Enough with the Presidential Prime Time Takeovers!

In 2009, probably when I was trying to watch an episode of "24" on Fox, "Law & Order" on NBC or "House" on Fox, my television viewing experience was interrupted my a Presidential Address to the nation. My frustrations prompted me to write a blog post about it but I did not publish it.

The written draft lingered among my unfinished writings as the days, months and years past of waiting until the right time to publish it. That time is now, after my television experience was interrrupted again....this time, watching "CSI: Miami" on CBS this past Sunday, May 1, 2011. At approximately 10:46pm EST, CBS interrupted the episode of "CSI: Miami," just as it was getting good, to announce that the President of the United States was going to make an announcement.

It seemed as though he was going to make an announcement within minutes but he did not do so. Instead, media figures discussed and analysed what was to come.....but it did not come, until well after 45 minutes. So, not only did the White House, the President AND CBS cause me to miss a very entertaining episode of "CSI: Miami," but they wasted time talking and talking until an eventual annoucement (or speech or whatever you want to call it) was made by the President.

The news comes on at 11 o'clock so based on that 45 minute delay, why couldn't CBS wait 15 minutes to cover the President's announcement, at a time when it would have been understandable to interrupt a program with "important" news or an "important" announcement? That would have allowed the recent "CSI: Miami" episode to continue airing until the credits rolled. I've had enough with these presidential prime time takeovers. They are annoying and, most of the time, unecessary.....as in the case of this past Sunday's "CSI: Miami" episode. I mean, man!.....he didn't even come on the screen until after 11:30pm.

There are many times when television viewing audiences could watch a NASCAR race and learn about the latest developments in local or national news, simultaneously. However, Fox is not the only network where you can watch multiple things on one TV screen. NBC, ABC and many other TV networks have the capability to do those multiple-screen broadcasts and for some reason, they choose not to.

Television viewers can watch two different programs and still learn about the weather at once in this day and age of technicalogical advancements. When has an identical setup ever occurred during one of Barack Obama's (or Bush's or Clinton's or any other President that has interrupted regularly scheduled television programming) speeches AND "Desperate Housewives"? Probably never.

This illustrates my point, that Presidential speeches and any related happenings take over the TV like those California wildfires in the summer. It is beyond ridiculous. I should be able to watch an episode of "House" without being interrupted by a Presidential address to the nation, especially when the topic is nothing new or of immediate importance.

What makes matters worse is the same content that is being covered during these Prime Time interruptions are nearly repeated during the ten o'clock and eleven o'clock news broadcasts. So now, TV fans not only miss their favorite shows but they get to relive the experience of being interrupted again, later at night when the news comes on.

Presidents should have their own special network or channel where they can broadcast all of the long, exhausting speeches that their hearts desire. The weather channel covers nothing else but weather and ESPN is all about sports so why does every Presidential conference have to take up every single broadcast channel?

Obviously, if someone is interested in watching the President talk for an hour or more, he or she will do it. Sure, there are more options for cable or satellite TV subscribers. That does not mean other TV fans should have to put up with missing their favorite shows by being overwhelmed with these annoying presidential broadcasts.

It is a shame that you have to pay extra money and buy Comcast, DirectTV or some other service just to escape the problem. Even then, you're still missing out on shows, especially if they are on broadcast channels. The public should be able to enjoy "Dancing with the Stars," "House," "24," "The Biggest Loser," "CSI," "Law & Order" or any other TV show with ease.

Disclaimer: None of this is to say that the recent announcement made by the President was unecessary or unimportant. This post isn't about that. It is about time management and wasting of TV space. Even today, when I tuned in to The Today Show to find out about the weather, they were discussing the recent events leading up to, surrounding and after the President's announcement on Sunday, May 1st. All of that coverage is unecessary. Also, I am not a fan of all of the TV shows mentioned in this post but I have seen an episode or two of just about all of them.

Technorati Tags: wordcount+blogathon, cbs, csi+miami, presidential+address, wordcount+blogathon+2011

Flying High

The love of airplanes or at least, things that fly...how wonderful! This week's theme is on movies that are "focused on flight, things that fly or become airborne" according to The Bumbles, so here are two movies I thought of automatically to fit the bill.

