A special Facebook hell
Long ago, I made the mistake of creating a second Facebook account just for family members who interacted nowhere else. Since then, I have made additional mistakes, such as thinking I was on my main Facebook account (that I've had since Facebook was for university folk only, in 2006) when I was on the family one, joining groups and adding non-family friends to the family account, and then getting notices of postings that might be in eigther place places, so I sometimes end up in my family account site rather than my main one.
Used to be that I could easily switch accounts on the fly, but now Facebook requires a password to get back, and it never fucking works. So I have to get a new one. This requires that Facebook send me an email or an SMS message, and those also don't come. Or not every time. So I'm locked out for however long it takes before I get an email or an SMS.
(Time passes.) Okay, I'm back on my main FB account. Sigh.
So far, I like it
A friend just introduced me to the Grand Bargain Project.
Bad Karma
Audacy last year killed off WCBS/880 in New York, handing its ratings over to sister station WINS/1010, which now identifies by its new FM signal on 92.3 (even though the AM signal is much bigger). In the process, Audacy also handed off the 880 channel to Good Karma Brands, which already owned WEPN/1050 in New York. It runs the same programming on 1050 and 880, now called WHSQ. They also share website, branded ESPN New York.
And get this: together they have no ratings. Zero. Nada. Beating both are a collection of online and HD2 streams, small college, ethnic, and outer-suburb signals with specialized formats.
Now get this: 880AM is a clear channel station with a monster signal that covers the metro and outer suburbs by day and half the country at night. 1050AM isn't as big, but still much bigger than most other stations (and streams) that do get ratings.
Prior to this change, ESPN New York was on 98.7 FM and had poor but extant ratings. At the time, 1050 was ESPN Desportes, the Spanish version of ESPN radio. It had ratings, too. Not great, but… something. Now 98.7 is owned by Emmis, and is called La Exitosa (while still carrying the WEPN callsign). It gets okay ratings. ESPN Desportes is gone from 1050, and its English-language replacement, which had been on 98.7, is in nowhere together with the 880 signal.
Let me sum this up:
1. WCBS—>WHSQ on 880. From good ratings as WCBS to none as ESPN New York.
2. WEPN on 1050. From some ratings as ESPN Desportes to none as ESPN New York.
3. WEPN-FM on 98.7. Now with ratings as La Exitosa, while ESPN Desportes is gone.
Anyone have any intel on what might be next here? This can't continue. (Well, ESPN New York may still carry the Mets, which might bring some ratings during the baseball season, but that's not enough.)
Sorry
I'm unsubscribing from Substacks that require subscriptions to read whole posts.
I'm glad to pay à la carte. I'd love to use EmanciPay. I'd love any payment option or system that gives readers forms of agency that are not limited to the few choices publishers provide. But, until we have that, I'm gone.
While not dying, it is kinda dead
Some fun comments under this post on The News Business.
Hope it helps
My old pal Dean Landsman pointed me to this post about Fake Fans, and much else, by Eliza McLamb, a musician, and much else. She's great. And she's from Chapel Hill. Go Heels!
Anyway, like many musicians, Eliza has problems with how f'd up music/recording/streaming/performing/promoting systems and industries are. I have an answer to that, which Dean and others helped author in ProjectVRM, and I wrote about in Linux Journal back in 2015. Since the images are gone from that archive, I just re-published it on this blog.
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