Today is the day!

It’s here!

The big shutdown of Analog Television has arrived!

(Yawn.)

Okay, be honest: Are you ready for the digital television conversion?

Yeah, I thought you were.

Anyone who doesn’t know that by midnight tonight all full-power analog TV transmitters will be shut down has to be Amish—and I have it on good authority that the Amish are sick and tired of the DTV transition, too.

Still, on Wednesday of this week, the Nielsen Company released research showing that 2,8 million American households are “completely unready for the transition.” While 2.8 million might seem like a lot, it’s only 2.5% of TV-equipped households. After all those months of annoying crawls, PSA’s and special programs, can they still say “we didn’t know” with a straight face? Perhaps they’re waiting for President Obama to personally deliver and install their converter box.

One explanation for at least a part of that 2.5% is that Low Power TV (LPTV) stations aren’t required to shut down their analog signals yet, and some of those unconverted households might be in rural areas served only by LPTV. They could also be in larger markets but prefer to watch only their favorite LPTV channel. They could also be waiting for the change so they can claim discrimination. There are also those who believe those converter boxes are “the government trying to spy on us.” Seriously, I’ve heard people say that!

For me, there is a sad aspect of this historic day. People are so sick and tired of hearing about the DTV transition that they just want it to be over. Many have missed the great historical significance of the day, the great and honorable tradition that is being laid to rest. When the first round of analog shutdowns occurred here back in February, I watched some of them and was horribly disappointed. At the appointed time, they just flipped the switch. No ceremonial moment, no salute to the generations that brought television to this historic milestone. Just a quick cut to snow and a licensee who’s delighted to lose that chunk of the electric bill.

I wonder what the true poineers of television would have to say about this day?

Philo Farnsworth, the man who, at 13 years of age, conceived the concept of image scanning and reconstruction upon which analog TV is based, went on to develop the first working electronic television system. Farnsworth didn’t get the credit due him because he was an ethical man, a genius who didn’t have the deep pockets (or lack of integrity) of David Sarnoff’s RCA. When fellow inventors from RCA asked to tour his laboratory and see his device in operation, it never occurred to Farnsworth that they might illicitly copy some of his technological developments. Farnsworth and RCA spent years in court over those infringements, and eventually Farnsworth won.

Philo Farnsworth would be fascinated with the new technology. Ever the inventor, he’d be in it up to his eyeballs and be having a blast seeing it in action. He’d probably improve on it, too.

Another big name in early TV development was Dr. Vladimir Zworykin, a Russian-born scientist who worked for RCA and developed much of their early television technology (including the parts based on designs “acquired” from Farnsworth). I believe that Zworykin’s reaction to today’s television might be found in an interview some time after his retirement in 1954. What follows is not a transcript, but it’s mighty close:

Interviewer: “Of all the many inventions to your credit in the world of television, what invention gives you the most satisfaction?”

Zworykin (heavy Russian accent): “Da Svitch.”

Interviewer: “What?”

Zworykin: “Da Svitch.”

Interviewer: “I don’t understand.”

Zworykin: “You know, Da Svitch, so I can turn the damn think off.”

I hope those engineers who use “da svitch” today will do so with reverence and respect, because without Analog TV, the world would be a very different place today. Whether better or worse is a never-settled debate—but it would definitely be different.

Rest in Peace, Analog.

Check it out! I won!

Yup, that’s me. Do I look a little giddy? Well, I should, because I was. My novel The Voice took first place in the 2008 ACFW Genesis contest, Contemporary Fiction category.

It was a surreal moment for me. Sure, I knew there was a 1 in 5 chance I’d win. There was also a 4 in 5 chance that I wouldn’t, and the other competitors were far from weak writers. I decided well in advance that I’d maybe take third place, with a slim shot at second. After third and second were announced, I wasn’t sure what to think.

When I heard my name and title, I think I stopped breathing for a few seconds. By the time I took my first step toward the stage, I knew exactly how I had to deliver my 30-second acceptance speech.

You see, early Thursday morning just before leaving for the airport, my wife Sharon told me she really wanted to go to the conference with me this year, because she knew I would win and she wanted to be there to see it. She may have said something early on, but she never pursued it because it would be an expensive trip and we had a lot of expense this year. I could see it in her eyes. She honestly believed I would win. She deserved to come along if she wanted to; I could never do any of this without her love and support. Had I known sooner, I would have found a way to cover the cost—but it was too late.

On my way to the stage, I pulled out my cellphone and called her. I had just stepped onto the stage when she answered and I gave her the news from the podium. I can’t recall every word of my acceptance speech; I wish I had a recording so I knew what all I said. There is, however, one part I remember well. I thanked God for the woman on the phone, someone who was not surprised to hear I had won first place, would not be surprised when I receive a contract from the wise publishing house that buys The Voice, and she will not be surprised if one day she sees my name on a best-seller list. She believes in me even when I don’t believe in myself, sees great things in me I cannot always see, and is the very best Gift God ever gave me, second only to Salvation. She’s my wife, Sharon, and without her I would have never been at that podium.

I concluded by having all 600 or so attendees greet Sharon as I held up the phone. I believe the resounding roar made even the rowdy, chicken-dancing wedding party next door pause, even if for only a moment.

