FCC fines ABC for 5 year old showing of NYPD Blue butt cheeks

[strredwolf]

Better late than never... er... maybe not.  Five years?  Three since the show poped off the air?!?

What is the FCC thinking of?

Comments

As an Amtrak employee I have to set the record straight.

[lowen-kind.livejournal.com]

Amtrak is not on "corporate welfare". We keep going back because they never really budget enough money to fully operate. They don't understand what it takes to operate a railroad. We have to maintain everything realted to the RR. And on the northeast that means the Catenanry, over head wires, that power the trains. Show me another industry where a company has to maintain everything from where they operate, to the siganl lights, to the dispatchers, to communications.

Amtrak is a government agency, just like the USPS. The real name for Amtrak is the National Passenger Rail Corp. dba as Amtrak.

Amtrak has to go to the government because that is who gives us our money and approves our budget. The corporate board is appointed by the president of the US. The CEO/President is appointed by the president of the US and approved by congress.

The difference between Amtrak and lets say the Army is that we're supposed to make a profit. By the way so is the USPS. Problem is that no strictly passenger railroad has ever made a profit, nor probably will. The USPS, up until the event of e-mail, really had no competition. If the average citizen wanted to send a letter they had to use the USPS.

Amtrak, however, doesn't have the luxury of no competition. The average Joe can select from not only the railroad, but his car or airlines. Fortunately Amtrak has seen an increase in passenger revenues as people are getting tired of the delays at airports, the longer and longer security checkpoint lines and the ever increasing prohibitions of what you cannot take aboard an airplane.

Thing is also, up to just recently most of Amtrak's unions had gone over 8 years without a contract! We still haven't ratified it yet, but at least something is there. Funny thing is most every union employee still showed up for his job, on time, and did that job to the best of their ability. Sure they were angry at Amtrak and the unions for not settling, but they put the passengers first. They could've showed up and just took their time, but, no, they did their job like they had been doing it for years. I'd like to see any other company where that has happened for so long. No "blue flu" or anything. Just show up for work, do your lob and complain about the lack of a contract, though not where the traveling public could hear you. Us Amtrak workers do like our jobs and want to keep the customers happy.

Why didn't we go on strike? A couple of reasons. First we were in the middle of mediated bargaining and the threat of what happened to the air traffic controllers.

BTW, if Amtrak did go on strike, we would shut down the north east from Boston to Washington, as almost every commuter operation uses Amtrak controlled track somewhere along that stretch. Not only that freight traffic would be snarled as CSX, NS, Conrail Shared Assets, CP and CN all use some portion of the North East Corridor to move their trains.

To put it mildly, if only Amtrak dispatchers went on strike for 24 hours it would probably take a week to straighten things out.

Re: As an Amtrak employee I have to set the record straight.

[kazriko.livejournal.com]

Aha. That means I've ruffled the feathers of a government employee. I must be doing something right. I'm not a fan of the government controlling anything.

More details on what I said with Amtrak is that they REPEATEDLY go and beg for MORE money over their budget. This happened once before with trans-atlantic shipping lines. Only thing that saved the world from that debacle was the fact that there was unsubsidized private sector competition that was much better at their job.

I have a problem with any government agencies being in control of vital transportation interests and being heavily subsidized because they almost always end up being less efficient and start relying more and more on the government handouts just to keep going. They're unwilling to do what it takes to find profitability. Ultimately, entities like this that can't be profitable and repeatedly go back to the government for another hit because they're "essential" end up being increasingly less efficient until they get to the point where the government just can't fund them anymore.

Just because you have been granted a government monopoly on stretches of track doesn't make it so the government will ultimately be forced to prop you up. Chances are, a private entity would do much better with all of amtrak's assets. They just might cancel some unprofitable runs and such though, and at the moment it's not palatable to the government to do that.

Railroads in general have so many government perks it's insane. If you look back through history you can see tons of instances where the government handed them huge globs of land to encourage them to move one direction or another. Now they're granted monopolies on certain types of heavy transportation in certain areas and then setup with rules on unions that would be completely unworkable anywhere else. That 8 years without a contract? The way that the government could instantly pull their ability to strike?

But now we're REALLY off topic. I suppose it's not too far off topic. Still talking about the excesses and the fickleness of government.

Re: As an Amtrak employee I have to set the record straight.

[lowen-kind.livejournal.com]

More details on what I said with Amtrak is that they REPEATEDLY go and beg for MORE money over their budget.

And as I said it is because they never give Amtrak enough money to begin with.

Put it this way: You need $1000 a month to live. But your parents, for sake of arguement, only give you $500 a month. You would have to keep going back saying, "Please? May I have some more?" You're not being greedy, you're just trying to cover your costs. This is the situation that Amtrak finds itself. If they would give us enough money in the beginning then Amtrak wouldn't constantly going back pleading poor. I'll give you that some of the poilcies that the board/president have made weren't the greatest, but on the whole we need the money just to operate.

