We never do things by the best method the first time; our history of being technology leaders worked against us for decades. We were the guinea pigs of new ideas and systems, and as the world’s early adopters we often built systems that we later discovered were wrongheaded.

The rise of the Internet helped accelerate a new trend in America, that when you find a better way, you just throw out the old technology and start again from scratch.

In the past, we insisted that new technology support the existing old technology, even if it made the new not so good.

We implemented Touch-Tone signaling in telephony with the requirement that we still support rotary dialing (even to this day) on landline analog phones. They’ll probably die that way, never modernized but co-opted by cell and VOIP.

FM radio went stereo by the most arcane method, whose prime directive was to not make mono FM detectably worse. How many mono FM receivers are there today? Yet we still hold them holy.

Television is even worse. We first put it together with spit and bailing wire (some of it to support an RCA that couldn’t build a transmitter worth a damn). Then to integrate color we did some of the damnedest crazy things.

Backwards compatibility means you get to keep all your past mistakes; in so many areas this country needs to stop dragging its feet forward with shit on our shoes, whether its legacy energy systems, legacy transportation systems, or television.

Sure, the poor will suffer more, and the way that was to be ameliorated through vouchers was completely screwed up by the Bush administration. But the short term future looks pretty bleak. Six months, ten months, twelve months down the road we probably won’t be better off to take the hit.

Doing this now (or at least not postponing it again) will take some pressure off a television business that is also hurting, and will let them concentrate on their digital stream which can bring more free channels in a time that people are unhooking their cable and satellite.

But most of all, its a message we can send that we’re willing to make some tough decisions and take some bold steps to change the way we do things to a better way. If we can do that with television, we can do it with the really important stuff, like energy and climate and health care. Its time we stop trying to avoid taking the bitter pill that can help us in the long run.

Let’s just do it.

Many, many years ago back when the FCC mandated news and public service commitments for radio stations, one of my duties as a local radio newsman was reviewing movies, TV shows and local live music venues. I came to have great respect for the Eberts and the Maltins (even when I didn’t agree with their opinions); knowing too much as a critic can cause you to lose objectivity.

Unless you’re writing for an industry mag, you’re speaking to an audience who may see a movie a month, while you’re seeing a movie a day, and it wasn’t long before I was an insufferable boring movie elitist for whom the grittiest little twisted indie was gold and everything coming out of the major studios was shit.

Javier's Jesus

How I got there was seeing the ground-breaking material that was the one good scene in some cheap indie being ripped off two years later by a major motion picture. It never failed to piss me off, and it just happened to me again–this time in new media–when I viewed the highly lauded first runner up (The Power of the Crunch) in the Doritos Crash The Super Bowl filmmaking contest.

I sure hope the producers of Power of the Crunch had Javier Prato on their team (I can’t find any credits listing him). He’s a talented DP and obviously a pretty creative guy, considering his Jesus Christ: The Musical went viral three years ago. You’d think it deserves at least a hat tip from the Power of the Crunch producers, considering they shamelessly ripped off his payoff right down to the framing.

I’ve been mainlining Ted Haggard of late. He’s on the stump to promote Alexandra Pelosi’s The Trials of Ted Haggard, now playing in power rotation on HBO. Our appetite for spiritual leaders with a downlow sexual side has been around at least since Aimee Semple McPherson.

Sister Aimee was the talk of the nation in the 20s when she claimed she’d been drugged, kidnapped and held in Mexico for ransom. But it was far more likely that she was having an affair with her radio engineer in Carmel-By-The-Sea. Nearly ninety years later, you need to kick it up a notch. Substitute same-sex gigolo for radio engineer so the affair goes gay, and make the preacher ask for and pay for the drugs, and its 21st Century ready.

Sister Aimee Semple McPherson

In concentrating on the salaciousness of evangelicals partying down in ways they condemn from the pulpit, we’re asking the wrong questions, and maybe that’s why Haggard’s description of his therapy seems like he hasn’t really done much deep thinking about it.

Perhaps that’s because some of his counselors were of the ex-gay type that typically get tossed out of the APA (the HBO doc suggests there were more than one). Or maybe it was because Ted Haggard’s needs are vastly different and a real documentary about him wouldn’t be very enthralling.

Ted Haggard talks about same-sex relationships using addiction words, and that has pissed off the gay community that sees him as disingenuous and someone who should know better. But consider the latest revelation: Haggard had sex with others, at least one of whom came forward and told the story of the preacher putting on a masturbation show for him.

