I didn't really want to go to breakfast but did. Eggs Benedict and
bloody marys were to good to turn down. Especially in Oxford, Mississippi.
Periodically, I go there to channel William Faulkner but most of the time it turns out to be my Uncle Jack Daniels. A favorite bed-and-breakfast.
A way to clear my head from the newsroom.
Breakfast went as smooth as it could until a seasoned group of travellers joined us.
Eating with people I don't know early in the morning...with a headache...is not something I do well. But in the course of conversation, I made an observation about
SEC football. Something about I wish Mississippi could step up and compete against the big boys like Tennessee and Florida. But I didn't think they could.
Maybe we could help them? Let them annex a county or two out ot Florida?
Out of the blue, a retired minister's wife, a pleasant woman wearing her Sunday best leaned over and said "well son, you sound like a democrat. That's what they do.
They try and make everyone all the same. Like one of those news people.
Always talking on the news about some guy that wants somebody to give something to him. I hate those people."
Sounds like an Alabama fan actually. But I digress.
My wife, who was already on her second bloody mary at 9:15 in the morning, started laughing and said "Hey Tvboy, tell her what you do for a living!"
Had to kill my bloody mary first and then pour a second.
I leaned in. Spoke softly so all would strain to hear.
"I'm a reporter. A member of the liberal news media. And every single day I
try to tear this country down brick by brick."
Needless to say. Breakfast was over.
Being from the painfully polite upper crust of Jackson, Mississippi, the woman said
"you have a blessed day."
Thanking them I stood up wished them well, and said "You kind people are welcome to join us at Ajax for lunch. But first we have to go to an ACLU meeting. Maybe we will see you at the Hillary Clinton book-signing at Square Books later today."
The evil liberal media.
On Sunday, I changed sides and didn't know it. I'm now apparently on the side of the vast right-wing conservative conspiracy.
Sunday, Feb. 24, we were scheduled to air the CBS 60 Minutes story about the prosecution of Don Siegelman. But right as the show started, we lost the feed and missed the first eight minutes.
The show featured a republican attorney who says Karl Rove asked her to spy on Siegelman, and also that the former governor was prosecuted for being a democrat in a republican state.
A technical problem. A glitch. A screwup. A mistake.
But all those open-minded people are now cursing, threatening, and and berating us. They think we're part of the republican-conspiracy to keep Siegelman in jail.
Today, I have been physically threatened. Another e-mailer says we will "get what is coming to us."
Other call us pigs, say we should be ashamed, one says his life goal is to screw us, and yet another wants us to die.
Nothing like calm political discourse. Our little technical problem is a microcosm of the country in which we live.
People make up their mind regardless of the facts. Don't confuse me with the truth.
I, seemingly, chosen a side in the republican and democratic debate. A bitter and hateful fight that is getting worse every day. It's about who is good and bad, and not who is right or wrong.
Now after so many years in the liberal media, I guess I can bask in the republican wading pool. Can I go back and forth? When the republicans run out of those white wedding cookies, can I go back to the democratic pool for oatmeal?
I've voted for democrats in my life. I've voted for republicans.
I make up my own mind. I don't vote one way or another because someone like Rush or Olbermann tells me their version of reality.
I can find and manipulate the Charmin without their help. I can also make my own mind up about conspiracy theories and the one that suggests we deliberately fouled up the CBS feed is just dead wrong.
If you have a reasoned and thoughtful opinion, I will talk and debate with you.
Curse and threaten me, scare my co-workers, and call so you can scream...then just listen to this sound....
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15 comments:
Damn.Admitting that you vote for both must mean you guys are catching some crap.
We expected better of you. Very disappointed. I really feel you have let us down. Your review of 60 minutes report this am was fair but missed things that should have been brought up (see Scott Horton's 'no comment' Harper magazine website). I will be looking at what the non-Newhouse papers have to say on this subject.
I condemn the threats you have received. All that energy needs to go into letting local ad companies know how we feel.
We simply do not believe it was CBS feed error. How could this happen in 2008.
It was a feed error. (Yes, I am a co-worker of Greg's.) Why would we have promoted it was coming on, several times in the last few days, only to plan for massive hate mail and vindictive calls?
This is worse than when we had severe weather during the CMA's a few years ago and we had to do weather break-ins for one county that had a tornado warning.
Last night, we rebroadcast the 60 Minutes special at 10pm, with special CBS persmission (which is not something they grant lightly). We also got additional permission (we were surprised at this) to rebroadcast it Monday at 6pm. CBS bent over backwards to help us in both cases.
We also made it prominent and available online, through the CBS video player on WHNT.com.
If we wouldn't have done these things, yeah-- some of these people might have a point. But why would we go to such lengths?
It was a mistake. Equipment fails from time to time. There was no engineer here to fix it quickly.. one booked it to the station as quickly as he could.
Geez.
"A technical problem. A glitch. A screwup. A mistake."
