TV and Radio news

I agree on Car-Talk and never did like PHC - 'cause I hate Garrison, but I gotta disagree on news.

Not sure I should - but here is my descending order for news: (I'll attempt to clarify for non-US)

National Public Radio (subscription funded Public broadcasting)

C-SPAN - (Cable companies public service news - frequent world leaders and direct broadcast from Congress)

McNeal - Lehrer Public Broadcasting (the telly side of Public funded)

If I cannot get to these sources I sorta trust (after I cross-check) or if the issues deem - I go international

Canadian Broadcasting is good - British Broadcasting C? is good - neither particularly defers to American sensibilities, both get a bit snarky about it.

Democracy TV I don't dislike for the screaming liberalness, but for the impassioned cross over from news to editorial without warning.

Al Jezeera has been surprisingly good.

FOX and MSNBC are not journalists. CNN and HLN really dicey - news light.

IMHO.

Have to admit this is not a particularly appropriate question for CR4.

However I do have to admit that they deserve our support for shows like Science Friday, and local to me Frank Statisio did an interview with a Physicist on his show The State of Things, about String Theory that has caused me to conflict with our expert Jorrie.

I initially disliked Diane Rehm, and still do sort of, but accept her since she is coming apart gracefully like I am.

Personally I hate it when Mr. Keillor sings. However I have read The Book of Guys, and I don't know a friend of mine on CR4, that wouldn't get what he was talking about in that particular book.

Personally he is sort of a snot, as opposed to Mr. Serling who I also shook hands with.

Mr. Roddenbury was more like Mr. Kiellor.

Russell

Have to admit this is not a particularly appropriate question for CR4.

http://cr4.globalspec.com/thread/39827/What-TV-Shows-Should-I-Watch

huh ?

Relax - I don't mind either question, we're all free to read or not.

I don't listen to the radio much, so I've no idea why I'm even posting here ! On top of that I've forgotton the original question !!

Don't know what kind of music you like, ronseto, but there must be a channel somewhere that suits ? Does it have to be from a radio, or is an online station OK? Maybe mgaulin can add some code to CR4. Hopefully not like that ! There's a load of different stuff online.

I listen to classical music and some jazz and oldies. There is only one radio station in my area that plays classical. I can tune in to classical music stations over the internet, but it is limited to my computer. Music plays all day long in my house as background.

well, I give money to public TV and radio, because I believe in what they do and how they do it. At least this is better than the politicians who simply steal it...

I might feel a little irritation, but I suppress it.

Me too.

The FCC basically requires radio stations to have news broadcasts; even your typical top-40 station will regularly run a five-minute news overview. There are probably exceptions to the rule, but it's up to the FCC, not the station or the network.

I can tolerate 5 minutes of news, but not 2 hours of the same news repeated over and over in the morning and in the evening.

I agree with the agony of fund raising drives.

I find the NPR news to be least offensive of the broadcasters.

I have wierd strange and unusual tasts in music, so for that, I have my ipod.

Before the internet, I had my shortwave radios for news from BBC World Service and a host of other shortwave outlets.

Haven't done that in years.

milo

For weird strange and unusual tastes in music, try to find a college radio station. Between the three and sometimes four that I can receive, I can usually find the blues I crave that certainly can't be found on commercial radio and is sometimes played on public radio. Often college radio stations are linked with public radio.

NPR is virtually always on in my house, for the music, mostly. We are lucky in our area to have two NPR stations, one for classical (which is what I nearly always listen to), and one for Jazz and talk. I have the music on rather low, so I can ignore most of the fund raising without much difficulty, and do contribute.

I do like Garrisson quite a lot, even when he sings. I don't care for much of the music on his show, but I tolerate it in order to hear Guy Noir and the news from Lake Wobegon, etc. I only listen to Car Talk once a month, while driving to a meeting, so it remains enjoyable.

Do you ever post anything other than vents, rants, and personal opinions in the form of "What do you think?" Is that why your avatar is you own "happy" face?

