Weekend Open Thread

I will conquer the couch and the remote control and proclaim them mine. I will then crown myself King and have food severed to me.

I'll help cut off some chicken heads!

I will conquer the couch and the remote control and proclaim them mine. I will then crown myself King and have food served to me.

Take a good look at activision at the older days when it first was born, yeah kind of boring huh? but now they have improved but how improved?

You can't beat River Raid and Pitfall!!!!

You can't beat River Raid and Pitfall!!!!

Time to restyle blog, and clean up everything Hopefully it will rain too!

A new rulemaking process aims to free up more wireless spectrum from broadcast TV providers. The target date for the complicated auction, which has three distinct parts, is June 2014.

The complicated process, which is the first of its kind, will have three components. First there is the reverse auction, in which TV broadcasters will voluntarily sell their spectrum back to the government. Then there's a "repacking" or re-allocation of remaining television spectrum designed to free up large enough blocks for use by wireless operators. Finally, the plan calls for a forward auction in which the wireless broadband providers would bid on available bandwidth.

Verizon Wireless, the nation's largest wireless carrier, applauded the FCC's action.

But some in the industry wonder how the FCC can pull off this daunting task. Earlier in the week, Steve Berry -- head of the Competitive Carrier Association, which represents the non-Verizon, non-AT&T carriers -- said he doubted the FCC could meet its 2014 target date.

"If they hold both the reverse auction and the forward auction at the same time, I'm just not sure how it can be done," he said. "I'm not sure who will be able to bid on spectrum without knowing how much they will get and whether or not the spectrum is contiguous."

The next step in the process is that both of these items will be opened to the public for comment. And at the end of the comment period, the FCC will evaluate the information and draft a formal proposal that will be voted on by the commission.

One question some are worried about is what this means for the continued existence of Over The Air(OTA) broadcast TV. If the broadcasters sell their spectrum, could that end OTA TV as we know it.

One question some are worried about is what this means for the continued existence of Over The Air(OTA) broadcast TV. If the broadcasters sell their spectrum, could that end OTA TV as we know it.

What's wrong with this picture?

More hyperbole please. Besides the obvious fact that those frequencies would suck for mobile they aren't even going to get the majority of TV spectrum that's left.

Though I agree that they should find a way to make better use of the 192 MHz they have gotten from TV over the last 30 years first.

Very few TV stations use it anymore and many that are, are leaving it because it such for OTA DTV.

So.. Why did we switch to Digital from Analog instead of keeping them both? Oh ya, because large companies wanted it for themselves instead of others that could actually use it.

Getting tons of rain today and this weekend here in Boston. Might even thunder too which I love listening to. Its been dry so the rain is needed. Good time to clean up the house some. Leaves have been falling early this year off the trees.

Har... Har... Your gonna need a band aid making jokes like that

A) I see a state owned Saudi company worth 7 times as much.

B) wal-mart is nowhere on that list.

Where is Comcast/NBC in the listings? Both revenue and income should put them in the top 25 charts.

If you have the Federal Reserve’s back, there’s a good chance Ben Bernanke will notice.

He may even send you a thank you note.

In July, the Fed chairman sent letters of gratitude to five Democratic members of Congress after they delivered speeches on the House floor urging fellow lawmakers to reject the “Audit the Fed” bill authored by retiring Texas Republican Ron Paul, the central bank's chief antagonist.

Their efforts failed to defeat the bill, but they were not in vain, at least in Bernanke's eyes.

“While the outcome of the vote was not in doubt, your willingness to stand up for the independence of the Federal Reserve is greatly appreciated,” Bernanke wrote in the letters, which were obtained by POLITICO through a Freedom of Information Act request.

He continued, “Independence in monetary policy operations is now the norm for central banks around the world
and
it would be a grave mistake were Congress to reverse the protection it provided to the Federal Reserve more than 30 years ago.”

The letters were sent to Reps. Barney Frank, Elijah Cummings, Melvin Watt, Carolyn Maloney and Steny Hoyer.

TV news programs ignore false claims in the thousands of political ads that pay their bills

Tim Karr just released a report exposing the billions spent on political ads around the country -- and how that money is pocketed by local TV stations.

Are these stations offering any local news coverage to debunk the lies in these ads? Are they exposing the deep-pocketed interests behind the groups buying ad time? The short answer is: No.

The local stations we looked at in the report provided no local stories exposing the special interests behind these ads, and only one station among the 20 surveyed devoted even a few minutes to investigating whether these ads told viewers the truth."

We have a political system whose players are constantly chasing dollars -
a system gamed to a point of dysfunction by wealthy, undisclosed donors and media corporations that are all too content to just cash their checks.

• The Super PACs vs. Justin Bieber: The hundreds of hours of local news that aired in the two weeks prior to Wisconsin's June 5 recall election
included no stories on the 17 groups most actively buying time on Milwaukee's ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC affiliates.

While these stations were ignoring the impact of political ads, they found time to air 53 local news segments on Justin Bieber.