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In Canada right now the big CRTC (FCC) hearings are going on in Ottawa regarding fee for carriage, the conventional over the air broadcasters want a percentage of the fees from the cable subscribers and are saying that ad's don't come close to paying the bills any more. Even radio which ten years ago used to be a license to print money has been decimated.

One thing I know for sure is I am going to have to upgrade my skills fast for this business or something else, The way it's going they want one person to do five things and maintain the same quality of ten years or more ago when each task was done be one person.

This media business though is a unique breed of cat and so are some of the people in it.

Right now though I think and maybe I will be wrong but I think this whole idea of live via the web, transmitting broadcast grade video via the web is the next generation live truck, not a million dollar sat truck but something almost as effective for a fraction of the cost.

Building it has a few technical challenges as this is still fairly new but what I am finding is selling the idea is near impossible, I've seen bosses that are firmly stuck in the 80's, in the tape era and don't want to hear anything about being able to feed video from the middle of nowhere using a laptop and saving a ton of money. Not that there is anything wrong with the 80`s, the music was good.

If I stay in this business or am lucky enough to stay in this business I think that's what I want to pursue, I want to be on the leading edge of the next generation live truck, then again once they figure out how easy it is they will just add that task to the camera operator and before you know it we'll be doing five things at once

I haven't given up yet.

mark

Originally Posted by Al Skierkiewicz

Mark,
To show how bad things have become, the AP reported that NBC is being purchased (at least in part) by Comcast.

Cable takeover marks new era for NBC, TV industry
The Associated Press
Eight decades after pioneering the concept of broadcasting, NBC is on the verge of a startling move that illustrates broadcast television's decline.

Cable TV operator Comcast Corp. is expected to buy a controlling stake in NBC Universal, perhaps as early as this week, bringing the network of Johnny Carson, Jerry Seinfeld, Bob Hope, Milton Berle and Tom Brokaw under the corporate control of the company that owns the Golf Channel and E! Entertainment Television.

"This is highly symbolic," said Tim Brooks, who had worked at NBC for 20 years and now writes books on television history.

Starting Sunday, Vivendi SA has an option to sell its 20 percent stake in NBC Universal. Majority owner General Electric Co. is expected to buy it and then sell a 51 percent stake of the entire NBC Universal unit to Comcast, which serves about a quarter of the nation's subscription TV households.

Broadcast people, the folks who remember when television was ABC, CBS, NBC and little else, used to look down upon cable.

The idea of broadcast TV was implied in the name; the networks tried to reach the broadest possible audience. For cable it's important to do something specific and do it well, and the audience doesn't need to be as large.

NBC Universal Chief Executive Jeff Zucker recognizes this. Cable properties such as USA, SyFy, CNBC and The Weather Channel mean more to NBC Universal's bottom line than staggering NBC, fourth place in the ratings.

And those cable properties â more than the flagship "Peacock" network â were the draw for Comcast. By owning more content, Comcast further hedges its bets as mainly a distributor of shows in case viewers ditch their cable TV subscriptions and migrate to the Internet, mobile devices or a platform that has yet to emerge. The company could charge for the shows or sell ads wherever the viewers are.

In a sense, NBC would become a pioneer again, as it seeks to stay relevant amid intensifying audience fragmentation.

NBC was established as the nation's first radio network in 1926. Its parent company, the Radio Corporation of America, made radios and realized the best way to get people to buy the product was to make sure there were interesting things to listen to.

"Without NBC, there wouldn't be broadcasting as we know it," said Walter J. Podrazik, a consulting curator at the Museum of Broadcast Communications.

NBC was the leading radio network, so powerful in those days it had two networks: NBC-Red and NBC-Blue. It was forced by the Federal Communications Commission in the early 1940s to divest itself of one network. NBC-Blue eventually became ABC. In fact, all three original broadcast networks can be traced back to NBC. One of its original owners, Westinghouse Electric Co., bought CBS in 1995.

Some of NBC's radio profits were funneled into researching the new television technology. NBC began television broadcasts in 1939 by covering the opening of the New York World's Fair.