How 'bout those Olympic Games?

Are you, like tens of millions of other Americans, captivated by the dramatic stories of formerly unknown teens and twenty-somethings searching for their 15 seconds of fame? Are you mesmerized by the hyped-up stories of years and years of hard work that may or may not propel them to the podium? And are you fascinated by the cutthroat competition and the scathing pronouncements of the judges? Well then, you, like millions of your fellow Americans are probably tuning in to watch American Idol.

Yes I know, the title of this post threw you. You thought I was talking about the Olympic Games...that biennial celebration of the power and glory of athletic competition. But the sad truth is the Olympics just aren’t what they used to be when it comes to TV ratings. NBC’s coverage of the games has been contrived and choppy, so perhaps they deserve to be trounced by Idol. But who would have thought that a reality TV show that features vocal contestants vying for a chance to be insulted by a trio of C-list celebrities would pull in nearly twice the viewers as programming that was once an icon of “must-see-TV” viewing?

What do you think...are the Olympic games passé?, or are we just a nation in love with Idol?

Should the universal service fee fund broadband for rural areas?

Montana Republican Sen. Conrad Burns has introduced a bill to revise the universal service program, allowing funds from this program to help subsidize broadband and other high-speed telecom services for rural areas. According to an article published in The Missoulian and reported in The Rural Blog, this change would mean more telecom-related services (including Internet voice, cable Internet and broadband) would have to pay into the universal service charge. (See http://www.missoulian.com/articles/2006/02/11/news/mtregional/news08.txt)

In a related story (also from The Rural Blog), Drew Clark of National Journal’s Technology Daily reports that broadband Web service is becoming an economic necessity for rural American communities. Without broadband, these communities are unable to meet the growing technological needs of businesses, and businesses are being driven to relocate to areas that can provide them with proper technology. (See http://www.RuralJournalism.org, click on “Rural Blog” and access the blog for Monday, Feb. 13, 2006.)

Are you willing to pay the universal service charge for your cable Internet/broadband services to help rural communities in America become more technologically and economically competitive? Is the universal service charge the answer for making high-speed/broadband Internet affordable for more Americans? What other options are there?

The name of the blog

Let's get creative. Face it: most blogs ought to be called blahgs to signify the so-so content they contain (I'm neither including nor excluding this one in that category). What other terms can we use to identify blogs by content? If a blog is particularly edgy, for example, or particularly accurate in the information it provides, should it remain merely a blog? I think we need a descriptive lexicon to distinguish blogs from one another. Perhaps that lexicon already exists. If so, enlighten us all. If not, let's begin here with:

Blahg: A thoroughly enervating blog.


Add on, folks!

Book of Daniel has an afterlife on the web

If you blinked and missed the four episodes of The Book of Daniel on NBC, you have one more chance to catch a couple of episodes before it is sent to programming purgatory. Drawing more criticism than viewers (only about 6-7 million viewers per episode) the show was attacked by the American Family Association and others who viewed the portrayal of Christ as "blasphemous" and the minister and his family as dysfuntional at best. Surf on over to http://www.nbc.com/The_Book_of_Daniel/ to see remaining episodes and judge for yourself if this experiment in "edgy" programming deserved its fate.
Once you do, tell us what you think. Was it strong-arm tactics by offended viewers or simply market forces at work that pushed Daniel off the air? And while I'm asking questions, do you think the future of "broadcast" TV is safe, lowest-common-denominator fare while everything else will migrate to cable and the web?