• Michael Hillman

Michael Hillman didn’t always know that photography would be his passion. Since he was young, Hillman would flip through the pages of surfing magazines to look at the photographs. The vivid colors and exotic locations captured his attention. Since he was young, Hillman has been engrossed in visuals.

I guess it seems like Comedy Central has been on the cable lineup forever, but there was a time twenty years and one day ago when the idea of an all comedy network featuring American Pie sequels and Futurama episodes was just a dream. However, these days my life would be a hollow empty place without Comedy Central, whether that's the memories of Reno 911! and the Chappelle Show or the stellar doubleheader of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. If nothing else, I will always thank Comedy Central for giving me Kids in the Hall episodes to watch after school as a teenager. How could I possibly thank a television network that has given me so much? Actually, it's a corporate entity, so I'm sure they'll be ok without my thanks, right?

I wanted to include clips of my favorite Comedy Central show ever, VS., where groups of people who dislike each other competed in an impossible game show, but YouTube was no use, so you get highlights from Let's Bowl instead.

It really was a waste to have excitable sports announcer Gus Johnson calling the Butler/Wisconsin game last night and leaving the semi-comatose Verne Lundquist on the Arizona/Duke game. Not that the result was close in Anaheim, but at least Gus would have seemed involved. In fact, it's sort of a mistake to have Gus Johnson calling everything, as evidenced by his takes on historical moments for Funny or Die:

The Onion Reports: "Actual Expert Too Boring For TV"

Canton was brought in for a test interview based on a recent op-ed in the Boston Globe, in which he argued that increased reliance on nuclear power is "inevitable." When asked to address nuclear power's potentially disastrous consequences, however, Canton launched into a well-reasoned lecture that balanced modern energy demands against safety and environmental concerns.

"At MIT's Laboratory for Energy and the Environment, we see nuclear-power technology as the best option for the United States and the world to meet future energy needs without emitting carbon dioxide and other atmospheric pollutants," Canton said in the taped pre-interview, which has already been erased. "Other energy options include increased efficiency, renewables, and carbon sequestration. Actually, all of these options may be needed for a successful, non-stratified, growth-oriented national energy infrastructure."

Salters was not impressed.

"[Canton] went on like that for six... long... minutes," Salters said. "Fact after mind-numbing fact. Then he started spewing all these statistics about megawatts and the nation's current energy consumption and I don't know what, because my mind just shut off. I tried to lead him in the right direction. I told him to address the fears that the average citizen might have about nuclear power, but he still utterly failed to mention meltdowns, radiation, or mushroom clouds."

"I'm sure he knows what he's talking about," Salters added. "But we have a responsibility to educate and entertain our viewers. In the end, we had to go with someone else."

MSNBC chose Skip Hammond, former Arizona State football player, MBA holder, and author of Imprison The Sun: America's Coming Nuclear-Power Holocaust. Hammond is best known for his "atomic domino" theory of chained power-plant explosions and his signature lavender silk tie.

[The Onion]

Turns out it was those pesky women that convinced Obama to intervene in Libya, with their "emotional arguments" about trying to prevent mass genocide.

The U.S. military has plans to use social-networking sites to spread pro-American propaganda, according to a British newspaper.

The really freaky part is that the plans call for operatives to pose as normal people while spreading the message:

The project has been likened by web experts to China's attempts to control and restrict free speech on the internet. Critics are likely to complain that it will allow the US military to create a false consensus in online conversations, crowd out unwelcome opinions and smother commentaries or reports that do not correspond with its own objectives.

The discovery that the US military is developing false online personalities — known to users of social media as "sock puppets" — could also encourage other governments, private companies and non-government organisations to do the same.

The Centcom contract stipulates that each fake online persona must have a convincing background, history and supporting details, and that up to 50 US-based controllers should be able to operate false identities from their workstations "without fear of being discovered by sophisticated adversaries".

Read the rest here.

Information you can also learn from Patrick Finley's NCAA Tournament wrap-up today: There's only one team with a peacock as a mascot, and a few players have kind of funny names. Then again, I posted a photo of a really expensive dog yesterday, so maybe I shouldn't criticize.

The Journal Broadcast Group, which owns and operates the only FM news/talk station in the market, is now hoping the success of that model will carry over to sports: Journal is simulcasting its sports station KFFN AM 1490 on 104.9 FM.

Furthermore, it has changed its image from The Fan to ESPN Tucson.

"We’re very excited to be on 1490 AM and 104.9 FM," said program director Ryan McCredden in a press release. "This additional signal gives us the ability to reach more people across Tucson and that’s what it's all about — bringing everyone in Tucson the best in sports/talk and play-by-play."

In a Media Watch column two weeks ago, I reported that Journal was likely going to give up the signal for 104.9 FM. The scenario involved a transfer of ownership from Willcox radio station KWCX to Tanque Verde. KWCX broadcasts on 104.9 in Willcox, and its closer proximity would occupy that frequency here. Behind the scenes at KZLZ, LLC, the company that owns KWCX and also operates KZLZ, an FM station in Tucson, they believed that to be true at one point. Well, that didn't happen.

While the 104.9 FM signal—which had been simulcasting the Mega 106.3 signal—is relatively weak, it's still an improvement over the 1490 signal, which is inaccessible in many of the outlying Tucson areas. It seems safe to suggest the company is so pleased with the performance of its other FM talk offering, conservative news/talker 104.1 KQTH, that it hopes the FM success carries over to sports talk.

KFFN 1490 AM and KCUB 1290 AM (which employs me for UA football and men's basketball pregame and postgame shows) have languished near the bottom of the Arbitron ratings for some time, so Journal likely figures the move to FM can give KFFN a distinct ratings advantage. And it probably will. Furthermore, even if the ratings aren't stellar—sports talk in this market has never performed as well from a numbers standpoint as many observers believe it should—it will still be an improvement over dedicating two signals for a Mega 106.3 station that ranks among the lowest-rated FMs in the market.

KQTH 104.1 FM has dramatically cut into KNST AM 790's news/talk dominance in the market, and while it doesn't rate ahead of KNST in overall Arbitron numbers, that's largely due to KNST's stranglehold among its 55-and-older demographic. KQTH delivers stronger numbers than KNST in many of the key advertising demos.

Ken Kowalcek, the GM at Citadel- (soon-to-be-Cumulus-) owned KCUB 1290, declined comment on the Journal move.

KCUB is the flagship for UA football and men's basketball broadcasts and simulcasts games on 1290 and 100,000 watt FM station KHYT 107.5.

Seemingly worth noting: in the print edition, this article was placed above an obituary for LSD pioneer Owsley Stanley.

On the patio of a downtown bar here last Wednesday night, a handful of people gathered over pitchers of beer to plot the creation of America's 51st state.

With copies of the Arizona constitution before them, they debated how to turn Pima County—a liberal southern swatch of Arizona that borders Mexico and includes Tucson—into "Baja Arizona."

"What's the objective?" one member asked the group, Start Our State.

"Becoming our own state and making our own decisions," said organizer Paul Eckerstrom.

Baja Arizona (the working title) will almost certainly remain a dream, but it suggests the growing chasm between the state's Republican leaders and its frustrated liberal minority.

[WSJ]