The Next Window

As Rita was arriving, the television stations were swamped with Rita information. The local stations and cable news stations focused on Rita.<br />
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Now, the morning after, as we sit here without power except for radios and battery-powered TV stations — what do we have? FOOTBALL!<br />
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Cable was down including cable Internet. If this was like Hurricane Katrina, those people who jumped on cable phone were regretting it. When the cable goes down, there is nothing. Obviously the cable company's repeater stations have batteries that last several hours, but they have been unable maintain the service for longer times.<br />
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What is worse is that, of Baton Rouge's three primary stations, one is UHF. Of course, all the small TV's now come cable-only. They can pick up bad pictures on channels 2-13 if cable is down, because channels 2-13 are identical frequencies for broadcast and cable. All the rest don't match up. That took the NBC affiliate out of contention immediately for most people.<br />
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I can understand WAFB's choice — they are showing two SEC teams so there is a lot of local interest. (They are showing the Alabama / Arkansas game.) Of more importance to those of us still without power — they ran a news banner at the bottom of the screen with hurricane Rita updates from across south Louisiana<br />
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Not so WBRZ, the local ABC affiliate. These fools ran Iowa at Ohio State. Why in the hell was that even broadcast in Baton Rouge, let alone during the aftermath of the hurricane when over 80,000 Baton Rouge homes were without power. No news banner. Nothing but football. These turkeys must be clueless.<br />
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On the local talk radio at WJBO (1150AM, www.wjbo.com), callers were chastizing both VHF stations for running football.<br />
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Our Power came back on, again, about 2:30 for me. Then, it went into flicker &amp; brownout mode for a couple hours. Still no cable tv. Still no cable Internet. It took another hour for cable to return.<br />
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