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Monday, May 10, 2004
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 Monday, May 10, 2004
started 5/10/2004; 6:04:57 PM - last post 7/1/2004; 10:33:22 AM
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Doc Searls - Monday, May 10, 2004 
5/10/2004; 10:04:57 PM (reads: 6094, responses: 6)
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You're welcome 
| | A few minutes after a minor earthquake in the wee hours of yesterday morning, I posted this report. |
| | Since we lost our local news radio station last year (and, amazingly, we still lack a local news-oriented NPR station), I tuned to the biggest regional news station out of Los Angeles, KNX/1070. They had nothing on the air, so I called their newsroom and got no answer — not even a message machine — but their site featured a page with a little box where you can post "comments." So I filed my story there. |
| | A few minutes ago I received an email from somebody with a promotion/marketing title saying "Thank you for taking the time in sending us this information. I will forward this to the news dept for them to double check against their information." |
Don't say you weren't warned
| | Ten great days on the Usumacinta, studying the ancient mooring stones of the Maya. Wonderful, in spite of getting robbed in the middle of the night by gun and machete toting bandits. We camped on a beach that was fine last year, not this year. There is apparently an organized group that preys on the illegal immigrants passing through, fires shots at passing authorities and is now targeting tourists. |
| | Note to future rafters and travelers - stay off of the beach on the Mexican side at a spot known as Anaite, just below the "Tower" guard post on the Guatemalan shore, a few hours below Yaxchilan. The beach is on a sharp right turn in the river, above Chicozapote rapids. |
| | Beyond that we had no problems, |
| | Anyway, maybe you've been following this business about the Mayan ruins in Guatamala. Needless to say, Dave has been on that case. And he's sending a heads-up for a National Geographic Special, "Dawn of the Maya," airing on PBS two days from now, on May 12. He writes, |
| | I've been down here in Mexico and Guatemala for 3 months now, documenting the work of archaeologists and doing the Usumacinta River campaign (stop the dams, save the river). The first 5 weeks were spent in tunnels inside a pyramid in San Bartolo, where Bill Saturno has been excavating pre-Classic murals since he stumbled on one in a looters trench in 2001. He`s featured, with shots from last year`s work, in the new National Geographic Special airing on PBS this week, May 12. The show "Dawn of the Maya" presents new findings about the earliest days of the Maya in a familiar style - skillful editing, gorgeous shots, dramatic recreations, lots of spooky music. Yes, the Maya are mysterious, but this is predictably over the top. I saw a pre-screening last night here in Flores, Guatemala, with an audience of local officials and tourism operators, who are justifiably proud of their state (the Peten) as the birthplace of Maya culture. Most of the screen time is taken by the site of El Mirador and the controversial archaeologist Richard Hansen. Many here in Flores think his ambitious plans to create a new tourist destination may threaten the work they have done over the last 20 years to preserve the Maya Biosphere. In this program, he is presented as the guy who will save it. |
| | In any case, the show is worth watching for other folks like me who have been bitten by the jungle bug. |
| | Of course, finding evidence of the show on either the National Geographic or the PBS site is an exercise akin to crawling through one of those Mayan tunnels. These three links are searches for "Dawn of the Maya" on Google, PBS and National Geographic. Guess which ones come up with nothing. |
| | Here's the schedule for WGBH, Channel 2 in Boston. Check your local listings. And good luck trying. |
Floating heads of state
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Dave Ely - Re: Dawn of the Maya
5/11/2004; 7:32:10 AM (reads: 796, responses: 2)
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I don't know if you get KCET that far north, but according to Watson (which gets it's data from TVGuide.com) it's being show there on Wednesday at 8 PM and again on Sunday at 2 PM.
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Bob Getsla - Re: Monday, May 10, 2004
5/11/2004; 10:46:26 AM (reads: 995, responses: 2)
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Doc,
I don't think you are missing much by not having a news-oriented NPR station. We have KQED-FM as the primary NPR outlet in the Bay Area, and I can tell you two things about KQED-FM.
First, KQED-FM runs Morning Edition from 3 am to 9 am, repeating the same 2 hour show 3 times in succession. All Things Considered rus twice (fortunately not back to back.) Same thing for Terri Gross' "Fresh Air" program. KQED does have some local news breaks (mostly of the "rip and read" variety), but they are relatively brief and mostly at the top of the hour. An earthquake such as you described would probably not be mentioned for quite some time, if at all.
