Streaming Network News: Quality?

Happy Labor Day holiday weekend! "Labor Day, the first Monday in September, is a creation of the labor movement and is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers. It constitutes a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country." 

America has turned into an anti-labor endeavor of the part of the rich and powerful. We need to consider and reflect on that today, and all that we can do to continue turning that around. A country is not built upon its wealthy and powerful, but upon the engine of its existence...the people.

Some argue Unions, labor concerns, and government caring about its citizens is socialism. Pure socialism is dysfunctional just as pure capitalism is but hybrids work. Like in America, when it's allowed by those in power who tend to fight it tooth and nail. Who tend to call entitlements such things as social security, Medicare, and healthcare for all. While actual entitlements THEY want, for big business, as unquestionably necessary and not to be discussed but simply given, no matter what. Even against all reason and the damage, it does to our government, our citizens and our trust in our leaders, mostly Republicans as the belonging to the party of big business and apparently citizen discare and abuse..

Irish Central argues: Labor Day is an 'Irish holiday,' as the Irish created the union movement

OK. Enjoy...

In 2016 I retired from a career in IT, sold my house of 16 years where my kids grew up most of their lives in and moved to another nearby town of Bremerton. Ironically a town I'd avoided all my life after being put in jail for the afternoon one fine early summer day when I was in 12th grade and visiting my girlfriend who lived in Bremerton and went to Olympic College (yeah, back then in high school, few believed a 12th grader in Tacoma, had a girlfriend in college, in another town, nearby or not...though my close friends did knowing I wouldn't lie).

I was just sitting there waiting for her to stop by for lunch, at a friend's house, with her best girlfriend and ex-boyfriend (older than me and her) who introduced us. when I was 17. I was innocent of anything that day, and they let me go. I've detailed this story elsewhere. In being the only town I was ever tossed into a jail cell in, and because back then Bremerton sucked (it's really nice now) and kind of a rough Navy town, I never wanted to return here after we split up. Until I moved here in 2016 and both myself and my two adult kids found it a pretty nice community ... now.

I was shooting for, as I still am, for a career change, not actual retirement. Like many, my retirement funds aren't what they need to be. But I had enough of a cushion to allow me this attempt into a creative career in writing and filmmaking. A luxury I didn't have while my kids were being raised. As I just noted to a friend who said he was impressed with what I'm doing as he wouldn't try it at this stage in his life...I had really had it with working in IT and it was quit or retire. So I retired and decided I had the ability to go for it. I'm making the best of it so far. In the end, I'll either fail and look stupid, bor succeeded and appear smart and courageous. Time, very soon, will tell.

That meant I needed to change my lifestyle, cut my overhead, and lose some amenities and luxuries. One of those being news and entertainment access. I dropped my DirecTV satellite which I'd had for years and had never wanted Comcast because everyone I knew who had it, complained about it and I'd had no complaints with DirecTV. Besides, for years they refused to run a line out to the community I lived in, which was in the woods. Not far off, only a mile out of town, but if you wanted "cable" you needed a non-cable cable. Or pay for the cable to be strung? Really Comcast?

Once I got moved to Bremerton (from Suquamish, where Chief "Seattle" is buried), I signed up with Comcast. I wanted faster internet speeds and had tired, to be honest, of atmospheric conditions screwing up my viewing times.

One of my favorite shows and one I missed the most, was/is Rachel Maddow. Also Comedy Central's The Daily Show. Which I still can't get.

One of the things I like about Rachel is her cheerful attitude, her understanding of what the hell is going on and her ability to deliver complex issues today through a historical perspective. Essentially educating her viewers.

Something I don'/t see on Fox News, or much of anywhere else. It's what I've liked about some PBS news shows. A deeper, more academic perspective. So I'm going to use her show as a vehicle to exemplify what I'm talking about in this blog for this week.

Let me take this brief aside as I've gotten hammered by various conservatives I know about being in a liberal bubble (while it really is them in a far more corrupted conservative bubble), saying I only watch MSNBC (I don't, only Rachel on there), Or only CNN (I don't, not at all, unless I'm at an airport maybe).

I actually have always gotten my news worldwide, since college, ever since the 60s as a kid watching PBS. I found it fascinating there were other ways of delivering the news, fewer articles and deeper perspectives. Back then I did watch Walter Cronkite, and so on. Those were good days when news was a "loss leader", not for profit, or for entertainment, but real journalism.

