The Houston Chronicle (Houston’s misleading news source) posted a story today about Houston radio ratings for the month of July.

Instead of a well thought-out article by David Barron, who actually understands ratings and the radio market, they opted for the madding slide show in the aggravating attempt to get more page views by click bait.

After a quick re-cap that really doesn’t put the data into perspective, they encourage the reader to check out where their favorite station sits in the rankings.

Even before you can click and start down the magical journey of images, there is a glaring error, the first photo shows a ham radio operator which begs the question; huh? What a ham radio operator has to do with radio ratings is a mystery, much like Area 51 and likely to be solved in our lifetime.

Moving on, the next slide shows KPRC-AM with an unidentified talent (using the term very loosely). In the information they indicate their rating is a 0.8 and a 0.6. While showing two different numbers is confusing, they don’t bother to show rank, so it’s hard to know if that’s good, or that’s bad.

The photo for KROI-FM shows it when it was an urban gospel format. The caption (probably taken from the original story) explains that the station has seen changed formats two times and is now known as Boom 92 (but hey, it is a fun photo).

Some other highlights include the photo of cars lined up at a gas station to represent KTHT-FM radio, somebody from KHMX milking a cow, John Lander for KKBQ-FM (which has to be more than 30 years old) and my personal fav, a photo of Hudson and Harrigan (love those guys) for KILT-FM (610) which lists the station as having sports format. Obviously, they are mixing up KILT-AM and KILT-FM, but as they say on the Monday night football pre-game show on ESPN; “Come On Man”!

While radio ratings may not be a big story, putting a tease and link on the Chron.com home page suggests they think it noteworthy and yet don’t feel it necessary to fact check any of it. Even readers are posting comments about how dated/wrong the slide show is.

You can click here to see the awarding winning journalism here.

I came across this story today and was blown away on how brilliant Nikola Tesla was.

Check out part of this 1926 interview where Tesla predicted the creation of the smartphone.

“When wireless is perfectly applied the whole earth will be converted into a huge brain, which in fact it is, all things being particles of a real and rhythmic whole. We shall be able to communicate with one another instantly, irrespective of distance. Not only this, but through television and telephony we shall see and hear one another as perfectly as though we were face to face, despite intervening distances of thousands of miles; and the instruments through which we shall be able to do his will be amazingly simple compared with our present telephone. A man will be able to carry one in his vest pocket.”

I sometimes catch myself wondering what life will be like 100 years from now, and realize I don’t have a clue. And for you guys out there thinking about the new world order, consider what else Tesla told the interviewer.

“This struggle of the human female toward sex equality will end in a new sex order, with the female as superior. It is not in the shallow physical imitation of men that women will assert first their equality and later their superiority, but in the awakening of the intellect of women.”

HBO and CBS-TV took a shot across the bow of the cable TV industry by announcing plans to offer a streaming service separate from cable subscriptions, effectively cutting the cord as a stand-alone product.

Consumers of the boob tube have long complained about being forced to purchase channels they weren’t interested in to get the channels they want. Not interested in sports? Too bad because you are still going to get ESPN, one of the most expensive channels out there.

In a rare display of bipartisanship, Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) attempted to introduce legislation that would have allowed consumers more choices, but that effort stalled out.

Now HBO and CBS-TV have decided to join companies like Netflix and Amazon Fire TV by offering programming directly to viewers. There are 80 million households in the U.S. that currently do not get HBO and the cable channel is counting on many of them wanting their programs without having to get a slew of channels they’re not interested in.

It is estimated that 45 percent of Americans stream television shows at least once a month and that number is certain to grow. Is this start of the demise of cable television? It may be too soon to tell, but when a broadcast outlets like HBO and CBS-TV break away from the pack, you can be sure cable executives will be tuned in.

Do you “Twitch”? For those non-gamers out there, Twitch.tv is a website that provides live streaming of people playing video games.

Sound crazy? Check out these crazy numbers

• The site generates 55 million regular visitors from around the world each month.
• Those people watch 16 billion minutes of its videos.

More than 1.1 million people broadcast their gaming activity to the service.

Those are the kinds of numbers that attract attention from the big boys and it launched a bidding war with Amazon prevailing, dishing out a cool $970 million in cash for the right to join the game.

Want more numbers?

• Twitch had 43 percent of the live video streaming traffic by volume in a given week, more than ESPN’s website, MLB.com, CNN.
• Last year during a championship for the game “League of Legends”, 32 million people were reportedly watching live. That’s more than the audience for the finales of Breaking Bad, 24 and The Sopranos combined.

It appears the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has done an about face with its policy towards net neutrality according to reports in the Wall Street Journal.

The new plan would grant Internet service providers the ability to give websites favored treatment meaning they would have priority over other sites and deliver faster service.

The catch is the ISP’s would charge such sites fees for better access. Companies like Netflix could have to pay extra fees which would give their service greater bandwidth and thus a better user experience, but I’m sure you can guess who will pick up those extra costs.

Now the new proposal under consideration would ban the outright blockage of sites that are not willing, or able to pay for the faster access, but to many internet activists, that’s not good enough. There is a fear that ending net neutrality could stifle innovation and Internet startups from competing for page views and revenue.

If a gaming company could not afford to pay for the high speed access, interest may vanish among the gamers and the company might not be able to survive. And there are also concerns that companies like Comcast, the nation’s largest provider of high-speed internet service who also owns NBC-Universal and is trying to purchase Time Warner Cable, would really limit the number of options available to consumers.

None of this has been approved and it is expected that the FCC will vote on the new rules near the end of this year, but after the January ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, you can be sure your surfing experience will have a new feel.