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This morning I was reading the Political Blogger Charles LeBlanc’s site when I came across the following little gem.

Worker was confronted by a nut with a Machete because he was making too much noise while shoveling snow on Regent Street in Fredericton.

Doesn’t that just make you want to say OMG! The sad thing is that this is not the only recent event like this. Last week there was the 15-year-old Hampton NB native charged with 2nd degree murder for bringing a kitchen knife over to an alleged sexual assulting drug dealer and killing him in the back or side.

Then about a year ago the guy chasing after another down the streets of uptown Saint John with a freaking broad sword.

I once heard that you are more likely to get stabbed than shot in Canada, does that really make you feel any better?

In the view of what may be in line for Canada over the next year in the camps of the Fee-for-carriage debate between “Save Local” and “Stop the TV Tax.” Although this seems unfathomable in the current landscape, the near future will see broadcast, cable, and satellite a thing of the past to internet based distribution methods.

Why pay for 100’s of channels that you do not watch? Why can the creators of the content not just distribute themselves? With devices like the Roku player, Apple TV, PS3, Xbox 360, and many others, we can feasibly get HD to your TV. Problems with getting broadband will als be a thing of the past soon as 4G LTE cellular networks with 51 mb/s connections will make getting fast internet to people easier and cheaper. Even more so in less that 5 years with 5G

“In the last 12 months talks between cable operators and program providers have become even more tense. Programmers have been seeking better affiliate fees as they have seen advertising revenue hurt by the U.S. economic downturn and remain uncertain about the future of TV advertising as more marketers turn to the Web.”  Yinka Adegoke for Reuters.

Fox, Time Warner Cable reach deal to avoid blackout – Yahoo! Canada News.

NewSong FM 96 1 FM » Operation Christmas Child Now Underway.

A real breakdown of Saint John

Today I picked up a copy of The Barron, UNB Saint John’s student produced paper. I came across the article “Travelling around Saint John: what you need to know” by staff writer Simon Jack. It does not take long for one to realize the writer did not understand the history of Saint John or the Transit system.

The first point so a can move on was the reason he did not find information on the “Night Owl” run was that it was canceled in Spring 2008.

Now to the areas of Saint John, to refer to drawing a random line to determine the limits of both Millidgeville and South End is vastly poor research. The boundary for Millidgeville dates back to the 1950’s era boundary of city limits. Basically the official boundary is if a line was drawn from Somerset Street and Sandy Point Road westward to Pokiok Point that was the city limits pre-amalgamation in Saint John.

To define the South End one has to go much further back in time, back to 1785 (the beginning.) In the Royal Charter that created Saint John defined the 4 wards of the “South Central” peninsula was split into quarters at Duke and Sydney Streets. The upper class mostly lived in the west side of the harbour, or northern two central wards. The poor (very broke poor) lived to the southern wards of Duke Street making the “South End” boundary Duke Street. Through the next 20-30 years the South-enders made money suing the rich for literally everything. Leading to the creation of New Brunswick’s first Law School, that lead to UNB’s School of Law, as there were not enough lawyers to handle the workload.

In conclusion, it also needs to be pointed out the reasoning for the layouts of the streets have much to do with them being planned before those areas were part of Saint John in many cases.

Today I checked my e-mail hand found this letter from my cable television provider Rogers Cable.

Dear Rogers Cable Customer:

{snip}

I am now writing to inform you of yet another broadcasting policy proposal that is under consideration by the CRTC

After rejecting it twice, the CRTC has reintroduced the idea of having a fee-for-carriage: a payment to Canadian over the air broadcasters that could ultimately end up costing cable and satellite TV subscribers between $5 and $10 per month! continue reading…

Over the past few weeks I have heard discussions on the bus about these upcoming changes. Some of the things I hears sounded stupid but look to be true. Now that I have seen the changes as a whole it makes a lot more sense.

Basically the routes I use are only changing by about 5-10 minutes and better evening runs. I really would not call this a major change, with the exception of the East-West and University runs and addition of a few routes. But the numbers are. They are now grouping lines by area where the old system had numbers all over the place.

These changes are taking effect August 9th, 2009. Please leave comments below on what you think of the changes. www.saintjohntransit.com has more information.

One of the major articles from the Telegraph-Journal this week that had caught my attention (Petition would oust Mayor) was the petition by Gerry Webster to recall the mayor. All I can say is where do I sign. No don’t say that I don’t agree with democracy, in fact I believe that petitioning to recall the Mayor is very democratic. I gives everyone the chance to vote on whether to keep the Mayor or pick someone better. Ivan Court in my opinion has not kept up the standard in the first year of his reign that this city needs, and is in fact going to be severely detrimental; as his and councils policies do nothing more than chase businesses out of the city.

On the other hand I see that Fredericton would be probably the most likely and willing to nail the tomb on Saint John. In a historical perspective the city of Fredericton was created because of all the morons and poor decisions of Saint Johners.

It would be very interesting to see who would come out of the woodwork that could beat Mayor Court. The fact that it only takes 15% of the electorate is a good number that that people will not pull the Mayor as that number mean the “do not rock the ship” people will need to convert to pull the mayor. Which I think people believe the Mayor needs to go if not because of what he done but because the Telegraph-Journal told them so. (Follow-up on the Mayor won’t quit) (Follow up article if it was legal)

While in my last post I may have took the position that Saving Local is not important. That is not true. I am against CTV and Global who have for the last few years, mainly CTV, treated New Brunswick as a second class maritime province in terms of share of news coverage and local programming.

