Eye on the Philippines (and other stuff)

Eye, eye, eye


Over the last several days, people in the Philippines were tweeting up a storm about the weeklong special CNN is doing starting April 30 (local time). The Philippines is the latest country to be profiled in this weeklong special, that takes a look at the cultural, economics, what they're doing right, etc, so it's nice to see overrated huge publicity on it.


The last 3 days however, thanks to the Pinoy hospitality, Anna Coren is back on Twitter after 1004 days, albeit she only sent 4 tweets, 2 of which are irrelevant off topic to what is presented here. Anyway, every reporter in the Philippines had to take a picture of her, and had to post it on Twitter, and had to make more publicity. Sounds fair enough. But Anna's focus is on the special (and that's why I like her)


Tweetdeck observations time


Also, besides that, I have 20 columns on my Google Chrome Tweetdeck, which explains my personality. Columns 18 and 20 have been suspiciously been active, while Column 19 regain conscious. Columns 5, 6, and 17... not so much. Column 1 is my feed, columns 2 and 16 being my mentions and interactions, column 3 is my favorites, columns 4 and 12 are for the Eurovision Song Contest (4th year I'm following it), columns 7 and 8 are mostly financial tweets, column 9 is my DM inbox,  columns 10 and 11 are mostly war tweets, column 14 is my Facebook feed, and columns 13 and 15 are empty. Pretty much I am boring.


What? Loreen's getting 12s left and right? Since when?


On the Eurovision front, Loreen from Sweden is getting 12 points left and right. Amazing. It's like Alexander Rybak in 2009 except I'm enjoying this one (Loreen that is). Other favorites (all of which are boring except Russia and Italy) are having a hard time keeping up with Sweden, so Stockholm 2013 it is.


We only go 4 columns at a time.


That's 5 pages for the math-illiterate


Those are just my thoughts right now and if there's anything else that comes up, it'll be there.

Playing the "The Feed is Down Again" Game

Most of us CNN Fans want to have CNNI available anywhere. That's why we have online streams, so that when we are away from our TVs, we can have access to it online.

We scrambled in May when Justin.tv took it and several news channels out (even ignored my request to keep it on), so I had to turn to Livestation. In the same period, Rent-A-Drone went live with a whole bunch of news channels, and even offered CNNI, so I was relieved.

Well, for the last 5 days, it constantly went down, in the same hours, from around 6 to 12pm EDT. This doesn't surprise me, because rent-a-drone likes to time out on me, sometimes after a few seconds, sometimes after a few hours. Rent-a-drone.org is a total piece of shit, and it will always be a piece of shit. Why? It times out on you without warning, the feed goes down constantly (and don't tell me CNN Europe is having problems, because they're not), and honestly, it's hard to use.

I recommend LiveStation because all others are plugged into the old Justin.tv and have not or did not care to update. Rent-a-drone.org has lost a viewer.

John King OVER CNNI Equals Fail

I have two CNNI feeds: the North America feed (which I have on my TV) and the Europe/Middle East/Africa feed (which I watch on my PC), and last night, just as I was gonna watch World Business Today, the debate comes on on the EMEA feed. This was my worst nightmare, a debate which carries no merit simulcasted on the EMEA feed while everyone else (including the North America feed) airs WBT, which has a lot of merit. I was stunned. However, I did get to watch WBT on my TV, but I still need it for capping purposes.

I am asking those who got and taped WBT (Asia Morning Edition from June 14, 2011) to send it to me at dezbee2008@gmail.com. I have asked my fellow forum members nicely and NOT ONE person came back with an answer, so I'm asking you to send it in. I could've done my capping if it wasn't for John King and his ridiculous Republican debate. That still has no merit and that's because I hate everyone who debated.

But guess what, WBT is also in hot water with me. Sometime two weeks ago, we saw the likes of Maggie Lake, Charles Hodson, and Andrew Stevens together for the last time before Andrew went off to Singapore. No problems, right. This week, he's in Indonesia covering the World Economic Forum and other economic topics concerning Indonesia. This is why I was desperate to watch last night: He's only live on the Asian morning edition, and the two other morning editions (Europe and US), he's on tape. That is a MAJOR FAIL!!!!!! I was expecting a lot of live shots on all three editions, why reduce it? Are they trying to pull off that Eye on India stunt where they took him out completely? This is the second time CNN is shortchanging him, and I swear that the next one he does, I'm not even gonna put my expectations high because I will get disappointed again.

Way to go, CNNI EMEA, for favoring John King over WBT, and way to go, WBT, for making the Asian morning WBT the only opportunity I will get to see Indonesia live. F- for both of you.

P.S. On a lighter note, I switched over to Rachel Maddow on MSNBC as a consolation for my lost viewing time on WBT and I'm hooked. Rachel is hilarious.

The More Local Sign of Things

I haven't been blogging as often as I should, so I would like to apologize. While I focused myself on catching up on BackStory and World Business Today, I was also focusing on the single biggest news story in my area -- the Casey Anthony murder trial.