I watched broadcast news shows for years and then I did like CNN for a while, in its beginning. But in the past years since college, I've leaned on a wider perspective. How do other nations view us? How accurate is our news? What are they missing? What are they too focused on? And since the last Iraq war, how much are they too closely aligned with our government.

Informed consideration, not political belief.

I do my best to receive and assimilate actuality in reality. I don't see that effort much on the conservative side.

I get my news now from all over. I see someone post something, I research it (if it's interesting) before I share it (mostly). I research down two or three levels while most do one level if even that. I review news from all over the world. I rarely watch American news, not MSM, or faux news as is on Fox News entertainment "news" shows. I review other information from intelligence sources available to citizens. Janes, FBI, even CIA, sources, raw journalists' comments in areas of concern, and so on.

I watch news shows from Japan, Canada, UK, Al Jezeera, and other countries. I do NOT watch Russia Today (or their disingenuous obfuscating moniker, RT), Sputnik or read Pravda (the misnamed Russian State News agency which disingenuously means, "Truth").

So yes, I'm well informed, with a background, education, and history involved in professional levels research, world history, civics, and covert intelligence research. I am, therefore, far better informed than most American citizens. There are obviously others far more informed. But for a citizen, I think I do pretty well to stay level headed and rational with actual facts and information.

Before retiring I had MSNBC and so I had The Rachel Maddow Show (TRMS). When I moved/retired, I cut my paid channels down to basic and lost her show. I missed Rachel. But two years, no Rachel.

Then I moved a mile away into a far smaller home, with a much more reasonable monthly rent (yes, dumped having a mortgage and just rent now...I hope to buy another house, but I want to pay it off, with no mortgage as I do now when I buy cars).

I moved as I said, and moved my Comcast cable. A friend, an actor I had used on my audiobooks and now in my filmmaking, mentions Rachel at times, as he has her show at home, and sometimes good-naturedly teases me about my not having her. I got to wanting to figure out how to get Rachel's show back.

I discovered on my LG smart TV something I'd known about but never much bothered with, "Live TV", streaming TV off the internet. MSNBC is in there. So I started messing with it and discovered, Rachel's show was on it!

I started watching streaming TV and discovered some interesting things. Like, the network doesn't much care about the quality of their shows on streaming. It's a bizarre world of broken segments, ads you HAVE to watch (can't scan past or skip as with a DVR), and weird juxtapositions of shows, internally speaking.

I'll say upfront, even though I'm a high-level computer and internet savvy one time professional, I haven't researched this issue and don't know much about the format or issues of networks presenting their shows on the internet. I'm just relating it as a consumer and a viewer. So I'm happy to hear knowledgable explanations for my following complaints.

I couldn't figure out at first what the hell was going on with Rachel's show. And then, they took it off streaming on Live TV. I lost her show again. But, what I realized was, they were running the segments of her show...backwards! It was starting with the last segment of the show first, then go backward until at the end you had the beginning. WTF I mean, really? But before I lost access to her show on streaming, they seemed to be changing it around to be more in proper order. OK, progress. But again, what the hell? I even posted on their website asking, what the hell people?

Anyway, she was gone again. Until...Amazon Prime day. I have a Kindle Fire HD 7" and on Prime day I got a 10" Kindle. I'd also heard about Amazon Fire TV Stick. Cheap, so I got one. And discovered that I could now again access MSNBC and other things. And I had back, Rachel's show!

So I started watching again, though I have to wait until the day after to see the previous day's show. . It seemed the show was better handled on this format which is apparently streaming, but different, more ordered and not just seemingly (to me) so randomly presented. There's a menu system for each show offered.

However...

Again there are the ads I cannot skip as I can automatically now, on my Tivo Bolt DVR. Something I'd been looking forward to for decades. Still, the attention to detail on these shows is frustrating at times. At times, at the end of a segment, they cut it off before the end of the segment.

When the adverts are over, you see that cut off ending, then the brand logo, then the next segment. The commercials, ones you have to watch, or mute as I do as they are so annoying (I mean, animals selling big pharma products? bizarre) and the same commercials again and again, saturation advertising for the dumbest among us. So annoying.

My point? IF they know, and they do know, that we are forced (no ad-skipping capabilities) to watch their adverts, then they are making money off these ads. To be sure. So at least they could do some due diligence regarding the quality of their presentations of their shows.

IF the argument is there's only one tech putting these shows online and they are overworked or something, they're still making money! Give us the quality we're actually "paying" for in watching adverts. We're not just your poor unwashed, we're your customers, your ad viewers, so give us the paid for attention we deserve!

