A little Sunday side trip into radio

You don't have to be a Hoosier to like Indiana Radio Watch. You just have to be an unreconstructed radio freak. Blaine Thompson probably knows as much as anyone about Indiana radio as it is now and as it was back in the 8-pot-Gates days.

The periodic email report always includes at least one thing I find interesting. This morning it notes that the little station  WBZQ in Huntington, about 20 miles southwest of Fort Wayne, has been sold. So what? Little stations change hands like used Chevys.

Because the price was 75,000 Bernanke-inflated dollars.

So what if it was just one step up from a coffee-pot operation, putting out 500 watts until sunset, then 13 after dark -- yes, only about twice what your old Cobra CB exhaled before you wired in the illegal linear amplifier?

Only a generation ago a station like that would have grossed maybe $100,000 a year.  (For perspective, that amount of 1970 money would have bought you about 20 new Corvettes, loaded. )

The rule of thumb held that an AM radio station was worth about two times its gross revenue. Real estate was extra.

So comes the end of my denial. AM radio IS dead.  Bury it beside the Yankee dollar.

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(Blaine would be glad to put you on his mailing list, but I don't care to publish his email address. He's on Facebook.)

Et voila!

Oh, it's Brother Jimmy's turn to throw the bomb...

And while we're at it, why not flag the assault craft?

Flagging

Once upon a time an anal SCUBA diver criticized my diving flag because it was out of proportion. "To be official it has to be five by four by one."  Five  units wide, four high, one as the white-stripe dimension. I thanked him profusely, of course,  though I somehow forgot to ask my wife (RIP) to resew it. Despite the omission I used it for many more years and somehow escaped being hamburgerized by an Evinrude. Just lucky, I guess.

I suppose this ancient memory comes because of a morning mood which demands that I do something frivolous. So I think  I'll paint an anarcho-capitalist flag on the west end of the big propane tank. I know I have plenty of black rattle-can paint, and if there happens to be a can of yellow, it'll be a done deal shortly after the dew dries.

Unfortunately I don't know the official proportionals of the AnCap banner, so I'll welcome advice from anyone who does. In fact I solicit it. How could any friend of real liberty live with the notion that his flag fails to meet the legal standard?

Your papers! Quickly!

After a couple of months of technical problems, The World's Greatest Travel Blog is back with a summary of bureaucratic crap you need to deal with if you want to visit some far and exotic place --Toronto or Tijuana, for instance.