Local

DirecTV and AT&T U-Verse may be dealing a death blow to local ownership of WBNS-TV.

The satellite and cable television conglomerate has blacked out Channel 10 in a dispute over carriage fees. This had cut access to CBS-TV programs and local news to approximately 20 percent of the 920,000 television households in the Columbus TV market for three weeks by late September with no end in sight as The Columbus Free Press went to press.

Yes, it is possible to view Channel 10 with a digital antenna and some of its programs through the internet, but most viewers will not bother and will watch other channels. This puts Channel 10's No. 1 news rating in jeopardy and may vault Channels 4 or 6 to the top.

Advertisers tend to pay a premium to be on the No. 1 news station in a market. TV ads are sold based on audience size. When audiences are reduced significantly, stations must give either rebates or provide makeup spots. Both remedies are costly to the station.

DirecTV and U-Verse were paying Channel 10 a fee for the privilege of carrying its signal. The blackout puts those payments in jeopardy.

Renee Dion’s newest album Haven is probably my favorite Columbus release. Musically, the R & B singer sits somewhere between Sade and Charlotte Gainsboug.

This kind of begs the question. Is R & B the most vibrant form of music right now?

John Legend has pretty much taken a place next to Bruce Springsteen as mainstream liberal America’s favorite entertainer. The Weekend, Rihanna and Beyonce are constantly releasing music that could almost be trip hop if the songs didn’t operate so smoothly.

Obviously, this can work within the same thesis that Drake and Diplo are the same guy. 

Never forget DJ Khaled’s is a man who was a Miami DJ who came from the NYC Golden-era of Hip Hop surrounded by the rise of Miami Bass, Latin Music, No Limit, Cash Money and various influences.

R.I.P. Amy Winehouse.

The blogosphere recently had fun with WFMU’s billboard depicting Justin Bieber, RIhanna and Charles Manson. WFMU is one of the most well regarding radio stations when it comes to playing underground garage, punk. Hip hop, funk soul and whatever else is tasteful in the past 70 years of music.

Wednesday, October 4, 5-7pm
Trinity Episcopal Church, 125 E. Broad St. 
In a recent event at the Columbus Metropolian Club Mayor Andrew Ginther said “there is no evidence to support a pervasive issue [with racism] in the Columbus Division of Police.” We believe the first step is admitting you have a problem.

Everyone wants to go home to their families at the end of the day, including officers, but right now there is a crisis in the streets of Columbus. Columbus Police have killed 5 Black men and boys in the past 15 months and brutalized countless more. Most recently, multiple CPD officers were caught on camera brutalizing Timothy Davis. He remains in custody being denied adequate medical care for his injuries.

In an era of alternative facts and executive leadership who refuses tohear the cries of their people we seek a faithful response. We will never bridge the divide by pretending racism doesn't exist and silencing the cries of heartbroken Black families. Join us for a one mile silent march against racism and bigotry stepping off at 5:30pm from Trinity Episcopal Church. 

In case you missed it on Dr. Oz, the cure for Alzheimer’s (and quite possibly other types of cognitive decline) has arrived, only it’s not so much a pill or even an immunotherapy as it is a wholesale lifestyle change. Think clean eating, loads of healthful oils, 12-hour fasting, physical activity and probably something along the lines of Emotional Freedom techniques--particularly if you’ve grown up in a culture that discourages emotional expression and personal authenticity. Goodbye, Aricept, chain restaurants and packaged foods; hello, bone broth, home cooking and evening strolls. Dr. Dale Bredesen, the lead author in this research at the Buck Institute (Novato, CA) boasts a growing cadre of nearly 1,000 middle aged and elderly adults who have turned the table on Alzheimer’s by faithfully adopting his ReCODE protocol. They meet regularly to share their progress and you can too (or merely join as a voyeur) at apoe4.info/forums, named after the gene associated with an increased risk for the disease. His MPI Cognition site is also kind of cool, at drbredesen.com.

Politicians reversing themselves on key policy positions is often portrayed as weakness. Governor John Kasich has surprised both Republicans and Democrats by taking principled positions that directly contravene the positions of his party – most notably on health care and immigration reforms. Whatever else you might think of him, it’s a hard sell to call Governor Kasich weak.

