Big Day at the MGM Grand

Soft Rock 106.5 WBMW and Jammin' 107-7 have been presenting Women's Health, Beauty & Bridal Shows for close to ten years. This past Sunday's show was held at the new MGM Grand at Foxwoods. The attendance and sponsor participation were excellent. I'm sure our boss would say there's always room for more, but it was reassuring to see this kind of turnout at a time when the economy is on everyone's minds. The interest is still there. Life goes on. Let's hope this kind of success becomes more the norm in 2009. It's also not every day when WBMW people get this dressed up!

President Obama

This was definitely the most exciting Inauguration Day since the sixties. President Barack Obama was sworn in at 12:06 p.m. this past Tuesday. The country is in tough shape. People are hurting, and expectations are high. After years of partisan bickering and rigid ideology, Americans know that the credit cards we've rung up are now past due. I am encouraged by his confident and pragmatic attitude. He understands the need for consensus over catering to one group of like-minded citizens. I hope he gets the chance to fulfill much of the promise. As a baby boomer, I can recall enough history to realize the fact that Obama is President is a huge accomplishment in itself. This change is good.

All Downhill from Here!

A week or two ago, after one of our many snowstorms, I was driving past the Norwich Golf Course on New London Turnpike and saw the parking lot by the Caddy Shack restaurant packed with cars. I knew the crowds weren't there for the golf. They were there for sledding. It really surprised me that so many people - kids and adults - were still into sledding. The simple pleasure of walking up a hill or two and then letting gravity do its thing was one of my favorite things to do as a kid. The empty and sloping cornfield behind our house provided the perfect hill when the snow got deep and powdery enough. The walk up was rewarded with the rush of a fast and hopefully smooth descent. The time after school and before supper would fly by. Now there are more options like snowboarding, snow tubing and those plastic saucers, but give me a Flexible Flyer sled anyday. My brother and I found Flexible Flyers under the Christmas tree more than once. Skiing and skating are all well and good, but sledding beats them all!

Not Necessarily the News...

I wondered at a few recent news items, if you can call them news. The other night I saw a promo for the CBS Evening News telling us we could see how they made Brad Pitt look like an old man for his latest movie. Is it that slow a news night? I know it's a ratings thing and a lot of evening newscasts segue into tabloid shows anyway, but would Walter Cronkite have let that story get on? Here's my pet peeve about what is usually a fine news operation. WFSB-TV 3 has this habit of naming every wave of unsettled weather that comes along. If Channel 3 calls our latest 4 inches of snow "Storm Carlos" does that mean Channel 30 can call it something else? It's a winter storm - a natural pattern we survived with few problems. Imagine my surprise last night when comedian D.L. Hughley hosted a show - on CNN! At least Comedy Central calls their Daily Show the "fake news." They're apparently not the only ones doing that. Rent that 70s movie "Network." It saw the future of TV news.

Vacation!

Like the Go-Gos Awesome 80s hit, is "Vacation all I ever wanted?" And how can we get away, anyway? I thought of visiting a friend in Florida after the holidays, but then I decided to try and pay off my car and not owe anything. That's not to say I won't go anywhere this winter, but first things first. Being debt-free is the best reason to celebrate I can think of these days. To me, a week of no 4am wakeup alarms qualifies as vacation. It's about not having to answer to some of the demands of the normal routine. I'll try to catch up with a few friends who might otherwise fall off the planet, see a movie or two or three and disable my email alerts on my cell phone. The Go-Gos may be having a wilder time, but if it's "all they ever wanted" then that's a bit too much pressure to put on one week off from a job I enjoy anyway. Rebecca's on her own for one week on WBMW. She's perfectly capable of yakking for a week without me! This blog began six months ago - my last vacation - and I'm sure this will provide an alternative to the Wakeup Club radio forum for a week.

HD Radio

Let me loose in a store's electronics department and I'm like a kid in a toy store. When a new gizmo comes out, I like to think I'm riding the wave of technology. Sometimes that serves me well, while other purchases gather dust. I got a digital SONY HD radio like this one for Christmas last year. The jury's still out on HD radio. It works fine, with rich sound and even an input for CD, iPod and even my old FM/AM stereo Walkman from the 1980s. The Hartford FM stations, which come in well here in Colchester, promoted HD Radio quite heavily and I really enjoyed getting the HD-2 "stations between the stations." Since then, I noticed a certain lack of enthusiasm on the part of several big corporate broadcasters. The smooth jazz HD-2 channel on one frequency has gone silent. Another has shut down their HD-2 classic hip-hop, although I didn't know hip-hop was old enough to have that many classics. When the corporate cost-cutters pull the plug on something you bought into, there's a letdown involved. AM HD is supposed to sound like FM, but Colchester is not a great place for AM reception in the first place. The only station I get with some consistency in HD is Sports Radio 66 WFAN. Even WCBS-880 doesn't quite make it here in HD. At night, some AM stations will sound awesome for a few minutes - like WINS, WBZ or WOR - only to fade badly. I also don't count on FM HD-2 stations to wake me up in the morning, because the stations disappear completely if the HD signal falls even slightly short. For all its promise, I get the impression that HD radio may be too little too late. The two stations I listen to the most on this radio are not in HD at all: Public Radio and Soft Rock 106.5 WBMW. As a radio geek, I want every station to have HD. As a listener, HD hasn't made its case - yet.

A Look Back & Ahead

While I shudder to think of the disaster my IRA accounts have become for now, I can't say '08 was a bad year. That seems to go against the prevailing attitude about a year many would like to forget. And no, I won't look back at it with rose colored glasses nor delude myself into thinking 2009 will bring us quickly back to the economy of 1999. While all the pundits say we're still in the middle of a bumpy ride, we all have to examine our own situations first. A lot of people felt the crunch firsthand this past year, but 2008 was one of the best years I've had. Factor in health, friends and family, and regrets are few. That's something I won't take for granted as we head into a challenging year. Happy '09!