fun with history
April 20, 2004 by Eric Richardson
Sometimes I wish I could just sit around and read about history all day. Today, while looking for nothing in particular, I ended up at losangelesmetro.net. That led me to experiencela.com, where I clicked around for a little bit before discovering their tour of the Figueroa corridor. Stop number four on that tour is the Stimson House, something I've passed by many times and always wondered about. Interestingly, the Stimson House is an example of Richardsonian architecture, the same as Hackley Public Library in Muskegon, MI. I only remembered it was Richardsonian because I was bored once and stood outside the library reading the historical information sign.
Anyway... Looking up more info about the Stimson House I happened across the fact that there once was a Wrigley Field in Los Angeles. I had never heard of it, but it was home to the Dodgers for parts of the '58 season and home to the Angels for '61. That means that my grandfather played there, which is cool.
Here's a question... Why can't I find a site that lets me look up the box scores for random old games? For instance, I know that the Yankees visited the Angels May 5-7, 1961, so why can't I look up those games?
T minus 25 days
April 20, 2004 by Eric Richardson
It's kind of a weird feeling to not know where you're going to be living in just 25 days. My rent at City Park is up May 15. Conveniently that's just 4 days after my last final. The place where we want to live next year has a 2br available, but we need to move on it quickly. We've also been unable to so far find a third for the summer, which is annoying.
So, uhhh, if anyone needs a place downtown for the summer, let me know.
I'll be glad when all this is taken care of. Really, I'll be more glad when I graduate and can put all this behind me and just work like a normal person.
doh
April 20, 2004 by Eric Richardson
So I went off for the weekend, had a little fun at a waterski tourney, came back with a nice sore throat, and am now sucking on cough drops like it's a job.
It's still kind of amazing to me to go to these tournaments and hang out next to people like Jimmy Siemers. Take a look at that list of accomplishments. And here I am, out there on the same lake he is, theoretically competing in the same tournament, but... not really. It is kind of funny sitting at the lake reading the article about Jimmy in this month's Waterski Magazine while he's throwing a football fifteen feet behind me.
Now I'm back in the grind, trying not to die while catching up on schoolwork before the semester ends. This whole being sick thing really didn't pick a great time.
The Development of Cable and Satellite
April 16, 2004 by Eric Richardson
(This post is part of a series on FCC regulation of indecency. To see the whole series, click on the FCC Category.)
With the introduction of cable, broadcast slowly started to lose its prominence. This wasn't what it was meant to do. Initially cable was simply a means to get the broadcast channels to homes that for reasons of terrain were unable to receive them. The first cable companies consisted of a central antenna which through size or location was able to pick up the broadcasts. The channels were then sent over cables to homes which paid to be hooked up to the system. Over time cable evolved, adding channels from farther away, and then channels that weren't broadcast anywhere. A fundamental characteristic of cable systems is the requirement that the user pays the cable company to deliver programming to their home.
Satellite -- which in this case we're using to mean just DBS services such as DirecTV and Dish Network -- developed much later but shares this same characteristic. The user pays not just for the hardware, but also for a subscription. While satellite is "broadcast" in that the signal is wirelessly sent via the spectrum, the signals are useless without a subscription, which serves as a key to decoding the digital signal and accessing its content.
The Scarcity Doctrine
April 16, 2004 by Eric Richardson
(This post is part of a series on FCC regulation of indecency. To see the whole series, click on the FCC Category.)
The FCC came into being because the early days of broadcast were unregulated, leading to a crowded and chaotic radio spectrum. In 1927 the Federal Radio Commission was created to issue licenses, regulate spectrum, and generally just keep the chaos from making radio unusable. The recipients of these licenses were then given certain requirements about what they could and could not broadcast.
These regulations were put into place with the justification that the broadcast spectrum is a public good and therefore the FRC (and then the FCC) must regulate it with the interests of the listening public, not the broadcasters. Licenses were granted to certain broadcasters in certain markets depending on market conditions and the type of programming the broadcaster wanted to offer. This second part is where the first ammendment comes in -- it's content based regulation of speech. If you say you're going to do one thing and the FCC grants you a license based on the fact that the genre you wish to provide is something underserved, they can stop you if you go and try to change your station into something else a little bit later. These days scarcity doesn't get the play that it once did, but it's still around. The court has said scarcity is less of an issue these days, but they haven't gotten rid of it for broadcast.