Now on to the main topic of this post, CBC Radio 1 in Saint John. In reality Saint John has about 4 main contacts for news CHSJ, CBC, CHNI, and Telegraph-Journal. However, only the Telegraph-Journal and CBC provide the depth of information and understanding of our community as a whole. Despite radio being close to a hundred year old technology. The style of the CBC just draws you in and is never shallow on good storytelling.

Technically speaking the CBC does have a trend on over staffing on productions on the TV end but with the radio it takes less people to technically produce the shows so that leaves cutting the staff as ripping out pages from the unpublished book, still there but more shallow. I definitely plan on attending the rally in King’s Square this weekend.

We Want Our CBC

Today I seem ads on CTVGlobeMedia stations that are urging the government to require cable/satellite distributors to pay for distributing the signal. I think this is just plain wrong. Here in Saint John there are 4 broadcast stations CBAT (CBC Fredericton but licensed and has its main transmitter in Saint John), CKLT (Has no programming differences from CJCH (CTV Atlantic) in Halifax, NS), CIHF-TV-2 (a semi satellite of CIHF-TV known as Global Maritimes from Halifax.), and CBAFT-1 which is a re-transmitter of CBAFT the Radio-Canada Moncton feed.
When it comes to local programming CTV is the absolute worst, as I have noted before at most has 2 stories from the Saint John area and 4-5 total from the entire Province of New Brunswick on a good day. Global TV despite their severe cut backs have managed to keep their news stories basically equal per province.
The basics is that all 4 of these broadcasters offer their signals for free over-the-air (a.k.a. poverty-vision). The cable company simply re-transmits the feed via an antenna to cables to the subscribers. Why should we pay to have something that we get for free anyway? In fact this even benefits the TV stations by making it more convenient to watch the stations resulting in more viewers rather than switching over to better content from away. Thus removing ad dollars.

In less dense markets like the Maritimes TV must come up with a different model in order to survive. Depending on a single news program is clearly not the way to go, but neither is alienating the viewers by making some pay, while others do not. Do we consider a TV tax like the United Kingdom? I don’t thinks so either but fees must not be duel standard. The CRTC recently made a decision that requires distributors to no longer require a bundle of channels. In this schema you can choose to not purchase stations, adding fees will just doom local programming to certain failures.

If you want to see more about this CTV is promoting the site http://www.ctv.ca/savelocal/.

For Immediate Release

April 1st, 2009

Saint John NB Set For Major Midget Atlantics

Saint John, NB- The Tournament committee and host team Saint John Vito’s would like to welcome the participants in this year’s 2009 Atlantic Major Midget Regional Championships this weekend at the Lord Beaverbrook Rink in Saint John NB.

This year’s host team the Saint John Vito’s will be joined by the Hockey New Brunswick provincial title winning Moncton Mark’s Work Wearhouse Flyers after winning a 4-0 series against the Vito’s. Joining the Flyers and Vito’s from the NB-PEI Major Midget Hockey League will be Hockey PEI ’s Cornwall Superior Sanitation Thunder, after their 4-0 series with the Charlottetown Mark’s Work Wearhouse Islanders. Representing Hockey Newfoundland and Labrador is the St. John’s Fog Devils after a 4-0 series win in the Newfoundland & Labrador Major Midget AAA Hockey Championship over the Tri-Pen Frost at the Bay Arena in Bay Roberts. Finishing off the list of the list of contenders is the returning 2008 championship team Cole Harbour McCain Major Midgets representing Hockey Nova Scotia . The McCain’s had one of the closest final series with a 4-1 series against the Halifax McDonalds Major Midgets. The tournament kicks off Thursday April 2nd at 1pm with the HNL Fog Devils against the HNB Flyers. The second game will feature the HPEI Thunder against HNS Cole Harbour Major Midgets at 4pm. Then finishing off the evening will be HNL Fog Devils against the Host team Saint John Vito’s. The Opening Ceremonies will be held at 7:30pm prior to the HNL vs. Host game at the LBR.

The Atlantic Major Midget Regionals will determine the Atlantic Region contender to the Telus Cup National Midget Championship to be held at the Selkirk Recreation Complex in Selkirk / Winnipeg , MB from April 20-26.

This morning I was listening to CBC Radio 1 and one of the main stories today is that the local cable company cut off the final few laps of the Nascar race for an all new episode of The Simpsons. Let’s face it The Simpsons is one of the most important influinces of my generation.

The Simpsons, teaches that it is important to think for yourself and that one voice can make a difference. In retrospect this week’s particular episode was one of the best lately and I feel bad if an cable company didn’t cut off NASCAR for it.

With all the comments I have been receiving lately about how bad my Oscar picks are I’m now going to post my Razzies picks.

Worst Movie

The Hottie and The Nottie
Regent Releasing/Purple Pictures

My fist choice was going to be The Happening but any Paris Hilton movie is guaranteed to be the Worst ever. And director that sees talent in Paris has no talent at making a movie, or is highly bribable..

Worst Actor

Mark Wahlberg
THE HAPPENING
and
MAX PAYNE

Worst Actress

Paris Hilton
THE HOTTIE AND THE NOTTIE

Worst Supporting Actor

Verne Troyer
THE LOVE GURU
and
Uwe Boll’s POSTAL

Worst Supporting Actress

Paris Hilton
REPO: THE GENETIC OPERA

Worst Screen Couple

Paris Hilton and either Christine Lakin or Joel David Moore
HOTTIE & THE NOTTIE

Worst Prequel, Remake, Rip-Off or Sequel

Speed Racer

Worst Director

Tom Putnam
THE HOTTIE AND THE NOTTIE

Worst Screenplay

The Happening
Written By M. Night Shyamalan

Worst Career Achievement

(Special Category!)

Uwe Boll
(Germany’s Answer to Ed Wood)