Soaked… Random Notes
Katrina did a number on New Orleans.
And we’re all headed there next month to do a little good… along with hanging out at the convention center, eating too much, drinking a little, checking out some good music and maybe even doing a little bit of business.
But that soaking of the city also left a lot of moldy, muddy, messy and unreadable books behind in the city’s schools. So let’s do a little something about that.
Along with book drives at Comcast, Time Warner, Discovery, qubo, ION and others, I’ve done a book drive of my own. As a political and history junkie with 2 large libraries (one non-fiction, one fiction), I’ve cleaned out the non-fiction home of four large boxes of significant hard bound historical and political books (keeping my collection of Teddy White‘s making of the president series and books about media) and am shipping them to New Orleans (via the NCTA in DC unless Cox allows me to ship them directly to N.O.) for high school library re-stocking.
There’s an easy way for you to participate, too: go to http://2008.thecableshow.com/CableCares/Libraries.aspxright now and join us. You can make a contribution of $250 and stock a classroom (with the teacher’s choice of books).
* Sportsman’s Do-Good: Lots of companies are jumping on the, "Hey! Let’s do some good while we’re at the NCTA!" bandwagon. The Sportsman Channel will be feeding the hungry mid-day on Saturday the 17th with a Hunt.Fish.Feed Initiative at the Ozanam Inn on Camp Street in New Orleans (info: [email protected]). And just so you won’t feel left out, they’re hosting a reception at Mulates (across from the convention center) that evening to thank all of the volunteers.
* Motorola + Circuit City + Blockbuster = Huh? Oh, I get it. Carl Icahn wants to merge the TV movie renter with the TV box outlet and stock it only with GI TV boxes.
* Speaking of GI: Donald Rumsfeld, twice former Secretary of Defense, once ran GI. He is going to write his memoirs. He is going to write about his time running GI. I can’t wait. But will have to, until 2010.
* Hall of Fame Class: Is a class act this year. Nice to see Hub Schlafly remembered. All this content wouldn’t get to the subscriber without his engineering. The other 5 are all great friends, and you know who they are already… more about them all later (that’s a threat!). This’ll be a not-to-miss induction ceremony in October for Cable Days in Denver.
* Newspaper Death Throes? Seems that way. Denver’s dailies shrink daily. So do the ones I see in other markets. Reporting staffs are cut nationwide. T&E at papers disappears. Maybe they’ll start filing Chapter 11 along with the airlines any day now. But, I’ve seen the future (heck, helped create it with this publication all the way back in ’89 when I stopped printing and mailing news). I now get The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times —sans ads and sans paper and sans hassle (don’t even have to send the dogs outside to get the "paper")—on my Amazon Kindle every day (except, of course, the Sunday sports edition of the WSJ hasn’t launched yet, so no Sunday WSJ). Original reporting is worth paying for… like for CableFAX.
* That Black Swan We Mentioned a Few Months Ago? Should have seen it coming? Well, no… but keep on the lookout. Our economy is likely to see a few more fly home to roost.
