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

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.