How about a REAL engineering question for once? OK, I'll lower myself to answer you just-this-once... Public radio gives news and opinions in detail instead of little sound-bite for little-minds. Furthermore, their slant might be a little liberal, but considering the last eight years of hell, NPR was the only group out there that kept the record straight (as best they could).

Look, if you don't like most of NPRs programming, then vote with your dollars and with your ears. I'm sure there are any number of stations out there that would please you just fine, as long as you don't mind traffic reports and commercials - Get over it!!!

This is probably not an appropriate question for CR4. This is an engineering site, more so than a site for venting feelings about random, non-technical issues.

NPR and PBS both provide news programming that is unavailable elsewhere, and cater to people who think and who appreciate their depth of reporting. If you want news lite or news with an arch-conservative slant, there are loads of other sources. Personally, I still like PHC, Car Talk, All Things Considered, Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, My Word, etc.

Write to your station. Give them less money. Switch stations. Simple.

Let's see. Instead of ignoring the "inappropriate" question and letting it die, there are many who contribute vast syllables in their rebuke of the OP for posting in the first place.

How does it differ from, "What TV Shows Should I Watch?"

I agree with you, lynlynch. This is our place for discussion of all news, not just engineering news. Ronseto appropriately lead in the first two sentences with precisely what he wanted to discuss and that it was not an engineering question but a question for fellow engineers. Those who didn't want to be bothered should simply avoid the thread. He then included all pertinent information in his original question for us to discuss.

This is our place for discussion of all news, not just engineering news.

Of course, the tag line is "The Engineers Place for News and Discussion" not "The Engineers Place for Discussion of News". However, this is not the place for all news or all discussions.

From the FAQs:

Please stay on topic. Posts and comments should be of a technical nature and engage some aspect of engineering, science or technology. If you are going to delve into other topical areas (business, entertainment, sports, etc.), please do your best to tie them back to one of the main focal points of this site. Posts focusing on politics or religion will likely be removed. There are plenty of places on the Web to talk politics or religion This isn't one of them.

We are all guests of Global Spec here, and we should try to follow their guidelines, I think. While we, as users, can choose to simply ignore threads like this that have absolutely nothing to do with engineering or science, the various posts all get indexed and become part of the search database. If Global Spec allows post on all subjects, the database gets unwieldy, the search times slow, requiring additional capacity (which costs money), etc.

In my view, even some technical subjects have essentially run their course, and additional "discussion" simply ads more noise. I've stopped posting on HHO scams, for example, because the "believers" believe (in the religious sense of the word) and no amount of rational scientific discussion will convince them that HHO injection will not improve their fuel mileage, despite plenty of scientific data to the contrary (as well as fraud convictions, etc.).

Obviously, none of this should be taken terribly seriously, because a strength of this forum, I think, is that it is fun. There are loads of witty comments, many not strictly on topic. I think it makes sense, though, to refrain from creating entire threads that have nothing at all to so with engineering or science. (Granted, it is easy to make the argument that absolutely everything has something to so with engineering and science: what evolutionary advantage is there to a brain structure that allows people to believe in one particular religion but not all religions? What type of brain damage would cause someone to go into politics?)

Not much really. However I did learn of some good shows I'd never heard of. Most of the suggestions were oriented towards History, or Science.

Slow news day.

I do think that Science Friday is a terrific show.

Want to help me out on Jorrie's Cosmic Balloon Application II Redshift?

He says more than one universe is too much to think about.

I want to take the two balloon models and put them side by side with the String Theory Big Void in between and figure out if it is possible that one universe would have a different constant for the speed of light, but essentially all other mechanics be the same.

I'm having some problems since I don't expect the universes to be perfect.

It is difficult going up against the masters, and I am not inclined to do so unless I feel I have a thought to offer based on things the masters have taught me.

Nice to see Vermin around.

Some of these "soft questions" just let us get to know each other.

