MMMM #152 HUGH Storms Detected!! By UPI!

BIG story this week...lightning storms on Saturn!

     Actually, the big story was the fact that I read about it on a UPI page. I didn't know UPI even existed anymore!

     During my early decades in Alabama, there was a rather fierce battle between UPI (United Press International) and AP (Associated Press), at least in Alabama. Not so much for subscribers, but to see who would break stories first. The radio stations that subscribed to UPI seemed out of the mainstream. Most of the broadcasters were AP

    UPI is still operating...with a HQ in D.C....but the company's web site has not a single reference to radio or TV on its front page, instead marketing the old "wire" service to corporations and boasting about how many hits its website gets.

     To be honest, my own memories of UPI are probably slanted because I was heavily involved in the AP Broadcaster's Association for a lot of those early years (twice as President)...and outstanding reporters like Bob Lowry (The Huntsville Times) and Alvin Benn (The Montgomery Advertiser)...who were both excellent UPI reporters...will no doubt point to the 1960's, when it appears UPI dominated Alabama Civil Rights coverage. Here's a page Lowry has online with UPI images. And Benn wrote about his UPI experiences in Reporter, a book published several years ago.

     And there's this classic photo of Bob sitting in Yellow Mama, Alabama's now second string electric chair. How many reporters managed to get that photo?

    Finally, writing this MMMM about wire services and not mentioning Hoyt Harwell, retired veteran AP bureau Chief, would be a sin of omission.

     I learned a lot from Hoyt in those days, including to always question anyone who tells me something is "the first"  of anything to happen. Really? First? Are you sure? Usually it isn't.



[Note: this was a tough week to decide the topic(s) on MMMM. There was the huge merger of three Montgomery TV stations (including the one I work for, WAKA!), the entire Casey Anthony murder verdict in Florida,  the 20th anniversary of the L'Express jet in Birmingham, which happened in the middle of the local station's 6:00pm news, the shutdown of the British tabloid, News of The World over the phone hacking scandal, and then from Dana Beyerle late in the week, the story that APT is closing the Montgomery Production Center at the same time it is keeping open a bureau in Washington D.C. that was opened in the middle of the Great Recession. In the end I blogged about two of those five during the week and went with the UPI piece today.] 

[The Monday Morning Media Memo is a regular feature of this blog.]

MMMM # 152 Publicasters Falling

     It's not only in Alabama that public broadcasting programs are going dark.

     In New Jersey, a 40 year old network  has ceased to exist...Governor Christie also sold the network's nine radio licenses. 130 people are out of work.

     Public Broadcasting has never been a favorite of Republicans, who now control the NJ and Alabama state governments. The GOP Majority U.S. House tried to strip PBS of its $430-Million earlier in the year, though a TIME blog suggests that battle is over with the funding is intact.

     If there was any concerted effort on the part of the Alabama GOP to kill FTR or any other APT programs, I was unaware of it. Legislators of both parties were always willing to take part, and spoke highly of the show, though that's what you would expect when they were talking with the host.

     The Montgomery Advertiser's Sebastian Kitchen, always a reliable and knowledgeable guest on the old FTR, wrote about the demise of APT's Montgomery operation in a column in Sunday's paper. He brings out the "death by a thousand cuts" element of the end...the repeated schedule changes to FTR etc etc.

     And earlier last week, Dana Beyerle of The New York Times Regional Newspapers added his own reportage to the the developments.

     The last locally produced APT program will be recorded in the studios on Madison Avenue on July 15th, Then someone will turn out the lights and lock the doors. More than a dozen Alabamians will be job hunting, and perhaps some viewers will be looking for coverage of what legislators are doing in the Capitol.  



[Note: the photos above shows an APT studio on Madison Avenue in February 2009, preparing for the taping of the final FTR. The topic was the faltering Alabama economy.]



[The Monday Morning Media Memo is a regular feature of this blog.]

Post Election

A couple of observations, now that the election work-week has ended:

• Newly elected Alabama Congresswoman Terri Sewell picked a tough time to win a seat in the U.S. House. She'll be a freshman and a member of the Democratic minority...probably not the best combination for committee assignments. Then again, she made history, the first woman (along with Republican Martha Roby) elected to Congress from Alabama, and the first black woman too.


• The other Democratic win in the night of the GOP tidlewave was Joe Hubbard, who campaigned hard enough to unseat veteran GOP legislator David Grimes. He too can likely count on few choice statehouse committee assignments in Montgomery.


• And NY Times Regional Newspapers reporter Dana Beyerle has a great quote in his story from Demo Party Chair Joe Turnham:

“There were 1.5 million votes, and we lost anywhere from 200,000 to 300,000,” he said. “By the time they throw enough people out of the nursing homes, double the size of classrooms, find no new money, they will have several hundred thousand people turn on them.”

• Good luck to all of the candiates, winners and losers. 2011 promises to be a tough year to govern in the U.S. in general, and in Alabama in particular. Do your best!

Dana Beyerle with defeated Democratic candidate for Gov Ron Sparks