Come on. Name the last time (not 3am) that your station broadcast dead-air for 8 minutes. WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME?
I'm waiting. When was your last "glitch"? I'm not talking about running the wrong 30 second ad spot, but regularly scheduled programming. Come on now, when was the last time you couldn't run a national feed for more than five minutes? When was the last time you broadcast dead-air for that long?
When? We're waiting. Until then you are liars.
AHAHAHA! First - if you have to leave a comment - at least leave your name. Seems kind of cowardice to me. Second - have we achieved absolute zero and I haven't heard? What a lovely complement to the programmers in this country that you believe that there are no longer glitches in technology. That has to be the most ridiculous argument I have ever heard. And by the way - I think that people going in and working a job every day making their living on $9 bucks an hour don't care enough about you people to go to this much trouble. I think your comment proves why. You should spend this kind of energy and angst in Darfur berating the men killing children in the street. You should be ashamed of this comment you left -
Kathryn
un-named co-worker of Greg
Sorry but I do not believe it. Not eight minutes. We know that the station is sorry it happened. An eight minute mistake?
Greg
Better reporting. More details. We have media problems. Get your news from other places other than Newhouse papers and the AP. Let us know what you are working on. I will check the website. Good luck
People do not think whnt is doing a good job. Our media has failed to provide two sides of the stories. You are really hearing it. Are you listening? Our media has failed us.
The eight minute lapse was icing on the cake.
Kat
“60 Minutes Done A Great Job”
The Bush’s elete group of corrupt GOP’ers are scared to death that Don Siegelman may be on the streets before the election. Slick Bob is so nervous that he is combing his hair and spraying his mouth and under arms every five minutes for two reasons: He’s hoping that the next president will be John McCain a republican and that Riley will be asked to be McCain's running mate. If the next president is a Democrat he/she will probally appoint new U.S. Attorneys in Alabama. Riley along with most of the top GOP operatives could get Federal charges filed against them for taking millions of dollars from Michael Scanlon and Jack Abramoff. This money was used to defeat Siegelman's lottery and to fund Riley's two campaigns for governor.
Ewww. The new broadcast showed a technical looking server room and then repeated the "glitch" story.
But they keep mixing up the transceiver and transmitter. Go listen to the video again. They can't even keep a simple story correct.
So tell me, are all CBS national feeds streamed live? Are you telling me you don't get this digitally ahead of time? How many hours ahead of broadcast did you get the digital segment? Is national CBS wrong when they said there was no transmission troubles and this was an editorial decision?
So who is wrong? CBS in NY, or the WHNT official "glitch" story.
So, again, you have a piece of receive hardware with no backup? And the problem was so bad (failing hardware) that it took you eight minutes to fix (new hardware?). Also, you say there are no engineers in at 6pm on a Sunday, but apparently one can get in there in six minutes.
I'm sorry for all the flack you are getting, but it is your corporate owners who brought this down upon your heads. I hope the FCC takes away your license for the editorial harm to the community. I hope you have a better story for the FCC then you did for your viewers... "glitch".
Here is the account from the Chief Engineer:
"At 7:03pm I received a call from Tracy Garrett at the DOC, Tracy said that we lost CBS when we went to 60 Minutes at 6:00pm. Tracy said he had talked to the station and they were trying to find out what was going on. I was about 10 blocks from the station at the time of the call and proceeded to the station as quickly as possible. When I arrived at the station I switched to CBS IRD 4 at the station placing CBS 60 Minutes back on air at 6:12:17."
It appears no one at the whole station was smart enough to switch to the backup feed. Luck the Chief Engineer was down the road. What would WHNT do if this guy ever is unavailable for any length of time.
There is more:
"[When the assistant Chief engineer went to the transmitter, he] looked at the output from IRD 1 there was no video and IRD three had an alarm because it was looking at the wrong channel. When Richard power cycled IRD one at 6:18:12Pm all IRD’s in the rack blinked and video returned from IRD one."
Sounds like an odd problem that could have been fixed very quickly. Looks like someone sabotaged the transmitter. I don't expect to see an investigative report on who had access to the transmitter shortly before switching over to 60 Minutes. It doesn't sound like an equipment failure, but more like what you might call a happy accident.
hang in there greg and whnt!
I am another one of Greg's co-workers. In response to this quote...
"Come on. Name the last time (not 3am) that your station broadcast dead-air for 8 minutes. WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME?"
Our entire station was off the air for most of the afternoon of July 16, 2007. We were able to put radar up so that we had something other than Black on air. We actually had to do our 5:00 newscast that night from our parking lot with the use of our Satelite Truck.
Obviously, technical glitches happen. I am sure they happen in your work place all the time, our glitches just happen to be seen by many more people than your work place glitches would be.
To the person who asks these questions, "So tell me, are all CBS national feeds streamed live? Are you telling me you don't get this digitally ahead of time? How many hours ahead of broadcast did you get the digital segment? Is national CBS wrong when they said there was no transmission troubles and this was an editorial decision?