No, this definately is off-topic for this group!

That said, I like their news and not their elevator music. Why news, not sound bites. Unlike you, I do like CT and PHC.

Don't like what you hear, turn it off. Have very specific musical tastes, acquire copies for personal use.

"No, this definately is off-topic for this group!"

I think that it is definitely presumptuous of you to have an opinion about what's OT, or not, on your very first post. But, everybody's entitled to an opinion.

You should spell check before posting, it's free.

I don't particularly enjoy their fund drives either, but I think it is necessary. The major bummer about them is that I only have 10 minutes in the car to listen to news and if NPR is doing fund drives instead (I think they only have a couple a year so it isn't that big of a deal to me), I have to turn it to the local network, which in Austin still has a very conservative slant. Further, the local station makes money off of ads, meaning that in a given hour, you maybe get 35 minutes of actual programming rather than listening to someone's air conditioning ad.

I'm sure there are other radio stations (XM comes to mind) that would not have all of the news mixed in with the classical or whatever genre you are listening to and it is fairly cheap.

Yes begathons are a pain to listen to. But given the choice of government funded broadcasting or publicly funded with begathons, they are a lesser of evils. It is to bad that some of the grant foundations repackage government moneys and have stipulations.

What pisses me off is when the news lies for entertainment value or public opinion approval. It is bad enough that many facts are bias by those in control of them to start with. Spin doctored news is propaganda not news. Do some research into some relevant news and find all types of error. Some is just poor fact finding and generalizations. Some is making it entertaining and some just makes no sense.

One problem with news is opinion IMHO

Ummm, NPR and PBS do receive gov't (our tax dollars) funds through the Corporation For Public Broadcasting (CPB). It's real blurry just how much of their funds are from the Fed's and how much is fund raising. All the official sites declare that Federal funding is miniscule but I don't believe it.

That's also one of the reasons I don't donate to NPR and PBS. They're already getting my money through my tax dollars, against my will.

Besides, the local PBS affiliate has ticked me off. I normally watch English Comedy on Saturday nights, which time they often use for fund raising. Recently they have been broadcasting TAPED REPLAYS of the fund raising programs.

And, I agree that there is too much "opinion" and analyzing in all the news outlets.

Hooker

Public radio and public TV was horribly slashed under the Bush administration. If I remember, their Federal funds were cut to something like 1% of what they had been! This resulted in trying to find corporate sponsors and up the pledge drives. The former is the reason for all the pseudo-commercials that you see on public TV.

Don't have time to look (I'm out the door this Friday afternoon ) but IIRC Congress quietly put the money back into CPB not long after slashing it in 2005.

I don't remember Bushes role, but it's Congress's responsibility for funding CPB. They created it.

Hooker

I did some research into grants and one of the major government grant programs is repackaging grants. The problem with the repackaged grants appears to be stipulations for who gets the grants and the strings contained there in. The problem I noted was the strings were politically motivated not to limit corruption or cause the most benefit.

This was about 5-6 years ago so what changes from the new/same old system

Brad

My reason for posting this non-engineering thread here was because I wanted to reach an intelligent audience and not an audience of kids, non-tech minded people. Classical music, my favorite is usually enjoyed by people who have a higher intelligence level than soap operas or WWF fans. I am on a fixed income, so contributing to NPR is totally out of the question. News programs are redundant. I don't wish to listen to an "experts" analysis of the news.

I'm also Yankee by birth, southern by choice. I used to donate to NPR decades ago, but got disgusted with the blatant liberal propagandizing. If they were a purely commercial enterprise, that would be fine - it is their right then to broadcast as they please, and my right to not listen. But using tax dollars to spew their filth is just evil.

I don't think it was ever correct to have publicly funded media, but back in the seventies there did not exist the plethora of alternative sources of every kind of content available today. There is simply no excuse for this dinosaur today except that a non-defense gov't program, once established, never dies. Closest thing to immortality on the planet.

emc_c