theMediaman.com

Like many others, I didn’t get the m@b (pronounced “Matt B”) brand of humour at first. The comic is syndicated weekly in Eye magazine; after all the articles, but before the ads for escort services.

Just having moved from Waterloo, I assumed it was another “you’re not supposed to laugh” comic from a small-run, niche newspaper like UW’s Imprint running “The Parking Lot Is Full” which was the most consistently unfunny (and poorly drawn) comic I have ever seen.

Unlike “Parking Lot”, m@b occasionally had a comic I found funny. Then they started coming more frequently. Only recently have I tied this growing love of the comic to my slow assimilation to Life In Toronto. Growing up outside the GTA has given me an objective view of the strange lifestyles that I see here. It’s a perspective I share with only a few others clever enough to notice it. I don’t know much about Matthew Blackett (the author), but I wonder if he grew up a small-town boy like me or if he’s just one of the really clever people.

Either way, there’s still a high percentage of his comics dedicated to “the weird stuff I saw crazy people do”, which aren’t always as funny as they are tragic. Although, since the start of the month (when I moved into “Toronto Proper”), I’ve been finding even those strips funny.

The one that really hit home was today’s strip. I was considering posting a blog entry about the World Cup, but changed my mind when I realized it would be mostly critical.

Not really interested in the sport, I decided I would enter the event from a positive angle. “I’m proud that I live in what is probably the best city in the world to celebrate the World Cup”.

This was a feeling that was quickly threatened when the Portuguese in my neighbourhood were honking horns for several hours after the very first game… the VERY FIRST GAME. Doesn’t really mean anything, it’s only the very first game, and they were going nuts like they had won it all. I know it’s not just the Portuguese, and that all neighbourhoods are like this. I’m not upset with the Portuguese, I’m directing my anger at all Cup fans right now.

At the start, I also decided that I should probably choose a team if anyone asks. Since my background is from Great Britain, I put my support behind England. Now I find myself cheering for them doubly in the match this weekend. On Saturday, England plays Portugal. If Portugal wins, they’ll go nuts, honk horns for several hours, and possibly repeat the same on Wednesday and even on Sunday night (no doubt throughout the night too). Right now I don’t care for England to go All The Way as much as much as they just win the match on Saturday.

(This is what I meant about this post turning negative.)

So what’s all this building up to?

When I read this week’s m@b comic, once again I feel a special connection to his humour as my forced optimism is beaten to a pulp by my general irritation.

Today, I only have enough time to write in my journal, or do my workout. I should be walking the two miles my heart needs to stay healthy. Lately I’ve noticed a lot of unusual happenings through the CBC and I’m compelled to write about it instead of doing a cardiovascular workout. Sorry, Heart. At least I’m not doing this as I eat KFC.

One of the biggest proponents of kicking CBC out of the competitive broadcasting market, Issy Asper, died in 2003. After that, it seemed the debate about whether or not CBC should be allowed to compete for broadcasting quality on the same level as Canwest and CTV all but disappeared. A lot of the arguing that CBC shouldn’t be showing Hollywood films and professional sports died down. I’m curious who’s fault it is that the Board members got a little too comfortable in their seats.

Recapping the last year…

A CBC worker strike. Postponed seasons and nearly ending the CFL season before it started. When CBC broadcast the games as direct camera feeds, it turned out viewers liked it as much or more than with all the frivolous eye- and ear-candy. It was a rather long strike, given the magnitude of its effect, but that wasn’t the end of the signs of discontent.

There have been a LOT of job postings for CBC. That can simply mean that they’re having a stretch of prosperity. It can also mean that a lot of employees are leaving vacant spots behind for better jobs and more appreciation in the industry.

CBC has enjoyed phenominal reviews for their coverage of the Olympics year after year. With a bit of a surprise attack, CTV banded with Rogers to win the Canadian broadcasting rights for 2008. Following that, Brian Williams joined the CTV family… and shortly afterwards had the remainder of his contract with the CBC terminated. From reports, it doesn’t sound like it was a friendly handshake sort of meeting.