Top Gun

The timing was perfect since this Tom Cruise movie came on TV last night after the White House, CBS and the President decided to interrupt my "CSI: Miami" episode instead of waiting 15 minutes until the news came on. Anyway, "Top Gun" has romance in the midst of fighter pilots being trained to fly an F-14A Tomcat.

Up

An old man decides that Tom Cruise's fighter aircraft options are sooo 80s and tying balloons to his home is a better form of transportation. Talk about traveling on the fly...and on the cheap! The floating house is supposed to help this man fulfill a lifelong dream of traveling to South America.

Let's see....floating home with balloons or a fighter jet?
Hmmm, I think I may want to go with Tom Cruise on this one. Then again, old man Carl has access to toilets, satellite television (hey, why pay for cable if you're already in the sky?) and possibly a change of clothes.......if he kept these things in his house. I didn't see "Up" but I do know one thing, Carl's form of transportation was not only more frugal and possibly environmentally friendly than the way Tom Cruise chose to fly but it also won him two Oscars while "Top Gun" is sitting pretty with only one....Best Original Song. Well, "Up" grabbed Best Original Score AND won Best Animated Feature. So, who's Top Gun now?! It surely ain't Mr. "You had me at hello"! At least not this week in the Monday Movie Meme!

Shucks! I just also thought of "The Aviator" starring Leonardo DiCaprio while adding the photos to this post. Oh well. Sorry Leo. I'm running late for something I have to do and still have to take a shower, so you're not going to get as much attention from me in this blog post, at least this morning anyway.

If you're not too busy, check out Manifest this, buddy by a fellow blogger who is participating in the WordCount blogathon.

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My Blogging from A to Z Challenge Reflections Mega Post

My experiences with the Blogging from A to Z Challenge was exciting, inspiring and exhausting but it was all for a good purpose. The only frustrating aspect of the challenge that I experienced were the captcha features that many bloggers had on their blogs. This made it difficult to visit and comment on as many blogs as I hoped, especially because I am having problems with my computer.

Still, it was only a minor stumbling block compared to the wonderful experiences that I had while participating in the blogging from A to Z Challenge. One of those experiences included winning my first ever blog award, the Creative Blogger Award from Deirdra who operates A Storybook World and I want to take this time to thank her again for such a thoughtful award.

The A to Z Challenge helped me become more productive as a writer and blogger by posting more on this blog of mine, The Madlab Post. The challenge also helped me to take a more active approach in promoting my blog and making it known to new readers while also meeting new bloggers that share similar interests. I gained an estimated 30 or so followers from my participation in the A to Z Challenge. This total is significantly less than what I desired but it’s also a lot more than what I had before I started the challenge, so the results are greater than I could have expected.

Reading dozens of blog posts was the most challenging aspect of this event for me due to a combination of factors including my work responsibilities, a slow computer and the captcha issue. The amount of published authors and writers participating in the challenge surprised me the most because I thought that the participating blogs would be a balanced mixture of subjects or niches but noticed that the majority seems to include writers with published novels or soon to be published novels. I would participate in the A to Z Challenge again because it gave me the opportunity to increase readership for my blog and also because it caused me to be accountable to a blogging schedule.

The A to Z Challenge also introduced me to some inspiring men and women from around the world who appear to be very successful and happy and able to do what they love, which are all things that I strive for but feel like I fail, so it’s nice to be in the company of people who will bring out the best in what I have to offer. It makes me want to do better and move more swiftly and diligently toward reaching certain goals.

I would recommend the A to Z Challenge to others who need a fresh start with a new blog or who want to turbo-charge the blog that they already have. I would also recommend the challenge to poets and lovers of literature even those who do not blog because, if for nothing else, it provides great writing exercises and entertaining reading activities.

I would not know whether the A to Z team of event hosts did an adequate job of helping to answer questions or solving problems because after a few days, I just stuck with Arlee at Tossing It Out because it was a challenge keeping up with all of the hosts PLUS other bloggers participating on top of that....I would never get anything else done that way, so I had to just stick with one host only.