When Ted Haggard talks about being who he is, and doing what his god intended for him, consider, instead of Ted Haggard as evangelical, Ted Haggard as media whore. He’s doing what he’s always done: performing. The only thing that’s changed is that Time/Warner (which controls CNN & HBO) has replaced the four old white men who legitimize New Life Church in Colorado Springs.

When Sister Aimee took us from Billy Sunday style tent revival to Azusa Street Pentecostal broadcast-enhanced ministry she created a new job description. Somebody who is so much larger than life that when squeezed through a radio transmitter or TV camera, they still emerge life-sized. She was someone a lot more like a Clara Bow “It Girl” than itinerant preacher. As anybody who’s been around media knows, people who jump off the screen often are a little hard to take in real life.

And that may be the real questions Ted Haggard has been asking himself. Its why he asked to show off having sex with himself instead of asking someone to join him. And its why the most perceptive thing he said wasn’t about sex but about how the evangelicals are missing out on leveraging his real assets. But to do that they’d have to get over themselves. In fact we’d all have to get over ourselves, me included, and start asking the right questions, not the ones that titilate.

Back when game shows were as simple as three people, a spartan set and a couple of cameras, You Bet Your Life featured the witty Groucho Marx, announcer George Feneman, and a mustached prop duck that was flown on a pully up above the lights. At the start of the show a “secret word” was announced sotto voce by Feneman, but kept secret from the contestant.

If the contestant said the secret word, which was usually a common but random word that had little to do with the game or the contestant’s life, they got an extra $100.

A stagehand lowered the duck into view of the camera and contestant. The duck had a hundred dollar bill in its beak. (Big money gameshows–and in those days big money was $64,000–didn’t come along for a few years).

Today, I got followed on Twitter by @diabetesnews, whom I didn’t follow back. I don’t have any war with @diabetesnews (or diabetes either, at least yet) and if I were diabetic or involved as a caregiver to someone who was, I might have sought them out. Its good information, in a reasonable amount, well linked.

But what troubles me about this is that I probably got selected because of an offhand snarky comment I made back to @WillPao over his “What age does it become inappropriate to eat Lucky Charms.” It was my answer, I suspect, that got me the follow: “The day you’re diagnosed with Type II diabetes. ”

Maybe I’m just being tech paranoid, and since I made my tweets public, I can hardly be outraged that people follow me. There could me other reasons, and I DM’d @DiabetesNews to inquire. But what worries me is the possibility that it was a bot that made this choice on the basis of a random, offhand remark. I said the secret word, and the duck came down.

I’ve come to love Twitter, which has supplanted other services and software. Its become my tip service, which I tune by deciding whom I follow and hoping that the right people follow me back so that I can return the favor in interest areas I watch closely.

Therefore losing followers and dumping people I follow is probably a good thing. Others are deciding that my content isn’t tuned to their life, or somebody else out there is doing a better job, and gaining followers isn’t necessarily a good thing, because if they picked me because of what I say and what I think, there’s a high probably I’ll like them just as much and will follow back. The incoming stream is already bigger than I’d like.

As Twitter matures, there will be more and more refinement in the art of finding the right mix. Atherton Bartelby’s Mashable post on Follow Fail is an excellent example. We’ve already had the first great security breech, and those of us who didn’t think security was an overriding concern (I mean, its just little txt messages) have been taken to the virtual woodshed.

What we don’t need, is an environment where every tweet is processed by sea of algorithms run by a world-wide collection of special interest groups,  and each day your last few days of tweets are reflected in a wagon-load of tangential follows.

Twitter is at a critical juncture, between security issues, the right mix of commercialization vs. pure social interaction, and just plain too much success. I wish them nothing but luck. They’ve got some serious problems on the horizon, but they’ve also got a lot of users out here who think they’re cooler than a mustached duck with a hundred dollar bill in its beak.

If there’s any silver lining to the storm clouds of the swift and sudden downsizing of legacy media, its the sheer number of great pieces of writing about pink slips amongst the ink-stained wretches.

Don Barrett (laradio.com) pointed to a great one over the weekend: Kill The Media Zombies by Tina Brown in which Brown points out that the wretches without the ink stains are both largely responsible for the demise and remarkably free from its ill effects.

But @themediaisdying on Twitter  tips us to John Gorman, who sees Ms. Brown’s class warfare and then goes all in on his media blog comparing Clear Channel to Russia’s politboro in Radio: Das Klear Khannel.

