Category: Entertainment

Last month, my wife and I accompanied our two year old on his first trip to the Sacramento Zoo. It was fun to take him to see the animals. Most he did not recognize. The lion and tiger were just big cats to him. When he saw the giraffes we had a spirited discussion with him trying to explain that giraffes are not horses. We had as much trouble-explaining giraffes to our son as we have explaining to Liberals the reasons that we are in Iraq. Neither could accept any evidence contrary to their presuppositions. Some day our son will grow-up enough to know the difference. Liberals are much more intractable.

I was surprised how much the zoo had changed. It has probably been thirty years since my last visit. Many of the animals that I thought of as the barebones minimum for a zoo were nowhere to be seen. Among the animals absent from my youthful memories were elephants, hippos, rhinos, alligators, bears, gorillas and assorted reptiles. They don’t even have common animals found in the state of California; Raccoons, deer, bears, cougar, bobcat, and diamondback rattle snakes.

The environmental regulations that face such institutions must be tremendous. However, I think that they could do better. I don’t think that they should become State Fair Lite but given that many children have never seen many of the more common animals, I think they could do better.

You may not have noticed it lately but the Democrats are not the only ones proclaiming the need for an exit strategy. Closer to home, the Maloof brothers are slowly working their plan for an exit strategy from Sacramento.

The local bond measure to build the new arena for the Kings is likely to fail. This half-baked idea by city and county leaders has been on shaky ground from the very beginning. Once these politicians let this bond idea deteriorate into a money grab for local governments the whole idea was mortally wounded.

The city’s insistence on the railyards as the location for the new arena created the real possibility that we could have a new sales tax with no team. The arena might never be built due to the environmental issues related to the railyards. It could take billions of dollars and decades of clean-up to get the railyard ready for development.

Another concern that is not favorable for a new arena is the insistence that the arena be within the geographical boundaries of the City of Sacramento. By limiting the arena to the handful of possible sites in the City, it increases the cost of land for these sites.

Thirdly, the number of government entities that are involved in negotiations creates a distinct advantage for the Maloof brothers.

I think at the end of the day, it will be impossible to get tax money to build an arena in Sacramento. Once this point is reached, it will trigger the Maloof brothers announcing that with great disappointment they need to move the team to a new city, probably Las Vegas.

My other reason for this belief is the way that the team has been managed over the last few years. The team has gone from first to worst. As the win/loss record has been deteriorating, the ticket prices have continued their upward march. The Maloofs have seemingly lifted a page from the Al Davis owners’ manual. Used up veterans past their prime are cheaper to sign and happy to be playing. There is little chance for Post Season action but the roster can be changed every year to create the illusion of new blood on the team. Should home games fail to sell-out; there is more ammo for the move the team scenario.

I think the die is cast. The Maloof exit strategy has been quietly executing for several years and should reach fruition in about three years. The Maloofs only need to firm-up their case with the NBA that another city would be more supportive of their team than Sacramento.

Sacramento will soon face the future without an NBA franchise bearing its name. We have a few more years to get used to the idea.

Salem Communications has issued a Press Release concerning Eric Hogue.

The Short version is that Hogue is moving to another Salem station and will be broadcast in the afternoon on KFIA in Sacramento and a Salem station in San Francisco. It is hoped that this will be similar format with larger audience. Best wishes to Eric.

There is no word on what happens to Hogue’s time slot at KTKZ.

See Craig DeLuz blog for copy of press release.
http://www.craigdeluz.com/2006/08/salem-radio-to-take-eric-hogue.html

There is a story circulating that KTKZ talker Eric Hogue is on the chopping block. His program is slated to be cancelled in September by some bean counters at Salem Communications. Salem would rather substitute some nationally syndicated talker to save some money.

I would like to address this idea from two aspects of the radio business.

First is the FCC license. If Salem cancels Hogue, in my estimation they have violated the Prime Directive of broadcasting which is to serve the public good. Hogue has done much to promote KTKZ and inform their audience. Hogue is the only program in the broadcast area that covers local politics from an informed perspective.

Only Tom Sullivan at KFBK comes close but Tom doesn’t understand Conservatives or the inner workings of the Republican Party. In addition, Tom doesn’t care to learn. Tom has no interest in “getting under the hood” and seeing how the Legislature really operates.

As someone who has worked at the Capitol and in radio, I have come to appreciate Eric’s insight in this area. It took him a few years to get through the learning curve after arriving here from Ohio but he has mastered his subject matter well.

Salem has severely handicapped Hogue by not giving him the bandwidth necessary to compete in this market. KTKZ AM & FM are the weakest signals in the broadcast area. When tuning on the AM side I have to search between Radio Disney and Air America to find the station. It is difficult to get either KTKZ station indoors anywhere in the broadcast area. I cannot get their signal at all at my Elk Grove home. If Salem got Hogue on a station with some broadcast power, KTKZ would be second or third in the market.

Not only have I seen the Arbitron ratings but I was a participant in the Spring sampling period. In the Sacramento market, KSFO from San Francisco has better numbers than KTKZ and their signal is often better.

Secondly, Salem may not be making much money on Hogue’s time slot but they need to look at the Larry King model used by Mutual Broadcasting. King was what retailers call a “loss leader.” King was not profitable by himself but Mutual required that stations carrying King also carry other programming by Mutual. As a package Mutual was able to make money by this arrangement.

Hogue has done something similar for KTKZ with sponsors. Hogue has done well enough for sponsors on his show that they are willing advertisers on other programming at the station. Spots cut by the team at KTKZ are often heard on other stations in the Sacramento market.

