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Are you READY FOR SOME SUPER BOWL???

Clickford, Steven M.

Just kind reminder, whether side of the fence you’re on with this whole years long drama between the Peacock Network or Sunbeam Broadcasting; NBC is no longer on WHDH, so depending on the last time you saw a football game, it’s most likely going to be on another channel.

Welcome NBC 10, or Channel 10 with a CBS O&O looking typeface from 1980?

On New Year’s, a year into NBC moving to an owned and operated license in Merrimack, NH and stick in Goffstown, they have had a hard time with ratings and viewers with a weak signal up here, and through some spectrum sales in the last year, “NBC10” Boston has been able to build a network of low powered stations.

So within the next 24 hours, and if you are wanting to know where to tune to see TB12 hopppeeffulllly make it to six rings, onnnneeee wwould hooopppe. Here are your options.

Over the air, it’s on channel 8.1. If you don’t get it on the ears, just do a “rescan”. If you live in Foxboro, you may get WJAR that other NBC 10, since Boston and Providence is such a tight market, it actually has a definition in the Harry Newton’s Telecom Dictionary on signal overlap (I think.)

For most cable channels, the HD feed is on 710 or 810, (hence the virtual channel 10 branding), some SD feeds are on Channel 10, mine (legacy Adelphia/Comcast) is on Channel 26, legacy Comcast may be on other positions.

Because the NFL is known to be the No Fun League, it’s unclear if you can stream it instead.

I know the Emily Rooneys of the world joke (or possibly are literal) about tuning to Channel 7 to see her late dad Sunday nights, but in this case, don’t turn to WHDH for the Super Bowl, “Turn to 10” instead!

This writing has been a continuation of the discussion of NBC and their historical hostile treatment to their affiliates. 

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Facebook Pages – Are You Being Screwed?

Clickford, Steven M.

On January 15th, Facebook did a major change that was announced last year to deemphasize Facebook pages and more content from your friends and family on your News Feed. For anyone who operates Facebook “pages” (the ones where you have to “Like” and/or “Follow”) had been screwed over. Especially when Facebook didn’t give Page Admins directions on getting their content to be top priority.

While Facebook Pages may mean little to some, it may be worth to others.

“Facebook pages” ofter are blurred between the lines of a fully public profile or a page where it’s not for “friends” and is used for business (meaning you can use the metrics and convoluted metering system for hits, likes, reax, etc.) For the purposes of the article, “profiles” are not “Pages” and the former is a befriend system while the latter is a “Like” and “Follow” system.

Nearly nine years ago, this was introduced for celebrities, ranging from A to C-list, to small businesses to “brands” and enterprises. Prior to there was no real way for a business to be on Facebook. In fact smaller towns and communities who lived on business on a seven-digit telephone number, that never got a website, and some refused to go on the email way, would jump into the 21st Century using Facebook pages.

If you are a page administrator to a business or a brand or use Pages for your own branding, you got screwed on January 15th.

Controversy on Facebook’s News Feed goes as far back as when Facebook became open for non university users. The reason why Facebook deemphasized Facebook pages on the News Feed may had something to do with a potential conflict in the 2016 Election, or just simply experimenting on their users. To me this is highly unethical.

And I do not want to blame the user, while some snooty Computer Scientist would probably do. Sure the writing was on the wall (no pun) and it was announced during Facebook’s developers conference last year, but small business owners and content creators ranging from old tech vlogs to cosplay models have no time to be reading on the corporate blog or page admin relations and stuff like that to be educated. For them this is a slap on the face.

For me I think out of the last eleven years I’ve been on and off Facebook, I’ve spent many as a page admin for various things. Part of it I felt at one point in my life I didn’t have a face for Facebook and I still struggle with a weak social network in real life.

I do not think this will hurt Facebook’s bottom line, the stock may not hit a bump for a few more quarters if revenues from the pages business starts to crumble. While Facebook has admitted that their fears came true of a unruly society wether it’s in the “real world” or packet-based world, I would say “guns don’t kill, people with guns do”, or fatty foods don’t kill you, the person whose eating them do. Facebook users make Facebook unattractive for many. The people on social media who are exploiting the negativity should be blamed. Where is the computer scientists when you need them to pass the buck?