My dad slumbered quietly as the Twin Towers fell sixteen years ago. He stirred and murmured, “What’s that?” I replied, “Nothing Daddy,” even though my eyes glued to the TV in disbelief. In that moment, I was glad Alzheimer’s had stolen his memory.

As a kid, I wondered why my dad, a brilliant steel industry engineer, jetted each week to New York and back. When the World Trade Center complex opened in 1973, I knew. He bragged in 1993, “We build them to last!” when terrorists detonated a bomb in a garage below one of the Towers, injuring many, but leaving the structure intact. This time, I watched in horror and wondered how Saudi pilots could destroy America’s most iconic buildings. I needed to look back only one week for a possible answer.

Seven hundred miles away in rural southwest Michigan, the feds were cleaning up a bloody standoff that left marijuana advocates Tom Crosslin and his partner Rollie Rohm dead at the hands of FBI snipers.

Well, our President in Twitter Chief, Donald Trump, has once again trumped his own self.  This time he’s taking on the rights of athletes to protest the injustices inflicted on people of color in America during NFL games. Our Twitter Chief, President Trump, feels that it’s more important for him, as President of the United States, to tweet about the right for people to protest peacefully, than it is for him to tweet about the horrific plight of the people of Puerto Rico, who are in desperate need of drastic help to rebuild and survive after hurricane Maria.

As of September 27, our Twitter Chief had tweeted twenty-three plus times about his anger at the NFL players for not “standing and being respectful during the national anthem” and only six times about how he was going to help Puerto Rico, which by the way is a part of the United States since 1898, which makes the people of Puerto Rico AMERICAN citizens.  But wait a minute, hold up, seems like we have been down this road before with the President of the United States being slow to help its “Brown” American citizens after a natural disaster.

Free Press Hero

The Free Press honors the anonymous man who bravely trained his cell phone camera on Timothy Davis during his horrendous beating at the hands of the Columbus Police. We thank you for having the courage to be the eyes and ears for the rest of us to witness the inexcusable and incomprehensible acts of our police department and how these racist officers, sworn to “serve and protect” us and uphold the U.S. Constitution, cavalierly and gleefully take out their immature macho aggressions on our citizens.

The superiority of the male sex was on the line when Bobby Riggs took on Billie Jean King in the 1973 tennis match known as the “Battle of the Sexes.” At least, that’s what organizers of the overblown spectacle claimed, and a sizable portion of the population actually believed it.

I was traveling out West at the time, and I happened to drop by a local restaurant in time to hear some macho types at the next table grouse about Riggs’s ignominious loss. It meant nothing, they insisted, except that the 55-year-old, out-of-shape Riggs was no match for the 29-year-old, top-of-her-game King.

Well, of course it meant nothing. Then again, it meant quite a lot in an age when women athletes—and women in general—were struggling to claim their rightful place in a society that had long been defined by male privilege. What makes the new comedy Battle of the Sexes so enjoyable is that it simultaneously treats the match as a ridiculous publicity stunt and as a historic milestone in the fight for gender equality.
 

Your first experience at Columbus’ Oktoberfest is the sensation of being gouged on parking at the fairgrounds. Your irritation will be soothed in the coming minutes by the pleasant surprise of no admission fee, but you don’t know that yet so you say “seriously, ten dollars? What do they have in there, fucking golden pandas?” And your wife asks why they would have pandas at Oktoberfest, and you explain that it is figure of speech, and she gives you one of those looks.

So you walk in, and are greeted by runners staggering through the Oktoberfest Meiler Vier, a four mile run in which 20 percent of participants are wearing lederhosen or other Bavarian alpine gear. If you miss them, don’t worry – you’ll find them later at the biergarten tossing back mugs of Bitburger.  From the looks of it, most of them chugged a couple before the race even started.  

At this point they hand you a menu, and you may hear a lively discussion about the merits of cabbage and noodles. This will end with an authoritative “as long as I get a dunkel I’m good.” This is fine advice, and you should probably take it.