It doesn’t even sound like the Mighty Peter Mansbridge has seniority. They’re pushing off CBC’s 10 o’clock news flagship program, “The National” so that they can air an American Idol rip-off on Tuesdays. He’s not happy about it, but I doubt he’s going to “Pull a Brian Williams”… I was trying to inject a clever pop-culture term there, but it just sounds rude. Sorry.

In addition to moving George Stroumboulopoulos’ “The Hour” on to the network from the 8:00 & 11:00 home on CBC Newsworld, and putting it simply at 11:00 pm on CBC, the network is restructuring itself to a younger audience. I haven’t found details on how the postponed “National” and “The Hour” are going to share traffic. I assume they’ve already figured all this out. I’m not going to say CBC’s reach for a younger audience won’t work… it could, and I hope it does. However, they’ve tried this before (poor Ralph Benmergui). It failed miserably.

This time, they seem to be alienating their established audience by pushing around the schedule to accomodate yet another Reality TV show. Also, if George is supposed to bring in the younger viewers, how many 15 year olds will stay up until midnight in order to watch a news program?

Apparently the Canadian Senate attributes this to CBC’s need to compete in the commercial market for advertising dollars. Their solution is to pump up funding 40% to cover the 400 million CBC will lose by removing ads from their broadcasts. At the same time, they’ll have to remove professional sports (including NHL?) from their lineup.

The Conservatives seem to be staying out of this. They don’t like the CBC or the Senate, so I think they’re happy to let them fight it out. The media isn’t so happy about it, since the Senate’s also proposing a manditory government approval on any media merger that claims over 35% of the market. So now CTV and Canwest need to take CBC’s side without looking like they’re defending them. Currently, they’re just playing up the whole “both sides are acting childish” angle.

The CBC is positioning itself for the younger audience, but they’re not going to get it with this lineup. Again, they’re going to make the effort by alienating the established audience. That’s not even the worst of it.

There seems to be a self destruction happening within CBC HQ. The uppers are not playing nice with the peons. It’s been simmering out of the public eye for perhaps longer than we realize, but it’s obviously reaching a point where the internal mess will spill out for all to see.

Simone and I are living in our own place together, she’s starting a new job next Monday, and the first of her close friends got married this weekend. To top all that off, I’m looking at giving theMediaman.com a facelift.

Anyone who’s been with me through the long-haul knows that saying such a thing is usually little more than words. After all, this would make the eighth time I’ve designed a site layout since I first registered the domain. Only three designs have ever been fully executed, and the last of those around four years ago.

I’m looking at blocking off sections to non-regular users. The journal will still be here (and probably at the same URL), but the obvious link from the homepage will be eliminated… or at least you have to sign in with a generic, friend-based login/password like Reg has on his site in order to see it. The link will still be there, but probably in the form of a hidden link so that web crawlers can still index my site.

I also want to remove the link to my 30 Second Photoshop Fun directory. Fun, and it gets me the most hits because of Darth Anny, the photo of my car’s “Big Bass” system, and my pic simply titled “amish.jpg”.

With my move to video, I want to move the theme of the site away from web and New Media towards some of my more recent work. I still do Flash, but it’s been years since I’ve been given the chance to do anything revolutionary. No matter, as I’m focusing on DVD authoring and video as my new outlet.

Now to see if I can actually execute this new layout!

Okay, I think this will be just a few random thoughts and links following yesterday’s entry. It was pretty serious-handed for me, despite no less than three movie references (I’m just such a film geek).

A week ago I attended the Post-NAB conference at Dynamix. Desperate to continue absorbing all I can about broadcast technology, I attended nearly every session. By the penultimate session, they were into storage technology, and I think that I was the only non-ATUG member there. Hopefully I won’t feel as out-of-place around Avid users someday, but it wasn’t this week. I slipped out before the last session (Post technology I remembered from last years show) in order to finish cleaning up my old apartment after the move.