I live in Deltona, which is in Central Florida, meaning I am part of the Orlando viewing area, and being part of the Orlando viewing area, we have to succumb to the endless updates on Casey Anthony. For those who don't know who she is (and I'm pretty sure you do thanks to the exposure), she is a mother from Orlando who is accused of killing her 2-year-old daughter Caylee in June/July 2008. That alone is not why she's getting worldwide exposure. She got worldwide exposure because Casey waited 31 days to report Caylee missing, and the endless lies that followed. By that time, Caylee was already dead. Her body was found in December 2008.

That case has already become a media circus, probably nothing that I have ever seen in my young life. When I first heard about the story at the end on one of the newscasts from July 2008, I thought nothing about it. Yeah, I wanna check it out, but I thought nothing about how it would be covered. This story has now gotten local coverage, national coverage, and international coverage (and the case even has followers from outside the US). I was amazed by how this situation reached so many people, and even though I still thought nothing of this trial's exposure, I was hooked on this case.

Well, the trial started on May 24, and EVERY local station here in Central Florida are covering this trial from 9-5 with a 9-1 showing on Saturdays, and this is supposed to last 8 weeks, so it's gonna be a summer of nonstop Casey Anthony updates. Which is great because I'll take that over soap operas and Oprah anyday.

Eye on India

Eye on India is airing this week on CNN. You would expect this to air three weeks ago, but the Japan Earthquake prevented it from going off. So, what did CNN do in the three weeks of the delay? They were able to nab a second sponsor (they had one last month). I thought that was the only change they made to Eye on India, until I see the new promo and there was a major difference.

In the first promo last month, they said that CNN anchor Andrew Stevens would be fronting this, but in the second one, they didn't include him. They wiped him out. Are they insane? They basically dropped this awesome veteran anchor from Hong Kong from the week-long coverage, and he knows India by heart. How dare they? I have been watching CNN since 8pm last night (April 3) and since 4am this morning, we should've seen Andrew 5 or 6 times, but we never saw him. Ever. His only appearance will be the new Talk Asia episode and possibly the half-hour show. There was a new episode of 'Executive Insider' that was supposed to include some Indian business man but they replaced it with the report by co-anchor Maggie Lake (I like her too, it's not her fault). What was that? CNN decided to snub Andrew Stevens from this week-long coverage, and I am fuming mad. Andrew doesn't deserve this April Fool's joke. Yes, I know he's been in India for two weeks already, but he's supposed to be the one fronting this.

I'm sorry, but with the way things are going, the only show I will be watching this week is Talk Asia and (hopefully) the half-hour special. This series is done. I'm not watching this bullsh*t series as long as they diminish Andrew's role in all of this. Shame on CNN for robbing one of the best CNN anchors of this important role. I will never forgive them for what they did to him. I'll give him a virtual hug when he does come back to World Business Today because that was wrong.

CNN Flashback: The Hong Kong Rock Band

14 months ago (aka September 2009), Kristie Lu Stout did a piece on the worldwide release of the Beatles Rock Band game. She and 5 of her colleagues tried out the game as part of the story. Did we all...

A) believe that what Anna Coren lacked in dancing, she made up for in singing

B) thought Kristie Lu Stout and Eunice Yoon rocked out the guitars (but are mixed as to who's better)

or

C) felt captivated by Andrew Stevens playing the drums like a kid

If you answered C, you can't get that smile off your faces.



Anyway, since it was 14 months ago, this would be long and gone, but sometimes, we like to look back on some of the favorite moments of CNN and this happens to be one of them.

GO STEVENS!!!!

Oh dear, is that what they called him? For real?

I've watched this video, like, 40 times in the past few weeks, and each time, I couldn't help but to laugh, not because of the hilarity that have ensued, but because of the egging (not literally). Once again, Andrew is a guinea pig.

First 30 min IDESK... not the same

I missed most of the first weekday 30 min IDESK cuz I went to the library, but I did catch the ending. John Vause (for those that don't know, he used to be one of the Beijing guys) filled in for Hala. Which kinda makes me think that Hala is still pissed by the shortened IDESK that she didn't go on air today. Understandable.

Some of my friends have seen it, and they said it's not the same. Which it wasn't because when I came home, African Voices had started.

And of course, we also floated around the issue that Jim Clancy deserves more than 30 minutes... which is so true. He's been at CNN for nearly 30 years now, he's worth MUCH more than 30 minutes.

Anyway, back to the IDESK issue, many scenarios have been floating around, from how Hala was possibly informed to a possible resignation. While I'm more interested in the first issue, the latter one to me seemed likely. The only other option will be that she's taking over Prism (which has extended to an hour, placing the canned programming to the other half of IDESK... you see where we're going) since she was in Abu Dhabi last week. Only time (and chain of events) will tell.

And as for the last post I made, I want to thank everyone who read it, and thanks to Pol Henrotte from Luxembourg (who started this facebook page) for reposting it on the page I just mentioned.