The revenue hit that KTKZ will take if they follow through on plans to cut Hogue will be tremendous. Not only will they loose the Hogue show revenue but the Friday night high school sports will disappear also. Sponsors of the Hogue show are also the backbone of advertisers for other programming like Hugh Hewitt.

One can’t help but wonder if killing local programming is a prelude to selling the radio station to someone with a different format in mind. This decision is not a formula for long term viability at KTKZ.

I have been indulging myself lately by watching the DVDs of Babylon 5. I have wanted the DVDs for a long time but I was unwilling to pay the $79.95 price per season. Now however, my local Sam’s Club is selling them for $40 per season. This is a much more realistic number for my budget.

So far I have made it through Season Three. I finally have many of the plotline questions resolved that I never understood before. During the original series run, I managed to see about 90 percent of the episodes but missed a few subtle story elements. (For more on Babylon 5 see the Lurker’s Guide.)

One of the main characters in the Babylon 5 series was Michael Garibaldi who was played by Jerry Doyle. Doyle looks similar to Bruce Willis during his Die Hard movie days. Doyle has an amazing resume and is currently a talk show host.

I first heard Doyle’s show as a filler on KFBK when Mark Williams was on vacation. His show format reminds me of Laura Ingraham and is carried by the same network.

I would describe him as less of a hardcore Republican than Hugh Hewitt but worth a listen. I listen to his show noon to 3 pm via the Internet.

Having grown up watching kids show like the Banana Splits and a myriad of productions from Sid and Marty Croft, I have my memories of children’s television in a more innocent age. As a father I now get to go through this phase of growing up with my seventeen month old son.

Until recently, all he wanted to do was hit every button on the TV and the assortment of remote controls that he could get his hands on. However, he has become mesmerized by an export from Down Under called The Wiggles.

The Wiggles is a fast paced show with short segments that is on the Disney Channel at 6 AM. Miraculously, it is presented commercial free. My son will sit in the rocking chair and watch every frame to the exclusion of almost all else. There are five main characters plus a few in costumes that are regulars on the show.

After watching for a few weeks, you will notice segments from various shows being reused. It is a unique mixture of silliness and mayhem with some good messages like drink water and eat vegetable soup.

I went hunting for their website and found it at http://www.thewiggles.com. Amazingly enough, they are doing four shows this month at Arco Arena on April 19 & 20. Ticket prices range from $15 to $30. If your youngster is under six then this is the show for you.

The Wiggles is a welcome upgrade from PeeWee Herman and Barney the Purple Reptile. 

DeGarmo and Key Band made a live album back in about 1981. It was called No Turning Back. It was originally released as a double LP and later as a double CD. Some songs on the album were never released on any other recordings. Needless to say the CDs are out of print.

I happen to own a copy of the CDs. However my disc 2 is defective. There was a period of time shortly after CDs first came out that defective media was mass-produced and sold. The media layers inside the CD will breakdown and render the CD useless. This is apparently what happened to my disc.

I have been watching E-Bay for copies of the CD but to going rate is close to $100. There are two albums by DeGarmo and Key that are not widely available as downloads on places like I-Tunes. This recording is one; the other is their album This Ain’t Hollywood.

I found a link at Sparrow Records that had said that the following titles were available for download. One of the albums listed was No Turning Back. Wow! I might be able to replace my bad disc via a music download. Fantastic!

I checked the four websites referenced at the Sparrow site. This is rather cumbersome because several require proprietary software to be downloaded to even view their sites. As it turns out, only one site actually had the elusive album for download. That site was Connect which is affiliated with Sony. I hesitated somewhat at the name of Sony. Why? Because of their recent reputation of installing spyware as part of their music licensing agreement.

My desire for this music outweighed my concern that this corporation is watching me. My other concern is the proprietary format that you must purchase the music in. (I’ll have more to say about this shortly.)

Once the software was downloaded, installed and my computer did the obligatory restart, I went to the site and created my account and purchased the music; 19 tracks for 9.99. I downloaded the songs to my computer and then said to myself, “hello old friends.” I hit the play button to enjoy some songs that I hadn’t heard in ten or more years and then it hit me: these aren’t right! Songs 1-7 were actually duplicates of 13-19. Tracks 1-7 were the correct names but wrong data files. Look at the time duration of the songs. The song order of the actual download is different from the album. Hey guys this is a live album. The order matters too.

The good news for me is that I did get all the tracks to rebuild my disc 2. Unfortunately, I didn’t get what I thought I was paying to download. I sent an e-mail to the company. I’m curious what type of response that I get from a large corporation about a rather obscure download on their site.

In addition to the tracks being hosed-up, one of the tracks that I downloaded that was labeled correctly has audio gaps about two-thirds of the way through the song. I tried downloading the track again on a different computer and have the same error at the same spot. Therefore their master is bad. I wonder if they ripped the song from the CD release and had a defective disc 2.

I was concerned about using music that was in a proprietary format. I created a CD from the software that I had download for the Connect music site and then ripped the CD in Windows Media format on my home computer. I labeled the tracks and now can use the files like any other music files on my computer. There does not appear to be any copy protection on the files in Windows Media format.

After just three episodes, NBC has pulled the plug on its controversial series, The Book of Daniel. The show featured an Episcopal minister addicted to Vicodin with a drug dealing daughter and prominently featured homosexuality and adultery.

The show was so out of the mainstream that several NBC affiliates would not air the program. The ratings have tanked on the program and a lack of advertising support sealed its fate lamented NBC Entertainment President Kevin Reilly.

Sadly, this program may have been close to the mark of where the leadership of the Episcopal Church of the United States (ECUSA) finds itself heading.