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<br><div><div>On 16-Oct-08, at 5:45 PM, Ted Langdell wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0; ">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?</span></blockquote><br></div><div>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. </div><div><br></div><div>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.</div><div><br></div><div>I might be fond of my ten-penny hammer, but I will never be able to fall in love with a robot.</div><br><div> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; border-spacing: 0px 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: auto; -khtml-text-decorations-in-effect: none; text-indent: 0px; -apple-text-size-adjust: auto; text-transform: none; orphans: 2; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; "><div>Joe Owens</div><div>Presto!Digital Colourgrade</div><div>302-9664 106 Avenue</div><div>Edmonton, Alberta T5H0N4</div><div>+1 780 421-9980</div><div><a href="mailto:jpo@prestodigital.ca">jpo@prestodigital.ca</a></div><div><br class="khtml-block-placeholder"></div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"></span> </div><br></body></html>