Enough with this sketchy quality nonsense on streaming!

Also, monitor and keep the audio synced up with the video? Just a basic tenet of production, right?

It's time that streaming is given as much attention as cable, paid cable or broadcast TV.

It's time. It's passed time.

You're all professional organizations.

Act like it. Be professional.

TUNN - The Useful News Network - News That Gets Things Done

This is an adjunct blog to today's earlier blog (USCNN).

Our news networks have been sucking, long and hard for some time now. Worst offender in the realm of Journalism? Fox News. Others? MSNBC. Worst News Network overall? Probably, CNN. Which is so sad considering what they initially achieved in their birth and creation of the twenty-four hour news cycle.

Sadder still, currently one of the best journalistic networks in the classical sense, is a foreign held news network (based in Qatar), Al Jezeera. What does that say about our home grown, bloated, biased news networks?

Some of the issues?

Instant media. The need to fill a twenty-four hour news cycle, even when there is nothing really going on in that period. Also, the belief by networks that people are only attracted to certain types of news, and the whore-mongering race to present those news pieces, regardless of what America needs to be hearing about. Advertisers. Advertisers who might pull their support if the wrong news is presented. Also, an overwhelming deluge by some networks of their corporate opinion. OpEds, over editorializing. Companies pushing agendas to make a buck at all costs with considerations of journalism taking a back seat, especially with politically partisan ones.

We need useful news.

We need a news network that isn't beholding to anyone. Who can do pure journalism. We need news that gives us what we need and not what they want, what their owners want, what a political party wants, what religious organizations want, what extremist conservatives or, liberals want.

We the American people are being held hostage by these groups, and it needs to stop. We need to start using our minds, to be intelligent, and to be a knowledgeable, even if in many cases not an educated citizenry. We need to be educated, even if only by our news networks.

This new network could be one where, between "hard news" segments, they could have alternative shows like the Jon Stewarts and The Daily Show type shows. Humor is a great way to get people to absorb news that is hard to hear, or accept. Stewart is an obvious liberal in his orientation. Perhaps a humorous liberal show followed up by a conservative show; but I'd suggest going another way.

Still, these types of shows show us the foibles in our ways, much in the way that the original Star Trek TV show, exhibited to us through science fiction, through aliens ("Those stupid aliens, who are nothing like us!"). They showed us things we needed to look at but couldn't, unless we saw it through the filter of it being others, outside of who we are.

We still need to see this kind of news, to deal with it, to ruminate on it with enough information so as to make useful, informed decisions. And we can't currently do that with the type of news we are receiving. The American people need news. Real news. News presented in a way that is useful. And news that we need to hear and not just want to hear.

In short, we need a news network that is giving us what we need to hear, and yes what we find interesting, but most of all not just editorialized and opinionated but real information with possible solutions; or at least a path to finding those solutions; ways to think about how to achieve solutions. Those are the key elements.

We need to know what to do about some of these intense issues so that when we talk to others about them, debate them, even argue about them, we have some meat, some fuel to use in order to achieve some kind of consensus.

We need news media that helps us to find the right answers and not just the answers for us, or for our group, our preferred political system. We need to put down the crazies, the extremists, the right wing fools, the left wing absurdities.

We need a news Network with programs that reports the news, even news we don't care about, until it is reported properly, and that offers the best case for fixing those issues; solutions as supported by the educated, the knowledgeable, even the public; and then updated over time in revisiting that news as better solutions and information make themselves known. Canvassing discussion groups, listening to the public, combing available information and actual journalistic endeavors.

The American people need to be informed. We need to be informed properly so that we support what our government does, so that they do what is needed, so that the American voice to our government not only supports what is done, or to be done, but can even offer solutions upward to our head of State and not only and always, downward from our head of State. It would need checks and balances but that can be figured out.

We need a new kind of news: a New News Network, a new kind of, "Triple N" that covers our nation's needs. Remember what John F Kennedy said: "Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country."

Many people take that to mean, leave your homes, go out and volunteer, join the military, enter public service. But no, not only. It can be as simple as knowing what is happening all around you. Knowing the correct information, having an informed decision, speaking out what is true and necessary and others having if not the same understanding, at least an educated, intelligent understanding of the issues. Because in that, we can have productive debates. And in a productive debate, you can arrive at what is the best answer.

You have to have accurate information for a good debate and you have to have information on the things most important at that time in the world, as well as future considerations and their possible repercussions.

As I mentioned at the beginning, I just wrote a blog on this today titled, USCNN, that talks about this kind of thing, in part.