So, I’m now a Genesis winner. There was a lot of interest in The Voice before the awards, and even more afterward. I have editors and agents pursuing me, quite a change from the normal routine. As I told a couple of folks that night, my new goal is to become disqualified for next year’s Genesis contest (contracted authors are ineligible).

I’ve had my thirty seconds of fame and I’m back in Little Rock, back at the keyboard, getting back into the routine of life. Before me stands a frightening question.

Can I deliver what I’ve promised?

Watch this space and find out.

I don’t agree with or approve of Don Imus’ put-downs, either of the Rutgers team, or fat people, or any of his other targets. His radio show isn’t (make that wasn’t) on in my market, and if it were, I wouldn’t listen to it unless it was on one of my stations and I was working out a problem that required me to listen.  After thirty-five years in the radio business, I know that’s the most effective way to deal with offensive radio hosts–don’t listen.  When people don’t listen, radio programming changes. It’s one of the laws of the broadcasting universe.

Should Imus be fired? I don’t think so, at least not for this particular infraction. It was fairly mild compared to some of his shtick.

But, now that Imus has been fired for racially insensitive remarks, does this mean that other radio hosts who make racially insensitive remarks are on the chopping block? For example, the well-known, nationally syndicated black guys whose programs routinely contain insensitive racial slurs toward white folks? Probably not. It seems that we live in a land that openly supports racial double standards. It’s okay for a black radio host to make fun of white folks. If white hosts make fun of black folks, that’s different. If a white person complains about the racial slurs made against them, we’re told that our complaint is racially insensitive, and we are called racists. I speak from experience.

The other day I heard Harry Smith of the CBS Early Show interviewing a representative of the National Association of Black Journalists. He asked a fair question–the term “ho” is common in Hip-Hop culture, so how do we define who is permitted to say that and who is not? The NABJ representative non-answered the question–twice. Why? It was a legitimate question, and as a journalist the interviewee should have been prepared with an answer.  My question is even deeper:

Why do we even have a “National Association of Black Journalists” in the first place?

It is by definition a racially discriminatory organization. If someone formed a “National Association of White Journalists,” it would be branded as a racist organization before the ink was dry on their charter. Why is it that the “National Association of Black Journalists” isn’t considered a racist organization? It’s simple, really: it’s a racial double standard. Apparently, some people are allowed to be racists in America.

Jesus had simple, straightforward attitude about racial discrimination: He would not tolerate it in his disciples–period. Racism in any form is wrong. What Don Imus said was wrong. Treating any person in a different manner than someone else because of their race is wrong.

Racism in any form is wrong.

Period.

In any direction.

I’m waiting patiently (well, alright… notso patiently) for Cingular to release their Cingular 8525, a WM5 PDA phone with HSDPA. It will be the first actual hand-held data device (I don’t count phones with WAP browsers as data devices) to use the new 3G service. I want one. I can’t stomach Blackberry’s devices, because they have lousy web browsers and no third-party software. WM5 isn’t the best thing on the planet, but it’s manageable and there are lots of excellent applications, many that I already have on my Dell Axim X50v PDA.

Hey, Cingular… want a real-world beta tester? Maybe a technically-qualified endorser? An engineer with a big mouth?

So far, HSDPA has been encouraging. I’m looking forward to experimenting with using it for remote broadcast audio — it could be just what we’ve been waiting for in Little Rock.

This good-looking young guy is named Marconi. He’s the youngest of the four kitties who allow us to inhabit their house. One day, he showed up at the back door of the Citadel Little Rock Radio Center, home of Arkansas’ largest radio group and the place where I work to support my writing habit. Since he was hanging around at a bunch of radio stations, it seemed only right that he be named after Guglielmo Marconi, the man who is known as “the Father of Radio” (he was the first man to transmit information wirelessly over long distances — more or less the inventor of wireless communication).

There’s something about having a cat show up on your doorstep that makes the “cat people” rise to the surface of any organization, the way cream rises in raw milk. Soon, folks were leaving him food and water, which of course made him a regular fixture around the back porch. One of our salespeople had a standing arrangement for discount spaying and neutering with a vet she used to work for, and several staffers chipped in to have Marconi “broken” and get him his first round of shots. A couple of our night and weekend guys were secretly taking him inside on cold nights and keeping him in one of the bathrooms. He really became part of the family.
     
At first, I thought Marconi he was feral because he wasn’t particularly sociable and seemed to be somewhat of a “traveling man.” Over the course of a few weeks, he became more trusting and even let a few of us pet him as he sunned himself behind the building. I saw something in Marconi. I was starting to think that he wasn’t really a feral cat. I noticed that he tried to come inside the building a few times, and he was much more sociable than most truly feral cats. The real clincher was the day that I saw Marconi playing with a live mouse in the grass. Feral cats do not play with their food. I decided that Marconi must have been someone’s lost, run away, or abandoned house cat. He could manage outside on his own, but it wasn’t his natural habitat.
     
