I’ve lived in the Charlottesville area for 20 years now.  During that entire 20 years, NBC29 has always been my go-to source for local news.  This is due in large part to the fact that NBC29 was the ONLY choice for local news until fairly recently.  With the addition of stations at the Newsplex, things changed.

I still watched NBC29, though.  Hey, habits are tough to break.  Especially those built over a decades.

The mere addition of three new stations wasn’t really enough to change the way I got my local television news.  On top of that, now that I have DishNetwork, I really don’t watch the local channels that much at all. Add to that the fact that network television is pretty much horrendous, with the exception of sports broadcasts, and you have the perfect recipe for me to completely ignore the local news outlets.

What has changed, however, is the way in which I get news and information, generally.  It’s not that I don’t want the local news and information, it’s just that I get all my news and information differently than I did five or even three years ago.  I don’t read a hard copy of any newspaper, but I read a heck of a lot of news through the various iPhone apps I have, or on the Internet when I am at the computer.  I use twitter a lot more to see what local folks are up to, and they tend to break a lot of stories for me.  I also follow a lot of local people of Facebook, and the same holds true there, too.

That is why when I discovered that CBS19 had a Facebook page, I was interested enough to become a fan.  Boy, am I glad that I did.  CBS19 does a wonderful job of posting not only the stories that they have during their broadcasts, but also additional information, polls, and more feature/behind the scenes type stuff that is interesting.

The best part about it is that I don’t have to be home at 6:00 and 11:00 to get the news, and I can find it while I am catching up with what my friends are doing on Facebook.  The fan page allows me to discover and connect with other people in the Charlottesville Area.  All of this means that the CBS19 Facebook page is not only convenient, easy to use, and informative, but it also helps me meet new people and expand my network.  Very cool.

If you want to become a fan of the CBS19 Facebook page, just go to http://facebook.com/Newsplex.  You can also find CBS19 on Twitter, and even on YouTube.

Kudos to CBS19 for being willing to take on the challenges that traditional media outlets face in this new media world.  I hope they continue.

And who knows, they may even get me to change the channel. . .

I’m a big New York Jets fan.

I’m not a crazy, irrational, talk-about-the-team-in-the-first-person, Jets fan, but I definitely a big fan.  Accordingly, one of the blogs that I like to frequent is TheJetsBlog.com.  It gives daily news and information about the Jets; which is cool, especially that I live in Virginia.

A recent post on the site discussed the NFL considering a policy on in-game tweeting by players and personnel.  The post generated numerous comments, including one by yours truly.  Apparently, I was the only one who supported allowing participants to tweet from the sidelines during games.

It seems that the most popular objection to allowing tweets from the sidelines was that players should be concentrating on the game, and not tweeting from a phone or computer.  Ok, I get that, I guess.  But the point I was making in my comment is just as applicable in a football game as it is in any other endeavor in life– players aren’t ALWAYS focused on the game.  For better or worse, this is the way it is.  I’ve played in many an athletic contest, and officiated even more of them.  If you think that every waking moment of the players is devoted to the game on the field, you’re kidding yourself.

I’m not sure why this comes a surprise to so many people.  I mean, how many people go to work everyday and concentrate on their job all day long?  No one.   Really, no one.  It’s just not possible.  In order for you to concentrate as hard as you need to on the most important aspects of a long task, you need to break for a little bit to regroup.  You can do any physical or mental task perpetually.  At some point, you gotta break to refuel.  Professional football players are no different.

I see no problem with allowing players to tweet during said breaks.  Rather than sitting on the bench daydreaming, why not allow them to give fans some insight into the game?

To me, the sport that does the absolute best job of filling down-time with valuable information and content for fans is NASCAR.  If you watch a NASCAR broadcast, every yellow flag is filled with interviews of crew-chiefs, listen-ins to team communication, and even in-car interviews with drivers.  NASCAR fans get more information about the sport during the contest than any other fans on the planet, and they love it; and the participants don’t complain about it, either.

So, I’m not really sure what the big deal is.  Let the teams decide.  If they want to stop their players from tweeting, fine.  If, however, there is a team that would like to test the waters and open up a bit more to the fans, why would the league want to stand in their way?