(nice segway)

Last night I hooked up my desktop in the den. This is probably the longest I’ve gone without setting up my computer after a move since I moved to Waterloo and bought my first computer. That was just over two weeks after the move that I had my shiny 486 on my desk, but this move took about ten days.

Every move prior to this one (an average of one-per-year for the last ten years), I set up the bed, then the computer, then proceeded to unpack over a space of six months. And the bed was only set up because it’s always been a futon. If it was the complicated, IKEA-built queen sized bed I have now, it would have taken even longer than six months for my average unpacking to be completed.

Looking back, I really only survived that time because Simone has the laptop, and because there are eight wireless networks accessible from our loft and four are unsecured - which means we can easily piggyback on someone else’s Internet connection.

Now that the DSL connection is set up, I’ve secured the wireless LAN to be the most secure of the nine in my area. Sure, it’s probably still crackable, but when four of my neighbours are only running WEP encryption, and the other four are wide open, it’s like the joke where “I don’t need to run faster than the bear, just faster than you.” In this case, I’m running faster than eight others.

</geek>

Actually, one more comment…

<geek>

It’s always so easy to post clever webcomics that make me laugh my ass off, but I try to refrain as much as I can. Despite that, here’s a clever one that takes some of the piss out of the superiority complex that Apple is actually promoting in their Mac users.

</geek>

I think I’m going to miss a lot of the Summer blockbusters this year. Living in “Toronto Proper” (or just “Toronto” to those who tell me I wasn’t living in Toronto before) with a TTC pass is really nice when we want to go out, but it’s a real trek in order to get to a theatre now. I’m already two movies behind because of the move, and only that few because I have no interest in seeing last week’s big release, “The Breakup”.

The easiest theatre to get to is Varsity, which is kind of nice since they have the VIP rooms. There usually aren’t blockbusters in there, but they did have X-men 3 playing last week. It was fun to see X3 with people who understand that the extra $4/ticket is so that you’ll be in a room with a bunch of people who really want to see the movie undisturbed, and are willing to pay that extra four bucks for it.

In the future, The Yonge-Eglinton Silvercity might prove to be the easiest for both of us to get to after work. This is important since our weekends are no longer focused just on spending time together. We have the whole week for that, and now we’re finding ourselves with more time to fill up on Saturday and Sunday. We actually have time for a social life with others. Kind of a nice addition to our time together.

Enough with the sappy crap…

I must say that Hwan is taking his Comment SPAM rather well. I’m still waiting for the day that I get so pissed off at people leaching my bandwidth so they can use Darth Anny as an avatar for MySpace or other forums, that I replace the graphic with a diseased penis.

That ought to get a few people banned.

The aliens in “Independence Day” attacked every major city in the world except for those in Canada. Maybe that gave us a false sense of security.

In “The Day After Tomorrow“, they said that everyone north of Idaho was going to be frozen to death… but we were sure they meant all the Americans north of Idaho. Anyone who’s made it through a Winnipeg winter can certainly handle 150 below.

In the eerily foreshadowing “The Seige“, it was made very clear that the terrorists attacking New York were doing so in retaliation for American actions. As Canadians, we don’t see outselves as Americans, and assume all other countries are the same. And perhaps we’re right.

That’s what makes this intercepted terrorism attack all the more difficult to understand.

I’m holding off my emotions until I get all the details. Right now, all the voices we hear in the media are the loudest and most extremist. So far, the most credible source of confirmed targets comes from heresay.

Simply, I’m not ready to be shaken up about this news. I’m not going to ignore it either. It took me a long time… a very long time, to fully comprehend what happened in 2001, but that extra time allowed me to understand in a way that made sense to me, and didn’t make me suseptible to the rantings of the Media Extremists nor the sheep who follow them.

If nothing else, be wary of the extremists on the small screen right now. They can be just as dangerous.