Sunday Morning Blues

Used to be these Sunday mornings were exciting times; up early, get some stuff done, park in front of the TV for pregame or head down to the stadium for the in-person experience.

But those days seem to have had the life sucked out of them the past few years.

It's game day in northeast Ohio, what used to be reason to celebrate. Regardless of weather it was Browns Day, but now even the sunniest, clearest Sundays seem to be gloomy. There's just no fun left in the morning, and afternoons now become just another weekend day -- just without college football. Maybe the answer is in recording a college football game and watching on Sunday.

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It isn't often we see a healthy dose of journalism schizophrenia, but this morning's Akron Beacon Journal provides an example. I think it's a good thing, too -- seeing more diversity of opinion from columnists from the editorial pages adds to the public debate rather than detract. What makes this so interesting is the interesting choices of headlines: Friday's editorial remarked "spare us the rhetoric" when noting the Strickland plan to delay a tax decrease was really a tax increase. "Not a tax increase" said the editorial. Flash forward to Sunday where ABJ writer Dennis Willard shares his observation that the Strickland plan is a tax increase; "Strickland tax freeze a tax hike."

It's nice to see different opinions make it into print.

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For those of you who missed it: yes, Western Reserve Public Media, former known as PBS 45/49, moved NewsNight Akron to a different time. The programming folks are in a moving mode and figured the loyal viewership of the Akron area's only regular broadcast television news discussion program would be strong enough to play musical chairs with NNA and other programs. If you have DVR then it's easy -- just tell the recorder to find the show. There's an early Saturday morning replay in the event you don't want to skip Jay Leno.

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We ran into an interesting situation when trying to plan coverage of this Thursday's first forum featuring all of Akron's school board candidates. The now-eight person field is holding an event sponsored by the League of Women Voters at Resnick Community Learning Center, formerly known as Fairlawn Elementary. The LWV was in favor of our offer to broadcast the event live on 1590 WAKR and possible stream video on AkronNewsNow.

Then federal regulations stepped in.

The school gets phone and Internet service at greatly reduced rates thanks to FCC regulations but those same regulations put limits on the services being used for "school purposes only," and the schools hold that even a forum for school board candidates doesn't meet "school purposes only." Even, we are told, presidential visits bar the Secret Service from using those services.

We'll do a workaround; not live audio or video unless we get a little more faith in wireless broadband. It does spark some thought on how community learning centers function in conjunction with public schools navigating the complicated regulations often found in help from the feds.

A reminder everyone deals with red tape...even the folks living in red tape world.