yay for Dan Abrams!