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The Station Across Town: A Lincoln Boyhood, the Federation I Did Not Watch, and the Second Half of a Television Diptych

When I was sixteen, I had a television show called Kidding Around on KOLN/KGIN-TV in Lincoln, Nebraska. It was 1981. I was a teenager hosting a teenager-aimed program on a commercial CBS affiliate, three blocks of which I have no doubt were paid for by advertising for Pepsi and Levi’s and the Lincoln car dealerships that kept American local television alive in the early Reagan years. The format was loose. The show featured kid interviews, viewer letters read on air, and unscripted segments of the kind that the FCC’s mandates for “ascertainment of community needs” were supposed to encourage and that the FCC’s 1981 decision to deregulate radio, followed by the parallel television deregulation of 1984, was designed to kill. Kidding Around did not survive into the late 1980s. It was a casualty of a specific federal policy decision documented in the book I published earlier this year, Selling Saturday Morning.

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The Path of Anathema: First, Always Do Harm!

First, we had Unethical American Dentistry, and now — perhaps thanks to Obamacare — we have certain American physicians who are playing loosely with the truth when it comes to telling patients if they are “in-network” with their insurance plan, and providing the right, covered, care for their patients. “First Do No Harm” is not an oath to these doctors, it’s a cue down the path of anathema!

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Boles Blogs is Six Years Old!

This week, Boles Blogs is six years old — we’ve been around under many different names and edifications for over 15 years or so — but Boles Blogs is now how we currently roll in blog publishing!  That’s a pretty amazing conflation of time and effort and the pressing of days into years!  The slow roll from the “Boles Blogs Network” of 14 blogs into this megasite of just “Boles Blogs” today was a long and hard road to haul, but we made it, and the pathway ahead is bright and well-lighted.

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Why 14 Blogs Became Boles Blogs on WordPress.com Business

For several years, I have published, and edited, and managed, a 14-blog strong consortium of blogs loosely called “The Boles Blogs Network” right here on WordPress.com.  It was a great delight publishing all those blogs, but now that WordPress.com is bundling services for single blogs, it started to become clear to me that I needed to condense and consolidate my blogs in order to keep them not just alive, but thriving. Out of 14 blogs, I initially kept three blogs:  Boles Blues, the newest and fastest growing, GO INSIDE Magazine, the first online entity that found great success in publication, and Urban Semiotic, the first blog I owned on WordPress.com.

Going from 14 to three blogs was an eye opener.  Everything was faster to publish and articles were easier to find.  As I began exploring the WordPress.com store, I saw a Pro Blogger bundle of services for $99.00USD per year and a “Business” class of service for $299.00USD a year.  Here is what the WordPress.com Business bundle offers:

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Creating a Publication Network with Google+ Pages

Yesterday, Google finally made Google+ Pages available to the masses.  I immediately logged in and started creating pages for all the web properties I own, and I’ll tell you why I decided to spend an afternoon clicking and linking on Google+.

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2011 WordPress.com Wants After One Year of Hosting 14 Network Blogs

Here we are, a year later, after making a triumphant Boles Blogs Network return to WordPress.com.  We temporarily left WP.com to unwittingly head into the gaping maw of a horrible experience with a self-hosted Movable Type installation — but we quickly remedied our dismay and rejoined the Automattic servers.

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