Secondly, although KQED claims to be a Public Radio station, they have as many or more "underwriting credit" messages than the commercial stations here have as straight up commercials. I once heard KQED-FM admit that their listening audience provides 55% of their operating budget. Obviuosly the balance of their budget comes from somewhere, and I am sure that's why we are treated to all those non-commercials on KQED-FM.
I would give just about anything to be able to listen to the various musical and spoken word performance programs NPR makes available to their affiliates. But precious little of that programing can be heard on the radio in south San Jose, where I live. KCSM-FM (San Mateo) specializes in Jazz, and carries the Jazz programming NPR has to offer, but that is all. KALW (San Francisco) does not have much of a signal here in San Jose, but to my knowledge, KALW is the only NPR station in the Bay Area carrying any of the NPR performance programs.
I would rather listen to the music progamming NPR has to offer than listen to yet another repeat of those NPR news/talk shows, filled with non-commercials from the corporations underwriting KQED-FM.
Bob Getsla
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Doc Searls - Re: Dawn of the Maya
5/12/2004; 4:19:07 PM (reads: 919, responses: 0)
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There's a UHF translator for KCET on Gibraltar Peak here in SB. But we're in a terrain shadow from it, so that's not an option. Our DishTV satellite lineup includes "all five" networks from Los Angeles, but in fact it's all the local major network affiliates (CBS, NBC, ABC, Fox) other than PBS. So, instead of giving us KCET, it gives us the PBS feed. And, generally speaking, the timing doesn't line up.
But I've got a PVR in the receiver, so I'll just look through the schedule tomorrow, see when it's on, and record it.
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Doc Searls - Re: Monday, May 10, 2004
5/14/2004; 1:54:41 AM (reads: 1089, responses: 1)
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First, great to hear from you, Bob. Been a long time.
Gotta tell ya, as blah as it often is, I like KQED's all-spoken-word format, and miss it a lot here in Santa Barbara. And I'm not bothered by the underwriting, if it pays for the goods and doesn't corrupt the staff.
And I miss KALW too. And KCSM. Here we have the student station at UCSB, which is good but obliterated by terrain where I live. And no NPR. And two mostly-music NPR stations from out of town. We used to get KPBS from San Diego, but then one of the out-of-town stations moved over from a translator to a licensed facility on that channel and obliterated it. Even though the new station is licensed to Santa Barbara, it's about as local as the moon.
Internet radio is the answer. We just don't have enough people asking the question. Yet.
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Doc Searls - Re: Dawn of the Maya
5/14/2004; 2:13:05 AM (reads: 889, responses: 0)
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It wasn't on either PBS feed yesterday. Something sucks there. Why can't Dish carry local PBS stations?
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Bob Getsla - Re: Monday, May 10, 2004
7/1/2004; 2:33:22 PM (reads: 1491, responses: 0)
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Doc,
Sorry for the slow reply....
I agree, Internet broadcasting may be an answer (but not the only answer IMHO.) There certrainly are a lot of Internet broadcasters out there, and many of them deliver fairly high quality audio and programming. About the only hitch is that it takes a decent DSL or CATV data line to bring it into your home. I have listened to several of the Internet broadcasters (but not recently -- and that's another story) and I think there is a future for them. KPIG is but one example. They are not in a good geographical location (how many people know where Freedom CA is anyway?), and most people just cannot receive their FM signal anyway, but this is where the 'net provides a way around their geographical reception problems.
As for NPR, I think there are enough NPR affiliates webcasting that probably all of the NPR lineup is available somewhere, and many webcasters now have archives available of their past programming (often made readily available for downloading for a week or more) so catching a program from a series when one happens to miss an episode for some reason is now pretty easy to do.
As CATV makes fibre to the curb more common, and with the telcos responding with higher speed DSL lines, I think webcasting will soon take off. The biggest problems I think will come from the economics of webcasting, and that is where advertising comes in. How can a webcaster sell time when they are using UDP and do not know how many listeners there are, or where they are? What model of financing a 24/7 webcast works? Google style visual subtleties like their pastel colored "sponsored link" messages probably will not work in an audio only format, yet I much prefer Google's ads (tasteful and often quite relevant to what I am looking for) to those nasty pop-ups and pop-unders that so many other web sites use.
Or, of course, you could use a subscription model to offset the operating costs and encrypt the UDP stream so only members can listen.
Or, you could just beg for support periodically, like Pacifica and the NPR stations do.
That's the nice part of being in the early stages of something, the innovators get to try out new ideas because no one "knows" yet what works and what doesn't.
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