I don’t know how many radio people are hanging out in the blogosphere — much less how many are actually reading this blog. I personally know of two besides myself — but considering that’s about the number of actual readers on this little blog, I suppose I’m talking to you. In any event, I’ve got this crazy notion that nearly every working DJ whose formative years were spent in the early ’90s got into this gig, in large part, because of ”Pump up the Volume.”
Not that this is based on a scientific study of any kind. Mostly, I just talked to other announcers about my age, and they generally agreed that yes, this movie had such an enormous impact on their young and tiny brains that they couldn’t help but grow up and become disc jockeys. Well…. I guess that’s probably about as scientific as most political polls.
Now, if I’m right, here’s what’s truly frightening. Part of the whole appeal of that movie was the shaking of fists to the establishment. Sort of a flipping of the bird at government commissions and regulators of free speech(!!!!) like the FCC. This should frighten some people, particulary those for whom the belief in the power of government to solve every problem known to man is nearly religeous. Because that means that, deep down, most of my generation’s DJs are at least 80% anarchist.
The other 20% in my case is Republican, so I call myself a “Liberterian.” Neither here nor there.
Now, lately, I’ve been okay with the FCC. Not that I figured their actions suddenly became Constitutional, or that i think they’re a bunch of swell guys. It’s just, I spend my job behind a microphone. The day to day stuff, the legal stuff, simply never crosses my radar. For the most part, they leave me alone, so I don’t do a lot of thinking about them.
But now they’re getting their fingers into something else about which I care deeply: television. This whole DTV thing (digital television… if you don’t know what I’m talking about, look it up here) is just sticking in my craw. For one thing, it bothers me that, with everything else going on in the world, the Federal Government has decided that time and resources should be used in forcing the digital revolution (a feat, for those just catching up, that they’ve been trying to accomplish since just before this century — really).
My problem with this? The FCC, traditionally, is stacked with morons. Like most government agencies, these idiots don’t know which way is up unless a congressman tells them — and very often, the congressmen don’t know, either. They can’t get it done right — and they want to use taxes to do so incorrectly.
The biggest issue here, by the way, is the issue of tuners. Now, most new televisions (all, actually, starting last year) have built in digital tuners. Recording devices, however, do not. And if they do, you add a hundred bucks to the unit. Which means, in short, that you now have to purchase particular cabling to be able to record in to these units. In itself not so bad.
Except that Americans, in particular, had trouble dealing with the VCR back when it was easy.
This means that those of us in the ‘know’ are going to get countless phonecalls from parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, friends (not to mention the parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles of said friends) to explain what they need to do in order to record “House.”
All because some mutt in congress went to some other mutt in the FCC about some jackass lobbyist who (undoubtedly) poured out all kinds of money to get the government to force this “revolution” upon us all.
And what do they want to do with the analogue “air” that is now going to be empty of programming? Sell it.
I smell pirate television coming on. Perhaps Hard Harry needs a TV show. The anarchist in me can only hope. And start looking for cheap transmitters.
