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Back in July, I made a bucket list  of things I want to do before I reach 55. Basically, a nine-year list of goals I want to accomplish or at least try just once. And now, as the year is winding down (it'll be 2025 in a couple of weeks), II felt it was time to revisit what I've actually done so far. I managed to cross off a few things off my list, but I know I have a long way to go. Find love again.  Marry that love or at least try my damnedest to make her happy. Write a novel.   I have one completely done, but I'm making it into a full series, all of which are in various points of creation. But at least one is completely done. Another slightly unrelated one is ALMOST done. I say "slightly unrelated" because when I first started it, it wasn't related to another story, but now, it's connected to two other stories, and one of them is an indirect prequel that fits in the timeline.  Write at least two non-fiction history books. Editing one right now and writi...

DISCLAIMER: The following is part two of a multipart alternate history series about the history of  Doctor Who  if it was an American-made production rather than a British production. It's purely speculative and a work of fiction, although some real-world elements were included and presented for realistic situations and scenarios. Neither this series nor its author are connected to nor reflect the views and opinions of BBC Studios (the owner of the  Doctor Who  franchise) or any entity or persons mentioned and does not mean to infringe on the copyrights and trademarks of those parties. - JH “There are fixed points throughout time where things must stay exactly the way they are. This is not one of them, this is an opportunity. Whatever happens here will create its own timeline, its own reality, a temporal tipping point. The future revolves around you, here, now, so do good!” - The Doctor After CBS canceled Doctor Who in 1971 , Universal signed a deal with ABC to pick...

I was watching Weird Al Yankovic’s 1989 cult classic UHF and thinking about how a guy like George Newman, played by Yankovic, radically transformed a low-tier independent UHF channel and made it must-see-TV. For a while, creating a network was a dream of mine. But television changed, and not for the better. And it all began with the death of independent television. I grew up in the 1980s. The younger half of Generation X, the MTV Generation, the Pepsi Generation, or as demographic analysts call us, nonexistent. Apparently, there are Boomers and Millennials and there were no humans born between them from 1965 to 1984 (by the way, that’s Harvard’s recent definition of the makeup of my generation), but I digress. The 1980s was the first TV decade fully in color on the local level in the United States. Cable was still largely in its infancy, but local television still held its own. If you were a kid with a decent antenna or a cable box in your house, television was pretty dang awesome. Ca...

The vacant shell of a building of a network that barely exists. I no longer have Cartoon Network.  For the first time since May 1995, I no longer have access to Cartoon Network. I don't think I'll ever get it back, and quite frankly, I don't think I need it, and they're really not giving any reason to want to resubscribe to the channel any time soon. And for the first time since I heard about the channel's creation back in 1991, I'm fine not having it. I never thought I'd be in a position where I no longer feel the need to watch Cartoon Network let alone support the channel because, for all intents and purposes, Cartoon Network is dead, and Adult Swim killed it. Not David Zaslav because, let's be honest, he's not thinking of what happens to Cartoon Network. Despite what so many people think, I doubt his final thoughts before he goes to bed is "How can I screw over Cartoon Network viewers and fans in the morning?" Way too many animation fans...

DISCLAIMER: The following is part one of a multipart alternate history series about the history of Doctor Who if it was an American-made production rather than a British production. It's purely speculative and a work of fiction, although some real-world elements were included and presented for realistic situations and scenarios. Neither this series nor its author are connected to nor reflect the views and opinions of BBC Studios (the owner of the Doctor Who franchise) or any entity or persons mentioned and does not mean to infringe on the copyrights and trademarks of those parties. - JH “There are fixed points throughout time where things must stay exactly the way they are. This is not one of them, this is an opportunity. Whatever happens here will create its own timeline, its own reality, a temporal tipping point. The future revolves around you, here, now, so do good!” - The Doctor Prologue: The Nail For want of a nail the shoe was lost. For want of a shoe the horse was lost. Fo...

I have a modest proposal to celebrate the television medium historically on the federal level. Do you know how there's an annual list of films inducted into the National Film Registry (2022's list is quite eclectic)? The group responsible for that is the National Film Preservation Board (the NFPB). Formed in 1988, the Library of Congress-based agency has selected films that are deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant." Similarly, a National Recording Preservation Board (the NRPB) at the LoC does the same for sound recordings such as speeches and music in National Recording Registry.   It is important to preserve our media history, and the NFPB and NRPB do that on the federal level. That said, there should be a similar federal-level board that preserves culturally, historically or aesthetically significant American-made television programs.  Not television news archives since there are many, many, many organizations dedicated to that, most nota...

Starting today, I'm putting up a few of my older articles I wrote for my Post account.  For those who wonder what Post was, think Twitter, but for journalists and writers who talked a lot about anything. Considering I liked to do that, this was a draw for me. Sadly, Post didn't last and ended earlier in 2024. I'm not going to repost everything I made there (a few were a little too personal), just a small selection of Post articles that still resonate and seem like a good read. Enjoy - jh.  I was thinking about how cable television was once used as a tool against public television by Congress only to become irrelevant in educational programming by the turn of the century.  It all began where a lot of weird modern media trends began - the 1990s.  Back in the 1990s, politicians threatened to cut public broadcasting funding and pushed broadcast networks to provide three hours of weekly E/I programming because they said that cable provided similar programming without taxp...

Over a month ago, I wrote this article about how Disney should fully embrace the growing FAST market and launch channels that are untethered to apps or streaming services as well as providing several I'd like to see them create. A lot has changed in a month, and Disney shut down all of their free TV Everywhere-connected apps with the exception of ABC News Now. The ABC, Disney Now, Nat Geo, ESPN, FX, and Freeform apps are dead, and everything that those apps offered to cable consumers who wanted their shows on the go are now locked behind a paywall on Disney+ and Hulu.  The ABC app was interesting because they had several FAST channels, or as they called them, Unlocked Channels, connected to it. Among them: 20/20 ABC News Live General Hospital Spotlight Press Your Luck To Tell The Truth To Catch A Smuggler Wicked Tuna Car Chases True Life Stories The Incredible Dr. Po ABC News Live ESPN 8: The Ocho Cesar Milan Better Human, Better Dog Life Below Zero Lost Treasures Supernanny Days ...

Before I begin, I have to preface this with message: THIS IS NOT REAL NOR IS IT GOING TO HAPPEN.  This is a speculative concept that imagines a scenario where something is possible using what a company has access to. I am not an employee of The Walt Disney Company nor are privy to anything the unit is doing behind closed doors. What I'm presenting here is a work of fiction. The content presented here are the machinations of a guy who thinks entirely too much about stupid crap like this on a regular basis. I just needed to get it out of my system the only way I could - through graphical and written analytical presentations Now, the article. Enjoy: Disney HATES the word "free." I think that's been a part of the company's DNA since it was created because the Disney brothers were betrayed by the husband of their original distributor and didn't want to just give away things anymore. The company has always been resistant of putting their wares on freely-available ou...