"...let me explain...
CBS shows are sent to us real time. Meaning, they come to our station, we send them out to you. Obviously, not all of them are live, but we do not get them ahead of time.
For example, The Price is Right is on right now. While CBS might contact us ahead of time to let us know that someone from our area will be on, they do not even send us video clips of that person early. We see it happening as you do.
The CBS Early Show comes to us on a 1-hour time delay. I direct the local morning newscast, so I monitor CBS to make sure we are not missing any breaking news cut-ins from them. From 6-7AM I see a black screen that says "CBS Early Show, Central/Mountain Zone Time Delay" So we don't even get a show that is being Time Delayed early.
CBS was not lying when they said there was nothing wrong on "THEIR" end of the feed. As we have said repeatedly, the malfunction was on "our" end. They were wrong, however, when they said that our not airing the segment was an editorial decision.
To see our Station Manager/News Driector's account of the story, her blog can be found at
http://www.whnt.com/Global/Link.asp?L=295554
She is working on her posting as I am working on this response, so if it is not there yet, be patient, it will be there soon.
You people are amazing. All of you whining, finger-pointing, ignorant people who speak before you think. God forbid any of you ever mess up at your job. Oh, I think Bob meant to spill his coffee on this morning's meeting notes. Oh yea, I think Jane meant to lose those project papers. COME ON!! Why would we shoot ourselves in the foot on purpose?? Why would we promote the segment to only "block" it at the last minute?? And for all of you skilled and knowledgable conspiracy theorists out there, WHY WOULD WE REPLAY THE SEGMENT NOT ONCE, BUT TWICE AND HAVE IT UP ON OUR WEBSITE FOR 24/7 ACCESS. Wow!! Some conspiracy. If we did it on purpose, don't you think it would have been gone for good? Don't you think we would have said "oh, well...can't get it back, sorry" and never even attempt to show it again? I could entertain your conspiracy theories if we never showed the segment again, but since we and CBS made it available again TWICE and on our website, I think your arguments are completely unfounded. The only reason this has become such hysteria is because the bored, ignorant, gossip hungry people of this world will take any and every opportunity to make a mountain out of a mole hill. God forbid there isn't someone or something for the rest of the world to gossip about and tear down.
And for those of you who may not realize the backlash we have had to deal with as employees, you should all know we have been subjected to threats, cussing, arguments, and every other rude, disrespectful, and absolutely insane comment you could imagine, all over a freakin technical problem that was fixed and re-aired.
And by the way, if any of you ever come across any technical device that has never had a glitch, please run it by me. I'd love to see that machine of perfection.
Oh, and since you're all experts in the field of politics, conspiracys, machines, media, and technical control, I commend you for your mass amounts of knowledge and hard work.
Peace.
WOW.
From all these posts, I'm starting to believe the stereotype about dim bulbs from Alabama.
Simply this: why would any TV station purposely and deliberately pre-empt a heavily-promoted telecast that's certain to draw huge ratings during a sweeps period?
I've been in the business and the answer is: they wouldn't. Ever. EVER EVER EVER EVER.
No General Manager with a brain in his head and oxygen in his lungs would advocate or tolerate such a decision.
This was obviously a technical error, albeit a poorly-timed one. Anyone who refuses to believe otherwise can continue to drink the Kool-Aid from the lunatic fringe and wear the foil hats.
(Guys, you're making your side look bad)
Renton
Renton,
You make a good point: "Simply this: why would any TV station purposely and deliberately pre-empt a heavily-promoted telecast that's certain to draw huge ratings during a sweeps period?"
Right. WHY would ANY TV station leave the control room unmanned without an active backup during prime time showing of a heavily promoted program during sweeps period? That kind of negligence at a major station should have pink slips flying all over the place.
But no, all we get are canned denials and faux outrage. Here's another one: Why would ANY responsible journalist worth his degree and reputation adamantly declare that this was an "act of god", when the possibility of tampering was by NO MEANS RULED OUT? That's not journalism, that's being a corporate spokesperson obediantly towing the company line.
This is a problem that could have been resolved remotely in seconds. From your engineer's emails, we know the station was manned, and that someone had punched up a screen crawl across the bottom of the black screen. Why didn't that person switch to one of the backup recievers instead of waiting 8 minutes for the CHIEF engineer to amble over and flip that switch?
I don't mean to impugn the integrity of the honorable people working at WHNT, or to imply that there was any kind of conspiracy. But there HAS been a serious lapse that still has not been adequately explained.
Please do yourselves a favor and put this speculation to rest. Comparing this instance to previous occurrances of Power failure or CBS switching the feed during a game is disingenuous. Declaring there was "no one there" is not true. "Technical glitch" doesn't explain why reciever 1 had no video and why reciever 3 was on the wrong channel.
Have you guys been asked to stop answering these questions?
BRAVO!
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