[QuadList] RCA Quad and TCR-100 action at KTXL, 40, Sacramento in 1985

[Joe Owens]

On 16-Oct-08, at 5:45 PM, Ted Langdell wrote:

> Forty years from now, do you imagine anyone will be talking about  
> what kinds of servers, hard drives and encoders the station was  
> using in 2008?

Obviously not. Its a tired old McLuhanism about the media being the  
message.  On reflection, maybe the "content" of the day was the fact  
that the electronic technology was being pushed, and pushed hard by  
skilled people who were getting more out of it than had been designed  
in.  The anecdote about performing some kind of miracle to get the  
local newscast on the air, down one TCR, sort of illustrates this.   
Station personnel were really doing this kind of thing to some degree  
on a daily basis.

There is a stunning loss of humanity in broadcast evident in the near- 
perfection of what arrives in peoples' homes nowadays.  The "Please  
Stand By" slide no longer exists... and its kind of sad in a way,  
because the viewership understood then that people were involved in  
putting on the show.  A modern, automated station or broadcast might  
be lovely and seamless and might be just what the advertisers want  
(or is that really true?), but all they get now are the plastic  
hairdos that read the news.  Frankly, I see all the billboards around  
town extolling the virtues of these fabricated celebrities being your  
best friend and all.... but the reality is that they are becoming  
more irrelevant by the minute.

I might be fond of my ten-penny hammer, but I will never be able to  
fall in love with a robot.

Joe Owens
Presto!Digital Colourgrade
302-9664 106 Avenue
Edmonton, Alberta T5H0N4
+1 780 421-9980
jpo at prestodigital.ca



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