Everyone could see that Marconi and I had developed a special bond, and I was frequently asked not if but when I was going to take him home. Our cats were strictly indoor kitties, I was leery of trying to bring this maybe-semi-feral cat into our home. We had three females at the time, but we also had an empty space that had been occupied by another yellow boy named Buddy, who had been with me for over 15 years and had died just a few months before. I’ve always believed that people don’t adopt cats. Cats adopt people, and Marconi had adopted me. He worked his way into a special place in my heart, and one day I finally knew that He wanted to come home with me. I gave him what he wanted, and today he is firmly and fully in command of the Case household.
     
Marconi never had any complaints until the day he heard about Larry the Garden Cat. Marco was sitting on the back of my chair as I was browsing the website of KTHV-TV, Channel 11 (“Today’s THV”), the CBS affiliate in Little Rock. THV has an outdoor weather set that they call “The Weather Garden.” One of the residents of the Weather Garden is a yellow cat named Larry, whose story is not unlike Marconi’s, but with a video twist. Larry’s become somewhat of a celebrity, with frequent appearances on THV’s morning show and weekend weather. I haven’t seen him as much on the evening news; the night crew must be dog people. Larry’s got his own corner of the THV web site, a blog, and even an on-air contest – the “11 Larry Look-Alikes Contest.”
     
I was browsing the THV website one day, with Marconi sitting on the back of my chair (not unlike the first picture above), and when I came to Larry’s web page, Marconi perked up and growled just enough to get my attention. I asked him what his problem was, and he responded with indignation and just a hint of jealousy. Ths discussion went like this:

“That Larry guy starts hangs around a TV station and now he’s a TV star with his own web page, and a blog, and a cool T-shirt with his picture. I was hanging around at a radio station, and what did I get? A radio show? Noooo.  A web page or a blog? Noooo. Not even a stinkin’ t-shirt. All I got was neutered.”

“Well, Marco, “ I replied, “It’s going to be 100 degrees outside today, and Larry has to live outside while you live in this nice, air-conditioned house. And, when it thunders, Larry can’t run downstairs and hide under the rug like you can. Are you sure you’d rather be Larry?”

Marconi thought for a moment and purred, “No, I’m good.”

Marconi does look a lot like Larry, so he wanted to enter the 11 Larry Look-Alikes contest. And, he won. As one of the eleven winners, he gets one year of heartworm and flea preventative treatment, sixteen pounds of high-class cat food, one full checkup from Dr. Bob, the THV Morning show’s resident veterinarian, and a Larry the Garden Cat tee-shirt. Marco decided to donate most of his winnings to Helping Hands for Little Paws, an all-volunteer animal rescue organization that rescued two of his three feline housemates.

But, Marconi wants that tee-shirt!

Those who don’t lean far enough to the left to tolerate Public Radio may not know that there really is a live weekly  radio show called A Prairie Home Companion. I was less than a year into my broadcasting career when Garrison Keillor did his first live broadcast of PHC in 1974. I remember listening to the program when I was a board operator/engineer at WQLN-FM in Erie, PA. The music wasn’t one of my favorite flavors, but I was a captive audience – I was literally being paid to listen, so listen I did. Before long, I was enjoying the flavor of the music, the dry humor, and Garrison Keillor’s masterful storytelling skills. I used to look forward to those Saturday night shifts when I was paid to visit Lake Wobegon. Keillor was able to stimulate my non-linear imagination in ways that nothing else - including the substances I was fond of at the time – could even approach.

So, when I heard about the movie, most of which was filmed in the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul, Minnesota that PHC calls home, I knew we would have to see it even if it meant the dreaded theater. Actually, the theater wasn’t that bad. We had a choice between the big, new, “place to be” theater and a smaller, older theater not far from the house, so we chose the latter. Parking was easy, and the crowds were manageable. The only downside was that, since it was opening night, the local Public Radio station was there giving away door prizes – various PHC “stuff” that no doubt had been collecting around the station. With all those Public Radio fans in one room, no matter where we sat the room still seemed to slant a little to the left.

The movie was phenomenal. It won’t be up for any Academy Awards, and its profits will look like pocket change to the “big guys” in movieland, but it will probably become a classic with a cult following. It reminded me a lot of those early days at WQLN. When it comes out on DVD, it will be on my shopping list for sure.

In keeping with our usual practice, at the end of the film we sat and watched the credits. It’s not that we expect to see the names of any close friends or family members, it just seems like a reasonable tribute to the hundreds of people that made the movie possible but that, other than the closing credits and a paycheck, are unknown, unrecognized and often unappreciated. I would have thought that in a theater full of NPR junkies there would have been more folks watching the credits. By the time they finished, there were just a handful of stragglers in little conversation clusters, the kid with a broom impatiently waiting to sweep the popcorn and other moviegoer droppings from beneath our seats (he had already finished the rest of the theater), and of course Sharon and me, sitting in the back row watching the credits and debriefing.

If I ever make a film – it’s unlikely, but not impossible – I’m going to put something really cool at the very end of the credits as a special reward for those people who watch them all the way through. Not just outtakes and the like, some really special treat that can only be seen by watching the credits all the way through, as a special tribute to those who cared enough to ride that bus all the way to the end of the line.

I’m sure both of them will enjoy it.