Thoughtnami™

The following was originally published at POST as "There Should Be A National Television Registry" on January 3, 2023. - jh 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 Americ...

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 the following, originally published as " A Public (Television) Embarrassment" on December 19, 2022.  - 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 th...

Okay, that was a bit of an overreaction.  I'm tired.  I don't think I can do this anymore. I'm tired. I'm done. I feel broken. I can't do this anymore.  The internet isn't the place I first stepped into back when I first got online in 1996. This isn't the same internet I used to log on a dial-up modem when I got my first home computer in 1997. This isn't the same internet I started my first really successful webpage on GeoCities back in 1998. This isn't the same internet I found a great community of friends back in 1999.  This isn't the same internet I found the love of my life over a decade ago. This isn't the same internet I found many friends through Twitter back in 2008. That internet is gone.  GeoCities died a long time ago. My old webpage is history. That old community has devolved into a group of whiners.  The love of my life died almost three years ago.  The site formerly known as Twitter is now just a white supremacist playground. wh...

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 ...

 People in Spectrum cable households (and other cable and satellite providers as well as virtual providers such as YouTube TV) are WEIRDLY concerned about whether or not they're going to get MeTV Toons. A small thread of sorts to try to alleviate those fears, though I think I'm going to be unsuccessful because paranoia and pessimism are character traits to some folks. There are questions you have to ask. Are you in a market that will carry the channel over-the-air? Does your local Spectrum service carry subchannels of local channels? Do they carry ALL the local subchannels? I have some answers: If you have MeTV Toons over the air on a local channel, there's a chance it'll be available on your cable lineup. Definitely a better chance than a market without it. That said, if your answer's yes...  If your local cable service carries subchannels of OTA channels, MeTV Toons will likely be on your cable lineup, especially if it's replacing another subchannel in your ma...

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...

 If you've followed Thoughtnami over the past 20 years, thank you for your patronage and your support . It's so great to be back writing posts like this after all of these years. It feels more natural and less constrictive than tweets and occasional posts across social media. You also know that when it comes to one particularly Hollywood media company, I have a love-hate relationship with them. And that studio has had many names during the course of those two decades. AOL Time Warner.  Time Warner. WarnerMedia. Warner Bros Discovery. And they've all been called "the most poorly run media company" by me throughout those two decades. Now, granted, I may be a little hyperbolic with that statement. They're really not the most poorly run media company (looking at you both, Paramount Global and Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment), but considering the two years the current management team of David Zaslav (President and CEO), Gunnar Wiedenfels (Chief Financial ...