This isn’t a huge surprise: NPR affiliates are concerned that podcasts from the large market stations (like KCRW) will cause listeners to switch off their local affiliates, especially during the pledge drives that pay the bills.
I like the argument at the end that the broader reach of shows, wherever they’re produced, should be used to find more underwriting money and that local stations should invest in creating smart local programming of national interest. (Too often, local NPR stations seem to just replay the national shows and maybe classical music. That model needs work in the 21st century.)
One thing overlooked in the story is that broadcasting costs money — KCRW has a series of towers all over Southern California to extend the channel’s reach up and down the dial, for instance — and that it’s certainly possible to readjust spending priorities so that Internet bandwidth is where most of the audience is reached, at an overall savings. Instead of supplementing broadcasting, it could (and probably should) replace it in some areas.
But content is king. If some of the, frankly, pretty awful NPR stations are forced to change or die, the NPR audience and the network itself will be better off.
Today, I have been at the Hesperia Star two years. In three more months, I will pass my longest newspaper writing gig to date, which was my tenure at the Potomac News.
Well, sort of.
Joe’s second graders have published a book through Lulu.com, which has to be one of the better ways to encourage a love of reading that I’ve come across.
Strange to think of Joe as a good influence, though. I keep imagining all of these kids dressed up like miniature Mexican wrestlers and dancing around to rockabilly music instead of learning “proper” things.
Having first read the Chronicles of Narnia in 1979, I had grave misgivings when I heard a movie was being made. I wasn’t only concerned about issues such as special effects and where they’d film the movie — Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings movies were showing that wasn’t much of a problem in the 21st century. I was mostly concerned about the tone and feel of the books, which are charmingly anachronistic.
I didn’t need to worry after all: The live action The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
, if it takes some small liberties with the book, gets the tone and feel of the book perfectly, giving us a battle between good and evil that feels on one level like a children’s story, while at the same time having obvious deeper currents to it, some of which can be puzzled out thematically, others of which will (mostly) be revealed in later stories.
The casting was also exceptionally well done, with all of the children actually looking like siblings and like real children (not Hollywood actor children creatures) besides. Tilda Swinton is especially good as the White Witch, who plays evil with a sophistication and intelligence rarely seen in movies.
For adults, there’s also great fun in spotting some of the celebrity voices of the wonderfully animated talking animals. Rupert Everett as the talking fox was an especially witty choice, and perfectly suited to the role.
In the end, as long as the film was, it suffers a bit from being an adaptation of a relatively short children’s novel, and feels significantly thinner than, say, Peter Jackson’s much denser Fellowship of the Ring. This isn’t a crippling blow to the movie — it’s still quite enjoyable and makes one eager for the next movie in the series — but it does mean the film doesn’t really bear the repeated rewatchings the extended editions of the Lord of the Rings movies do.
Strongly recommended for fantasy fans of all ages and the original Narnia books.
Pageant winner roommate with former Miss Hesperia turned Miss Apple Valley
By BEAU YARBROUGH
Staff Writer
What makes Marisa Yepiz an unlikely pageant queen in many ways makes her a perfect Miss Hesperia.
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