[And yes, I know media are plural, but the data aren't in yet and none is sure that "media" isn't on its way to becoming a mass noun]

Its a voice that startles you at first. Its not good, I thought. The songs were strange, sardonic, almost silly, and simultaneously deeply meaningful. And the voice. Was Jim Bianco serious? But we found ourselves listening again.

A modern Madeira (m'dear)

When the Portuguese started shipping their wine to the world in casks on sailing ships they didn’t know it was being stepped on by the heat of the passage in warm holds through tropical waters. Until one day one of the ships returned with its cargo of Madeira unsold.

When the Portuguese tasted their superheated wine, they were shocked; it hadn’t been helped by the long travel in the heat. Or had it? It had a taste that was shocking at first, but strangely captivating.

So we listened to Jim Bianco again, and again. We started dissecting it like the Portuguese picking through the tastes and flavors of their mutated wine. Though we had only three Bianco cuts, and two of them were alternate versions of the same song, we had taste after taste.

Is it meter that makes I have a thing for you so interesting, or is it phrasing or is it some combiantion of both? And it wasn’t long before we, like the Portugese sampling their tortured wine, were drunk on Jim Bianco, and couldn’t remember what we found objectionable about it at our first taste,

On this day 128 years ago,  was born Earle C. Anthony, a pioneer in some of the arts and sciences that began during his lifetime that are now dead or dying. The Packard distributor for all of California; one in seven Packards was sold by his companies.

ECA was a renaissance man born with a mechanical aptitude in the age of the great engineers who leveraged his abilities and his moment in time to not only profit from the rise of the automobile, but through building one of the first radio stations in the west. From money earned in his dealership he improved his station until it became the most powerful on the west coast.

A QSL card from ECAs KFI

Through the thirties, forties and fifties, KFI 640 was the powerhouse that brought the NBC Radio Network to most of the Southwest. With his other station, KECA (now KABC), he was a constant source of frustration to NBC. He’d no more sell his station than sell his wife, he told them.

While KFI is still a powerhouse (now a Clear Channel moneymaker in a sad radio environment), Packard preceded him in death (he died in 1961),  and each year AM radio becomes less important in a changing media world.

In 1930, Anthony was one of the elite in Los Angeles. He rode horses with the Warner Brothers and the other moguls in the early mornings in Griffith Park, from his lavish estate (now a Catholic Church retreat) to the Breakfast Club he helped found. He put one of the first television stations on the air (now KCBS).

He traveled the country in his private rail car, listening to his station and sending telegrams back. He helped build Los Angeles from a cowtown to a metropolis with arts and culture. Surely his name would be known forever.

Today, the Packard is about to be joined in death by other once-great American carmakers, the private rail car is a museum piece, AM radio is practicing its death rattle, and Earle C. Anthony’s place in history is a disappearing footnote.

Recently, I’ve found Pandora and it has me in its spell. Its like Napster all over again. I’m exploring new artists and new genres, and like the Napster days, I’m buying music because I like niche artists and narrow genres that I’d have little or no exposure to. Once again, the music industry has been presented with another goose laying golden eggs and is trying to find a way to kill it.

But then again, I’m trying to find a way to frustrate it. I’m pretty eclectic in my audio taste, and in 50-something years I’ve picked up a lot of strange knowledge, and I can’t resist trying to tweek Pandora with it. Its a little like entering Jimmy Webb’s MacArthur Park or Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah at “What do the lyrics mean” websites.

So far, Pandora’s responded admirably. At Pandora, one can create stations based on an artist, or a song, or both. This information drives a big inference engine that suggests a whole range of songs. My first attempt was Spike Jones. Voila! Spike Jones radio, which proceeded to play Spike Jones selections I’ve not yet heard, and offer up other off-center performances. Ray Stevens, Sheb Wooley, Ben Colder (who looks remarkably like Mr. Wooley), and a host of great novelty one-hit wonders.

Tom Leherer? Absolutely. Which gravitated to Dr. Demento and all his craziness. Pico & Sepulveda still streams in my head. OK. how about dead genres. Let’s try Milton Brown. “And his Musical Brownies?” queries the Pandorabot. Curses. Foiled again.

Nickodell Matchbook

Along the way, I learned and appreciated, and about that time my musical juggernaut was interrupted by a bulletin from Don Barrett at LAradio.com that Bill Drake had gone to that great music library in the sky, and my mind went to the Nickodell, now a parking lot on the Paramount Lot, where the Boss Jocks of KHJ drank away many happy hours. Background music?

