respublica

You run out of ideas during Norwegian winters

"Norwegian public television plans to broadcast a burning fireplace for 12 straight hours from Friday evening, with firewood specialists providing color commentary, expert advice and a bit of cultural tutoring. They''ll talk about the very nerdy subjects like burning, slicing and stacking the wood, but also have cultural segments with music and poems."

Actually as dull a non stop broadcast of a fireplace sounds, it might be something I'd watch for a bit. But, while they had me at 'advice and tutoring', they  lost me with the 'music and poems'. 

Advice on how to lower your cable bill

Now this story headline is deceiving.  From KSDK Channel 5 in St. Louis: " How to lower your cable bill to $8 per month."

Reading that most of us would think, wow, let's see how it's done. Turns out the way you do this is to get rid of cable and buy a Roku box which will allow you...let's see...access to hundreds of channels but you don't get to watch them until a day or two later. You also won't get HBO or some other popular premium channels. You also need to buy a good HD antenna.

If you are the kind of tv watcher who does a lot of recording of programs to watch later, this might well be the item for you. If you like to see things as they broadcast in real time, maybe not.

But truthfully the story misleads, you aren't lowering your cable bill, you're getting rid of it and paying another company a smaller fee for a different type of viewing.

The year and the day

The Chinese New Year's animal for 2013 is the snake. Words cannot do justice to how much I do not like snakes. They creep me out and I do anything I can to even look at them in magazines or newspapers. Every so often a snake photo appears in something I'm reading and my heart stops and I can't turn the page fast enough. Ugh

But today begins the best two nights in television, the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show. All the dogs and their often humous handlers on display. All tricked up with fancy hair do's. Love it. But Dale thinks the dog show is about as interesting as watching the cable channel list scroll up and down. However, he's gracious about letting me have the tv for two nights.

The thing to know if you want to watch is that each evening will see it broadcast on a different channel. Tonight CNBC will carry it and tomorrow USA will have it. In St. Louis Charter's CNBC is number 792 on high def and 46 on none high def. USA on Charter is 782 high def and 28 on the regular stations.

Cable news ratings for January

January had the inauguration and a couple of senate confirmation hearings. The top news programs on cable are pretty much dominated by Fox News programming with the first 9 spots out of the top ten. Rachel Maddow comes in at 10. What interested me was how far down on the list Morning Joe sits because we watch this every day and note that they seem so pleased with themselves and their own POV in the news commentary world. You'd think they were crushing the competition with all their self congratulations.

The Five is number two with totally dominating numbers not only in their time slot against Chris Matthews but total day. This is how we bookend our news day, Morning Joe in the morning, The Five in late afternoon. The list of cable news shows in order of their ratings can be enlarge to read by using the little magnifying glass at the bottom right corner of the list.

Taking a screenshot of your tv is not what it used to be

Did you ever try to take a picture of something on tv in the pre digital days? I bet you did and what you got was an image of a mess of lines, maybe one wide black line running through the middle or just a white screen.

Well those days are over since the dawn of digital. Digital cameras, digital/high def tvs all make getting a picture of something on tv almost real life. I've been aware of this for a while but never paid too much attention to it until yesterday when I took a picture of little Max who was visiting and got the tv in the background as well.

Yes, there's Ina Garten plain as day. Taking a snapshot of something on tv may be rare, but it is now possible to get a pretty darn good image. Just an FYI

And one more thing

When things like a presidential inaugural or presidential funeral take place, we see our country at its best. Beautiful ceremonies, color guards, flags, inspiring music reflecting a grandeur of place and history.

But sometimes the reaction to these things and the people involved by our media is contradictory. Yesterday it was all respect and adoration. Maybe this is what it always should be at times like this. But in 2005 things were different and no one thought twice about making jokes at the expense of the president and his family.

I'll be sort of interested to see what our late night comedians have to say about this year's inaugural on their monologues tonight.

Tune in to House Hunters tonight

One of Concordia Seminary's recent graduates, Daniel Ross (2011) and his wife Heidi will be featured tonight on HGTV"s House Hunters. 9 CST 

Dan is one of the pastors at Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Saginaw Michigan and he did his field work at Holy Cross in Collinsville.  

I've been looking forward to seeing how this goes ever since he talked about going through the process last summer.  

Channeling the Honest Toddler

The Honest Toddler is on Twitter, a cute little dark haired toddler who lets us in on his experiences with other babies, his parents, food, sleep, love of red drinks and crackers and sleeping in the big bed. Last night his parents must have been watching The Sound of Music on ABC and his tweets about the movie had me laughing and identifying.

1. Hour 6 of The Sound of Music. The children dressed as American Girl Dolls chased off the babysitter.

2. This lady just quit. Mid-shift. Put on her dress made of throw pillow material, grabbed her (stolen?) guitar and split.

3. This movie would be better if they animated it and replaced every song with an explosion.

4. I know I'm not one to speak as 99% of my clothes are from the $4 table at Target, but why are these kids dressed head to toe in Goodwill?

5. They have a big house and seem rich but they look like they've skipped several meals.

6. New mommy in the Sound of Music kind of reminds me of the witch from Tangled. Different hair. Same face.

7. Hour 14 of The Sound of Music. Instead of firing the babysitter, this man promotes her to mommy. I give up.

8. yay another song

9. Someone please get that youngest Von Trapp child some red drink

10. Feel bad that the kids have to wear dress shoes all day. Live in a mansion but can't afford 7 pairs of Crocs. It's called a budget.

11. MANAGE YOUR FINANCES MR VON TRAPP YOUR FAMILY IS IN SHAMBLES!!

12. Oh no. Oh no. They can't afford their lifestyle and are fleeing in the night.

13. Kids are walking behind the car. No $$ for gas. So sad.

14. Mr. Von Trapp's solo. Dressed like Captain Hook. Cool

15. Rather than pay down their debt they're on the run again. With no snacks.

16. Children cooperating in a time of crisis. This movie is not believable.

17. Ok now they're going to live off the land and eat wild salmon. This movie gets 0 out of five stars for wasting my life.

Sleep in Heavenly Peace

After Friday's horror in Newtown Connecticut not one thing came to me to blog about which would not have been trivial. So for the second time in 8 years I let a day go by without posting. But last night's opening of Saturday Night Live was a beautiful reflection on grief and peace. The New York City Children's Choir sang Silent Night without preamble or one mention of the lost children, but it was one of the best things they have ever done. My only quibble is that NBC might have left out the 30 second ad preceding this video just this once.

 

The average age of viewers of the cable broadcast news stations

Let's look at the numbers

Fox 65

CNN 63

MSNBC 59

CNBC 52

How about the average age of prime time broadcast stations:

ABC 51

CBS 55

NBC 45

Fox 35

When it comes to news, it looks as though younger people are not watching it on television. It would be interesting to know the average age of those who watch the non cable news: NBC, CBS and ABC. I'd bet they're just as old.