A Critical Ethnography of Social Media: An Open Letter to the FCC

 

Every morning, weather permitting, I take my daily constitutional through the park I live across the street from in Albany, New York. One day, the day after the fourth of July fireworks in Albany, a day when the dead remains of those who go to the park across the street to watch the fireworks and who apparently can’t be bothered or don’t have the physical or mental capacity to put their trash in the numerous rubbish bins in the park, I heard two city workers who were in the process of cleaning up the mess talking about how the United States sometimes resembled a third world country. It was a sentiment I long shared not only when it came to people and the garbage they left behind but also about the new digital media that the US government and its puppet masters, American’s media elites and their corporate allies, have foisted upon us in the name of “progress". 

I recently felt the need to write a letter to the Federal Communications Commission, the US bureaucracy that is charged with regulating America’s pubic airwaves, about this brave new digital over the air television. I reprint this letter below…

Dear Federal Communications Commission of the United States,

I am writing to complain about the operation of WYBN TV 14 in the Catskills of upstate New York.

I am, of course, aware of the problems associated in general with digital television. I live in the heart of Albany, New York a city with several local over the air television channels. In Albany over the air signals are weak. It is a city in which, when cars go by in front of my flat, the signal disappears. Signal transmission too often freezes up. Audio and visuals are sometimes off. Interference with signals, including background noise such as background noise from other stations and perhaps even radio signals, happens far too often. Frankly, I prefer the old analog signals to the brave new world of digital television even though the visual and aural quality of digital signals are admittedly better. Why? For the simple reason that I prefer to watch television stations consistently which you could do when we had analog signals and which you can’t do now.

What has [also] surprised me about the brave new digital world is the incompetence of many of those who run small stations in the US today like WYBN. WYBN, for instance, runs commercials over TV shows. They sometimes run commercials that are clearly incompetently made seemingly by dudes who have dropped too much acid. They run weather information that bears no relation to the actual weather outside. Their signals freeze way too often. Their signals disappear way too often. Their audio and videos are not synched up way too often. 

So, get off your arses and stop doing the business of America’s economic elites and fix the problems with the signals and the quality of over the air TV. I won’t, to say the least, be holding my breath. By the way, I was fascinated] a couple of apparently irrelevant fill in the blanks below in your file a complaint with the FCC online tool. I am not surprised because the US government is barely more competent when it comes to media than the rank and skank amateurs at WYBN.

Me out.

Addendum: It is difficult to find information on WVBG. They appear not to even have their own internet page. According to Wikipedia WVBG, which at one time ran the same subchannels as WYBN, is owned by Bridge Media which, in turn, is owned by the Indian businessman who developed and markets the 5-hour Energy Drink. Recently WVBG changed its programming. The Christian station that was once on 25.1, the Watchman Broadcasting WBPI-Religious from Augusta, Georgia, a station characterised by factual deficit disorder, was moved to 25.4 and now seems to have left the building entirely—praise the lord—and been replaced by Retro. [25 has returned on my TV dial and unfortunately WBPI is still there, a fact some might see as yet further proof for the non-existence of the gods], Newsnet is now on 25.1, Sportsnet, which is owned by Newsnet, is on 25.2, and ShopHQ is on 25.3. Of course, now that I wouldn’t mind watching this channel I can’t because I can’t get it just as I can’t get channel 4 either. The joys of television watching in the new digital age.