I also do not have an opinion on the preparation leading up to the challenge because I joined at the last minute, like the last day or two of March. I don’t really see anything wrong with the challenge and think that it is a very useful event. The only suggestions that I would offer to improve it would be to remove bloggers from the Linky list who have not kept up on their blogging through the challenge. I’ve come across a few who either did not start the challenge at all and their last post was in like February or March or others who started the challenge but their last post is for letter “D” or something like that.

I know that it’s easy to get behind if something happens but there is clearly a different between a blog that is like 2 or 3 letters behind and a blog that hasn’t written anything in like 2 weeks. An ideal setup would be for one of the organizers to check blogs, or create some kind of check-in system where participating bloggers must sign-in for the day or something. It could be as simple as requiring bloggers to leave a comment on a specific blog or something....and then participating bloggers could go by the current comment section when trying to visit blogs, instead of using the Linky List to visit blogs.

I am glad to have come across some very special bloggers with entertaining, creative, educational or just plain ol’ inspiring blogs. Having already recognized many these bloggers on my “Pay It Forward” post for the letter ‘P,’ I won’t list all of them again but would especially like to bring attention to Alana who operates Writercize because her blog is like the ultimate cure for writer’s block....and...maybe even slight depression!

Among the new blogs that I discovered and liked enough to follow were Film Sketchr because it focuses on storyboards and concept art from popular movies, Giggle Laugh Cry because it’s such a fun read, It's All Me because the author blogs about his life in such a free, relaxed way, Sand Castles and Snow Forts because each visit is refreshing and Gail M Baughnett - Author because she teaches readers about cool aspects of cultures from different parts of the world such as Japanese phrases and some type of dried Mango and Hawaiian plum powder. I also enjoyed reading the Random Thoughts blog where the author blogs about the ABC's of a Good Friend, which I thought was a clever way for Sharon, the author, to go through letters in the A to Z Challenge.

I must not forget Daily Write where my new-found Twitter buddy Damyanti blogs about writing and reading while also sharing really good short stories that she writes and I also enjoyed reading It's All Me where the blogger writes about his passion for playing sports and thought provoking topics about life that everyone can relate to such as Youth. There are too many new blogs that I discovered and liked, to name them all in this post, so I'll stop here for now but I do plan on highlighting more of them in my future blog posts throughout the year.

One of the new blog friendships I made that will make this A to Z Challenge more memorable would have to be Beverly from Blue Velvet Vincent and it’s funny how we met. She really helped the re-launch of my King Dong series take off and I later learned that she did not even know about the A to Z challenge until finding my Tweets about our main squeeze, actor Vincent D’Onofrio. She decided to join the A to Z Challenge, even though April had already started.....then the “Surprise” button brought her back to my blog.

I guess she and I were meant to connect since we sorta already met by communicating with each other on Twitter and she even gave me a Stylish Blogger Award, my second blog award that I received during the challenge. Unfortunately, our great times together during the A to Z Challenge did not last very long. A mutual love for the "Law & Order: Criminal Intent" star quickly led to a budding blogging friendship but then a few days ago, she informed me that she has taken down her blog and doesn’t know when she will return.

I thought it was just her blog but then I noticed that she also removed her Twitter profile and other online places that she was involved with although I'm not sure if the sudden hiatus includes the Facebook profile for BLV. I understand that this is just the Internet and we have not been communicating for that long but I miss her already and hope that she returns to blogging, tweeting and being online but in the meantime, I hope that she is okay and I wish her the very best.

I’d like to thank Arlee Bird at Tossing it Out for organizing the A to Z Challenge and for also visiting this blog and commenting on various posts. I also thank all of my fellow bloggers who participated in the challenge and visited my blog and left comments. I’m pretty exclusive and didn’t really care to have many blogging friends when first joining the challenge, especially since I felt like I had enough....I had Glozell and Herman at Terrible Analogies and some fellow freelance writing friends and I figured that’s it...they’re all I need in the world!

I guess I now have to accept the fact that my circle of blogging friends has expanded beyond my expectations and, well, hmmmm...I guess that's not toooooo bad. I like some of the rest of y’all....most of the time! *hehe*

Congratulations to all who completed the A to Z Challenge!

May you continue to blog and read often throughout the year and have fun doing it.

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