Archive
Bonus 6:00
Ted Turner died on May 6, 2026, at 87. Most tributes will focus on CNN and the billion dollars to the UN. But the moment that mattered most for broadcast history happened on December 17, 1976, when Turner beamed a struggling UHF station up to RCA's Satcom 1 and invented the superstation. WTCG was a…
EP 23 15:24
Most of America's radio stations no longer have a chief engineer, and nobody notices until a tower goes dark or the FCC fines start piling up. One station sat silent for six months because no one knew the transmitter had failed. That's not an accident. That's what happens when the people who keep…
EP 22 15:30
The FCC's public file used to be a dusty binder in your lobby. Since 2018 it's a searchable, timestamped online record anyone can dig through, and the political file alone has produced some of radio's biggest enforcement fines, running into six figures. I go through where most violations actually…
EP 21 18:08
Moving a file three feet shouldn't require a round trip to a distant server. LocalSend is a free, open source app that moves files, folders, and text directly over your own network with end-to-end TLS and no accounts, ads, or tracking. If you live with a mix of Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, and…
EP 20 16:21
You walk into a big box store with full bars and walk out to a flood of missed notifications. It's not your phone and it's not your carrier. It's physics and congestion colliding. Buildings act like leaky shields, and crowds create digital traffic jams. I break down both forces. The structure…
EP 19 23:52
Your phone call might have traveled 22,000 miles through space with zero protection, and someone with an $800 satellite dish could have heard every word. A new study from UC San Diego and the University of Maryland intercepted real, unencrypted satellite backhaul: voice calls, text messages, login…
EP 18 18:56
Local stations are going dark across the country, and blaming streaming only tells half the story. Media consolidation, voice tracking, and corporate cost cutting hollowed out AM and FM from the inside. Strip out the local DJs, local news, and community connection, and you're left with a zombie…
EP 17 14:32
FM coverage maps look bold and confident, but the actual audience listens six feet off the ground, weaving between buildings and hills where signals get chewed up. That's where audio turns fluttery and listeners quietly tune away. And the old "just add a booster" fix can make things worse in the…
EP 16 20:40
The FCC put foreign-manufactured consumer routers on the covered list, and if your facility is running one of those boxes in a mission-critical spot, it's time for a hard look at the rack. I break down what the new rules actually say, what's still unclear for brands that design in the US but build…
EP 15 18:04
I stopped waiting for the "Ugly's Electrical Reference" of networking and built my own. When you're standing in front of a switch at 11 p.m. and need the exact Cisco IOS command, a clean Wireshark filter, or a subnet answer right now, generic documentation and endless search results are a trap. I…