We need this new network to serve up to us the major and important news pieces. We need them to offer up to us perhaps the top three best solutions to the situation as it stands using (and over the next days and weeks), using all available resources, government, foreign governments, Vox Populi (the Voice of the People) via the internet and other news networks, using everything to continue to offer us the best solutions, possible solutions and not just that network's opinions, biases and hidden agendas.

Much as in the ancient Roman belief that a nation state should be run by the people, it takes an educated citizenry to properly support that best case type of a Republic.

In theory, we are a great nation.

To truly be a great nation and to continue being one will require us to pay more attention to what is going on; but first, we need to be sure that we are being supported in order for us to support our people, our government and thus, our position in the world and their perception of just what and who we really are.

USCNN

MSNBC, CNN, Fox News - what do these have in common? Capitalism, big money, kowtowing to advertisers and billionaire owners, perhaps? Even when they aren't told to alter the news to support the corporate desires, they can be slighted.

I'm sick to death of how biased the news is. When I was a kid I remember the news gave us the news. They would have editorials in the final segment where a trusted news journalist would  give us their insight on what we were dealing with on a major, important news topic and we could make up our own minds. It was a questionable thing. I thought (as a kid) that it was a great thing. Just tell us how to think, you're the one who is in the know, who does this for a living. My parents however weren't always so happy about it and sometimes disagreed.

It was heading down a slippery road they said, not just presenting the raw news and letting us decide what it meant for ourselves. But those journalists like Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite, and their like, strove for accurate reporting.

I remember when "Uncle Walt" gave us an editorial, trying to accurately give us an explanation of what the news meant. My parents thought it was a path that could go wrong if not careful; but, look around, it has. Now we have editorials, not news, and we need to get back to news.

News and information is as important as the military. Information is power and we need information, accurate information, in order to make decisions in our lives. An accurate news network is as important as our military, possibly even more.

But now it's like they took the Editorial and made THAT the news hour.

So how about this? We do things different than some other nations (like Russia, like Iran). We can do things that in some other countries would be horrendous (USSR, North Korea, China).

Perhaps what we need is to buy CNN and make it our own national news agency. Or we could create our own.

Hang on, give me a second here....

It would have to be set up as an independent department of the government and I do mean, INDEPENDENT. They would need a charter that guaranteed them the money they need to do a good job going into the future. So there is no way the government can dabble by any kind of direct action or even nuance, to affect their reporting.

Accurate news is a national necessity and private corporate interests are failing us.

It could be a network to offer news other agencies can't to give appropriate validity and veracity to. It could have commercials, it could have advertisers but... it would have to be set up in a way that should advertisers not like what is being reported on, they could walk off in a huff with only a good riddance from the network, so that it wouldn't be a problem; so that it couldn't affect their reporting.

It would have to be an independent agency so that even the government is somewhat afraid of them. Because we need a government who IS a little afraid of it's people, not our current government where the people are somewhat afraid of their government.

Advertisers could get to a point where they vie for a slot for advertising on USCNN (#USCNN) as the best news agency in the world. A network the entire world could trust to give unbiased, accurate information, even using CIA resources; which is after all, what they are there for. We just currently don't make as good of use of them as possible.

Why does it have to be Al Jazeera? We can do better than them!

This new agency would let the other news agencies do their whoring to their audience. They could continue to masturbate their public all they want. They could continue to spew the nonsense they are now to support the ridiculous beliefs of a ridiculous portion of our nation.

Because then if they came out with some nonsense, everyone would know that they could turn to USCNN for "Just the facts, Mam."

Eventually, it would clean up the other news agencies just by it existing. The prostituted news networks, the billionaires who buy and support this nonsense, would dry up. It would take away the reasons for big money to buy these news networks and support their rape of the American people.

Wouldn't that be nice? Accuracy in reporting? Science back in the media?

Just as we need a secular government to support people's religious beliefs so they can worship the deity of their choice, so we need a secular government to support our people's beliefs in accurate information; in order to make good choices in their daily lives, their voting lives, and even their religious lives.

Yes, this all sounds like a very scary thing. Sure we've all ready 1984, Brave New World, and so on but we are in many cases, already there. Yes, it could all go awry. But then again, yes, it can be done, and yes, it could change our nation, putting us back on a good path to the future again, and it could even, change the entire world.

Who are we to run away from a challenge? Especially when the outcome has so much potential to change so much, for so many, for the better?

See the follow on blog:
TUNN - The Useful News Network - News That Gets Things Done