I do wonder if FAANG (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google) are going to be the next Railroads of the New Millennium. The Railroad industry peaked in the early 1900s or a number of reasons, disruptions in technology and plain ol stupidity. The Tech Crash of 2000 was no less than people wanting to get rich quick, and Facebook can be more valuable, if they respect our privacy if people are willing to pay for value added services to ensure your privacy because storing stuff on the Internet doesn’t come free and it isn’t created like water.

These companies are large in power and market cap so therefore, they can do whatever the hell they want. Digital companies do not play by the traditional norms of industrial companies. That’s another discussion for another day, however I would be very careful of putting capital in FAANG only because stupidity is their true disruptor.

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“NBC 10” Comes to Boston…

Clickford, Steven M.

Branding aside, I strongly am an proponent of “legacy branding”,  I am an avid watcher of NBC Boston despite not watching SuperStore (although that looks funny) or Chicago Fire or whatever. I do watch TV still, on “traditional” means if X1 is considered to be “traditional”. It looks like a streaming platform to me. I watch CBS and ABC shows too. When the local news comes, I will change the dial to whatever applies to me. Because of the NBC’s license and stick, they actually have covered New Hampshire more often than the competition and since WBIN has gone off the air.

 

Welcome NBC 10, or Channel 10 with a CBS O&O looking typeface from 1980?

On January 1st, exactly a year after the switch from the NBC affiliation on WHDH-TV from the Sunbeam company, to an owned and operated signal owned by the network; NBC finally has added a channel number. 10.

In a very heavily cable market, NBC decided that the SD feed would be on most cable systems on Channel 10 and the HD on x10, where the x would be the one hundred ranges of the digital cable system. In most of the northern Comcast systems, the ones that predate Adelphia is on 710, and the legacy ones (like the ones that go back to TCI and Continental Cable) are on 810.

Also this past year, the TV spectrum in Boston has shank like crazy. Because more people are using the Internet to stream (and log up the bandwidth at the same time), that channel positions aren’t really the problem, it’s finding a strong signal.

The problem when NBC assumed it’s affiliation of it’s own network was the stick in Goffstown, NH was not even close to be strong signal to seen right in Somerville/Boston city lines. This goes back to the WGOT days, when the channel once aired a programming service that claimed to be the “Boston affiliate”  NBC bought I believe the old WMFP that used to be the Shop at Home station, and another low powered signal to extend the signal to Boston and points south. With the magic of PSIP, you can spoof the channel from that old rabbit ear spectrum to a channel number that could be viewer friendly.

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Lack of Social Networking = No Growth Potential

Clickford, Steven M.

From the other site

I’m writing this after a recent encounter on the ride home from the turnpike where I saw some toll taker that is about my age or even younger, cute and attractive. Many people are much older than I am. I’ve seen her before and she’s I believe married.

Living in a suburban area that is borderline rural and not rural just north of a big city is not easy. I’ve grown up in a large suburban town, where for most of my life, I didn’t grow up there, because I spent more time down in Massachusetts. I’ve repeated this story a number of times, for the people that know me well, middle school hell and high school insanity that impacts almost all adolescents.

Obviously I lost contact with almost every one of them. A vast majority of the kids I went to school are living in large urban cities, much further away from where they grew up, even one I know lives down under. I also do not think these kids are ever coming back to where they call home (as many aren’t also even married or having children and they have or are hitting three-zero themselves.) New Hampshire is the state for the hard tight republican types. New Hampshire was nice growing up, but a pain to live as an adult. It’s nice to visit as an adult but it’s much better to live an a “tolerant” urban locale.

This snobbery and arrogance is what isn’t helping my group. We don’t have a choice to pick our bags and travel to any state, especially in some locations institutions still exist, and the same group of people have limited tolerance for people with autistic or other developmental disorders. I’ve been pushed to the bone to find “peers” and be with my “peers” I always thought that those “peers” were normal “people of my own age”. And apparently because I am still longing for this over a decade later, I guess I am doing something wrong.

Now how do I grow my social circle? Go out and make yourself known. Ok, so how can that next step of trying to get people to be in contact? Business cards are just as bad as an attempt to befriend people on Facebook. I’ve been denied by a number of people who I had frequent contact, it’s not like I met a Barista and asked to befriend her on Facebook the day after.