So I started creating a station using the tools I’d discovered playing with the box (should that be a jar) that is Pandora, and soon, I had Last Round at Ciro’s. What might have been heard at the Nickodell in its heyday. Elegant music of the 50s and 60s with a twist of nostalgia. I was doing in minutes what used to take days even months; tweaking a radio format without even the need of a record library. Did Drake ever know this existed?

Before the Internet, there were specialized and scarce jobs that required multidisciplinary understanding, like the music director or program director of radio stations that were unapproachable by the masses. Today anybody with a little knowledge and a lot of passion can do them thanks to specialized websites like Pandora and last.fm.

And by the way, I finally beat Pandora at its own game. The Pasadena Roof Orchestra

“We’re always looking for great music to include, so we’ll check it out” said the Pandora-bot, its eyes downward. “Is there something else you’d like to listen to?”

[And thanks to Pete Handleman for the light. Bartender, another one for Mr. Morgan, Mr. Steele and Mr. Drake, on me.]

They’re scared. The newspaper crossownership restrictions that the FCC loosened in late 2007 may be an early target of the Obama administration’s desire to help return some diversity to legacy media, and the arguments are already beginning.

Broadcasting and Cable posted their “Open Hopes” yesterday in a pleading editorial that would have made George Orwell proud:

“Diversity can mean helping preserve TV and radio stations by allowing those in smaller markets to combine resources and ensuring that the government does not try to silence its critics.”

That’s got to go down with “less is more” and “obedience is freedom,” as a truly great oxymoron, so let me make this real simple for the obviously confused guardians of our public airwaves. Diversity is more people owning fewer media outlets. That means the local newspaper does not get to buy the local television station.

In the 1930s this was newspapers' biggest fear

In some cases, that is going to result in newspapers going out of business, sometimes the very same newspapers that tried to run radio stations out of business in the 1930s, until United Press threw in the towel and started putting wire services in radio stations.

The Broadcasting and Cable “Open Hopes” editorial tries to finesse its point by talking about “stations in midsized markets” and then changing the subject as quickly as possible to Bush’s embedded reporters and wholesale classification of embarrassing government reports. That’s not the point, in fact its counter-intuitive. If we had more diversity, somebody might actually have called Bush out on those issues at the time!

Broadcasters: you have two choices. Either start providing a range of opinions on your properties so that you can point to diversity on your own outlets, or get ready to be forced to divest them or to face that dreaded “fairness doctrine.” If you had been doing your jobs, there’d be no reason for any of this.

And stop trying to play this off as being somehow driven by troubles at midsized stations in small markets. It was the Chicago Tribune sale that caused FCC Chief Kevin Martin to ram this through, followed by Rupert Murdoch’s acquisition of Dow Jones.

And if you’re looking for “synergy” (meaning you get to buy the local television station), think again. The public airwaves are not there to pay for your red ink. If you need a new delivery medium, look to the Internet.

I got my report from Mr. Tweet today. If tweeting, Twitter and and the whole concept of social networking with an extensible API is foreign: the short version is its a way to drop 140-character messages into a virtual world where people who “follow” you see them almost immediately and others can search and find.

I knew about Twitter just from the background noise of the net, but when Tim Elliott of Winecast sent me an invitation, I accepted, even though I couldn’t see any benefit to it. Twitter just seemed silly. But I also knew Elliott was a smart and talented early adopter. If he liked it, I was probably missing something.

Over the last few weeks, Twitter has demonstrated itself as the next step in this evolution of connectivity, and I am now seeing the new apps that fill in the blanks, like Twitter Grader and Mr. Tweet: virtual appliances that ferret out folks on your wavelength and make it easy to include them in your own staccato-statement world.

And another truth was starting to reveal itself. The more these appliances make suggestions on people to follow, the more often I know who they are, and the more they’re “the usual suspects”–people I know (in a ! IRL way) from my last waystations along the early adopter highway.

Like the #1 suggestion on my first Mr. Tweet report: Robert Scoble. I am already following Dave Winer. Can the prompt to add Adam Curry be far off?

Next will come the wholesale monetization of Twitter, which was deftly avoided by them waving off Facebook’s offer of cash and pseudo-cash, but sooner or later, they’ll take the bait and tweets will suddenly sport more product placement than America’s Biggest Loser.

And that will be my cue to move on down the road, where I’m sure to find all the usual suspects on my next stop along this information superhighway that gets smarter at every turn.