I also said that no passenger only railroad has ever made money. The reason Amtrak was formed was because the privately held RR's were, for the most part, dropping passenger services as unprofitiable. Only the Pennsylvania RR, before they became Penn Central, really made any money at moving passengers, and that was they owned the NEC between New York and Washington.

This has been brought up in Congress. The current president of the U.S. wants to gut Amtrak, and everyone keeps telling him, rightly, that to do so will kill all long distance passenger rail service in the U.S.

As for you having "ruffled the feathers of a government employee", you are only partly right. I am a railroader first, as most employees of Amtrak will tell you. I just want to set the record straight of what Amtrak is and is not. My job is not tied to the whims of the government, other than for budget considerations. I would take the same stance even if I worked for the Union Pacific. We railroaders defend each other.

BTW, Kazriko if you live in the north east U.S. we should try to meet up and discuss this face to face.

Sorry Striker for hijacking your thread.

Re: As an Amtrak employee I have to set the record straight.

[strredwolf.livejournal.com]

It's no problem. I'm always fascinated by long-range rail travel (thus, the MADCAT is featured on Canmeph 2 -- hey, maybe they're reach on one line to Pennsylvania. :D )

I'll also give you another datapoint, Kaz, being an employee from the MD state's transit administration. This is all public info over the span of one decade, I must disclaim.

Currently MARC (Maryland Area Rail Car) service (owned by MTA, operated by CSX or Amtrak) is near or at capacity for Baltimore-to-DC service. Add onto that more load due to BRAC (Base Realighment anad Closing) dumping more people into Ft. Meade, and we have problems.

The Camden line runs from Camden Yards to Union Station, DC; it's near capacity for the line, and always has to compete with freight traffic between DC and Baltimore. It's operated by CSX and the rail lines are CSX owned. Add the fact that it runs very near the Howard Street Tunnel, and remember the fire that was there many years ago that disrupted traffic everywhere, and you have problems!

The Penn line, which is Perryville-to-DC-via-Penn Station, runs on Amtrak lines and are operated by Amtrak. Occasonally you'll see an Amtrak conductor along-side a MARC conductor. Delays on Amtrak equal delays on MARC between DC and Perryville. This line is AT capacity. 100% full, maxed out on trains and constanatly trying to get the double-deckers to accomidate 'em all. Add BRAC to the mix and you'll know why Gov. O'Malley and Transit secretary Paul Weiderfield called for expansion of MARC service.

Now combine all of that with the WMATA B30 bus (BWI to Greenbelt Metro), proposed studies of extending WMATA's Green line Metrorail service to BWI, and the constant lack of funding the state gives for transit (hint: WMATA supposedly federally funded; MD's MTA isn't)...

...and you'll get to see the point on how unprofitable it is.

I will tell you, rest assuredly, that Maryland isn't prepared to take up service if Amtrak shuts down today.

Re: As an Amtrak employee I have to set the record straight.

[kazriko.livejournal.com]

Luckily, I don't live anywhere near the North East US. If I did at any point, I would have moved away years ago. The government has gone insane up there. Even the bastion of independence from government, New Hampshire, is steadily increasing their taxes under pressure from Massachusettsian immigrants (Who went there to escape high taxes.) (I'm also a bit worried. Given the association of unions with certain other elements left over from the Alcohol prohibition... "Meet me here tomorrow... <whisper> Be sure to rub em out, Guido.")

The point is, from a free market standpoint if there isn't enough demand for a service that it can be self sustaining with its current structure, then it shouldn't be propped up and continue to run with its current structure. If those who need those services end up feeling pain from it being discontinued, then they will find ways of either supporting a more efficient service that meets their needs, or find a way of working around such that they don't need the service any longer. The government propping something up is a distortion of the natural free market which goes in cycles, unprofitable companies die, new ones rise that will either shift that need or meet that need in a profitable manner. By propping it up, they're damaging the future companies that will spring up.

It's a bit like the stupidity that has lead to all of the wildfires in California. Instead of letting the fires take their course over the last 50 years or so, they keep putting all of those natural fires out. Because of this, dead wood and underbrush accumulate in the forests. There's no fires (aka market forces) that clean out the forests. Thus, when there is a fire that is too large, and the conditions are just right... The government won't be able to control that fire, and all of the piles upon piles of dead wood will go up all at once, creating an absolute catastrophe.

Instead of small collapses and closures of a company or a line here and there, government interference is creating a situation where entire segments of the market are teetering and relying on the government to stay afloat. If the bumps get big enough, the government itself won't have the resources to prop it all up at once and BOOM. a super-fire of economic downfall. And they just keep doing it. Look at the economic stimulus package. Look at the subprime bailouts. More and more putting out of small fires instead of letting them run their course and letting the free market cycle work.