Daily Archives: June 28, 2009

After Friday night, I’d be embarassed if I still worked in local television

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We had another line of storms roll through Bismarck-Mandan on Friday night, and it appeared to be another instance of a problem I mentioned in a recent post about local stations and the weak link in their system. In fact, I got nothing but black from KFYR and KXMB at times when the storm was hitting the hardest, when one is most fervently seeking weather information!

I was dismayed that, although my system indicated 97% signal, there was nothing to be had on the screen except black with an occasional jitter. Apparently the transmitters were operating faithfully, but just didn’t have a signal to transmit! Shame.

You can put all the money into weather talent, fancy graphics systems, street-level radar products, and heavy promotion…but if you can’t even manage to feed it to your transmitter, what’s the point? If I see even a single “weather leader” promo after Friday night’s performance, I think I might just throw up a little.

Not everybody is a cable subscriber, especially out of town. If these stations are content with only distributing their signal reliably over cable TV, then why bother transmitting over the air at all? Otherwise, I implore them to please get their severe weather performance problems under control.

US Bank et al provide free housing to some needy residents

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This anxious mommy is feeding two little hatchlings nestled inside the “a” of the US Bank sign on the front of the Arrowhead Plaza branch. With a great view of the capitol and the rising sun, these nests also were perfect for riding out the storms this weekend. I originally saw these while out on a date with my lovely wife Friday night before the aforementioned storm (we LOVE the Walrus). Obviously I didn’t take my camera on such an occasion, so I caught these birds playing the following morning.

US Bank isn’t the only business whose sign provides such hospitality to the birdies. I think this ampersand may be part of the Arrowhead Cleaners sign, but I don’t remember. Looks cozy, doesn’t it?

This little fella is hanging out in front of the fitness center. No need for a membership when you live there! It’s nice that these birds have found such a secure place to nest; otherwise they might be homeless, after the blustery weather we’ve been having.

I don’t have any birds nestling above my motion sensors on my house or garage this year, since the upgraded ones are too small to support a nest. I do, however, have some great pictures and video of last year’s robins feeding their babies! I should dig those up and post them; I don’t think I ever got around to it last spring.