The social world is not what is taught in special education. It’s really a Banana Republic, and quite often, the fast-paced changing world of clueless teenagers as thirty year olds known as the Millenial generation does not help matters.

I’d rather have friends who are objects at this point. Because I am tired of being treated like a dog by my “peers”. I can’t tell you one person outside of my immediate circle that was born after 1980 that has much respect to have a meaningful acquaintance, friendship, and the ability to grow social connections and business opportunities.  And because of this, I’ve been “stuck”, and it has exasperated my ability to grow. 

What I have come to except is that the ability to grow my socialization to the masses will be a lost cause, which in 2016 was the year of accepting that harsh reality.

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Decoding Autism: Stop Coding The Condition!

Clickford, Steven M.

From the other site published in winter

As I have explained a number of times, autism is a condition that impacts people. Not boys, not just kids, but adults too. Some develop later in their childhood years, and some apparently from the routine MMR vaccines and classify that as an “injury”. Or you have some nit wit of a celebrity who uses every semantics similar to a person with a cancerous condition of “beating the odds, my child is cured!”

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Would MLK Be Happy Today?

Clickford, Steven M.

Sidenote: From my old site from winter

The Martin Luther King birthday is a holiday for me. A real holiday from the 364 or 365 days (if it’s a leap year) from tireless advocacy for civil rights for all.

New Hampshire, the state I live in was the last state to observe the holiday as such around year 2000. It was called “Civil Rights Day” because according to the contrary, the state feared if they dedicate one holiday for one person, it would open the pandora’s box excuse for other leaders. MLK has been the only major figure (whose holiday came after his assassination) since the 1960s. To speak bluntly, it’s the asshole conservatives that wanted to keep things low key. Especially anything that is social related.

I’m not a social justice warrior. I don’t believe the SJW movement in the first place. I am a vocal opponent of a growing trend of this state turning blue but the same blue people having red agendas.

Specifically in the “developmental disability” community. We should in fact avoid using said phrase and use every developmental disorder to underscore the difference, the complexities and the diversity of each condition. The officials at The State of New Hampshire may not want to be “disability specific” but that’s exactly the problem.

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NAB Show – Review

Clickford, Steven M.

So yours truly came back home late Thursday afternoon after one of the best days of his life, not because of drones, 4K video or some other “shiny” object; but experiencing so much I wished I had done this earlier.

So in this post, I’ll summarize the technological discussions in the seminars at the NAB Show, taken place at the Las Vegas Convention Center, the third largest in the world behind two in California. Makes Hartford look like doll house! Doing quick math it’s nearly 15 times the size, and some shows I went to Connecticut was only to tradeshow floors long, while the other few were not used. So yeah it was huge. But everything west of the Eastern Time Zone is large.

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NAB Show – Review, part two

Clickford, Steven M.

One of the other discussions was using LTE to replace existing Electronic News Gathering technologies that are decades old. ENG for many years made it easier to do live shots from the field and feed stories into newsrooms. ENG was a very complex method. For many years it wasn’t just the transmission method of microwave dishes being pointed to receive antennas or satellite dishes pointing to the stars. Most of this technology was based on transmission not for reception so hearing “return” feeds from the station, the interruptible feedback the earpiece to ether hear intercom or live program  (known better as the IFB), and seeing yourself required at least multiple phone lines from the field, a commercial two way radio with the station side having one or two channels completely open to broadcast the non delay feed of their programs, etc.

Due to the relevance of high definition, tapeless newsgathering, and sometimes the complexity making it hard to do a live shot in tight quarters; some companies are pushing for the idea for local TV stations to use their existing radio signals and turning them into their own 4G networks.

Sometimes 4g means LTE or Long Term Evolution or WiMax. It almost functions like a Metro area network for WiFi from what I know from the outside. Basically existing radio dishes on the ENG vans and receive sites would not need to be replaced, but the boxes that tie them up would, so there really isn’t that much rip and replace like the other stuff that was preached in the show.

A lot of local TV stations producing content are using a boatload of civilian 4G networks from the mobile providers, and by using this method, the costs would go down and any control of latency could be done through both a management system and intelligence of the device and app. Essentially if you have too many live shots going on at once the system will ether pick priorities or make you wait. If you have say 4 live trucks and 1 chopper, and the system is designed to take up to 7, then you’re all good because this type of software is pretty beautiful.