byJimmy Boegle
Indy Digest: June 27, 2024
In our living room, we have two little shelving units filed with DVDs and Blu-ray discs—containing movies and TV shows my husband or I liked enough to buy. Nobody has touched anything on those shelves for years (other than perhaps during an infrequent dusting).
For a while, I seriously considered getting rid of the shelves and everything on them. After all, who needs physical media like DVDs and Blu-rays in today’s digital world?
Well, I am no longer making such considerations. If anything, we may be adding a third—because it’s becoming increasingly clear that greedy, short-sighted and/or failing media companies are more than willing to remove access to beloved and valuable content.
Earlier today, Variety reported:
The vast repository of content on Comedy Central‘s website—dating back 25 years—has been removed by parent company Paramount Global, in a move to push fans to Paramount+.
The site, at comedycentral.com, has until now hosted clips from all episodes of “The Daily Show” since 1999, as well as segments from the full 11-season run of Stephen Colbert’s “The Colbert Report,” among other video content. Thousands of “Daily Show” clips remain free to watch on YouTube, but those go back only to 2015.
The move to scrub content from Comedy Central comes after Paramount similarly pulled the full archive of MTV News from the internet on Monday, as well as articles from CMT. …
While the Comedy Central site directs fans to Paramount+ to find programming, many older episodes of “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report” are unavailable on the streamer, as reported by LateNighter. Also gone from comedycentral.com are clips and full episodes of series including “The Opposition With Jordan Klepper,” “The Nightly Show With Larry Wilmore,” “@midnight,” hosted by Chris Hardwick, and “Lights Out With David Spade,” according to LateNighter.
What a loss—and it’s all in an effort to get people to subscribe to a streaming service that doesn’t offer much of the content that was just wiped away.
I first decided those DVD shelves weren’t going anywhere a little more than a year ago, when Netflix announced it was going to be pulling Arrested Development—one of my all-time-favorite TV shows—off of the streamer. Those shelves include box sets of the first three seasons (aka the best three seasons)—and when I heard this news, I was so happy I hadn’t gotten rid of them. Although Netflix later backtracked and kept Arrested Development after coming up with a new licensing deal, other shows—a LOT of shows—have indeed been yanked off the air, often to save gargantuan media companies from paying freaking residual fees.
It’s not just TV shows that have been unceremoniously removed from public access. Online news archives are far too often deleted when a publication closes or is sold to another buyer as well.
Physical media (DVDs, CDs, newspapers and the like) have their flaws—but once you have them, they’re yours. Period.
—Jimmy Boegle
From the Independent
The Fight Against Fentanyl: Fentanyl-Related Overdose Deaths in Riverside County Are Decreasing Among Youth—but Increasing Among Older and Latinx People
By Kevin Fitzgerald
June 27th, 2024
In some communities, and within certain younger demographic groups, the tide has either slowed or turned. However, fentanyl overdose deaths have increased in older age groups and among Latinx residents, particularly in the eastern Coachella Valley.
Recipes for Success: The Community Food Bank at The Center and Chef Mitchell Battersby Create Recipes to Help Clients Prepare the Items They Receive
By Charles Drabkin
June 25th, 2024
The Community Food Bank at The Center and chef Mitchell Battersby have joined forces to create weekly recipes highlighting the food being distributed.
The Indy Endorsem*nt: The 5-Alarm Panini at Play Lounge
By Jimmy Boegle
June 27th, 2024
The sandwich is called the “5-Alarm Panini,” and it includes egg, cheddar cheese, house-made salsa and a protein (bacon, ham, sausage or a Beyond patty), all on warm, pillowy ciabatta.
The Weekly Independent Comics Page for June 27, 2024!
By Staff
June 27th, 2024
Topics addressed this week include fences, beeps, Bitcoin, the Cybertruck—and more!
11 Days a Week: June 27-July 7, 2024
By Bob Grimm
June 26th, 2024
Coming up in the next 11 days: free drive-in concerts in the high desert; a belated Fourth of July party in downtown Indio; and more!
More News
• “WHO, scientists call for urgent action on mpox strain,” says the Reuters headline from two days ago. Some details: “The spread of mpox in Africa needs to be addressed urgently, the World Health Organization said on Tuesday, as scientists warned separately of a dangerous strain in the Democratic Republic of Congo. … John Claude Udahemuka of the University of Rwanda, who has been working on an outbreak in Congo’s hard-to-reach South Kivu province, said the strain spreading there—a mutated version of the clade I mpox endemic in Congo for decades—was extremely dangerous. It has fatality rates of around 5% in adults and 10% in children. … A different, less severe form of the virus—clade IIb—spread globally in 2022, largely through sexual contact among men who have sex with men.”
• The Washington Post examines mask bans—old laws that some politicians want to start enforcing due to recent protests: “Republican lawmakers in North Carolina are poised to overturn Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s recent veto of legislation to criminalize masking. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) said this month she supports legislative efforts to ban masks on the subway, citing an incident in which masked protesters on a train shouted: ‘Raise your hands if you’re a Zionist. This is your chance to get out.’ Student protesters in Ohio, Texas and Florida have been threatened with arrest for covering their faces. Decades-old laws against masking—often crafted in response to the hooded terror of the Ku Klux Klan—are on the books in at least 18 states and D.C., according to the International Center for Not-for-Profit Law. … Lawmakers eager to reinstate pre-pandemic mask restrictions say legislation would not target medically vulnerable people and others trying to avoid respiratory viruses. But critics say such an approach would be impractical and sets mask wearers up for further ostracization and harassment by police and fellow citizens.”
• Today’s recall news involves … ice cream! And this is a big one. NPR says: “As millions of Americans try to cool down during the record summer heat, a Maryland-based food manufacturer isrecallingmultiple brands of ice cream products sold nationwide that may have been contaminated with listeria, a potentially fatal bacteria. The list ofmore than 60 affected productsmade by Totally Cool Inc. of Owings Mills, Md., includes brands such as Hershey’s, Friendly’s, Chipwich and Jeni’s. Pints of ice cream and sorbet, as well as ice cream cakes, sandwiches, cones and more are potentially tainted. The Food and Drug Administration said there have been no reported illnesses so far.” Here’s the FDA alert, which includes a link to the entire list.
• Other things being recalled include: Ford F-150 trucks, Miniverse toy sets, Dania bookcases, and Volkswagen SUVs. Sheesh!
• Walgreens is getting set to close a whole lot of stores. CNN reports: ““Walgreens is set to close a substantial number of its roughly 8,600 locations across the United States as the company looks to reset the struggling pharmaceutical chain’s business. The company didn’t announce a specific number of store closures, but it said Thursday that it is planning ‘significant’ closures of underperforming stores across America as part of a multiyear optimization program. CEO Tim Wentworth said on a call with analysts Thursday that ‘changes are imminent’ for the roughly 25% of stores that aren’t profitable and Walgreens’ strategic review will ‘include the closure of a significant portion of these underperforming stores.’”
• And finally … if you’ve applied for a job opening recently, you should know there’s a decent chance that job isn’t actually a thing. CNBC explains: “As many as 4 in 10 companies say they’ve posted a ‘fake job listing’ this year, and 3 in 10 companies say they’re currently advertising for a role that isn’t real. That’s according to a May survey of 649 hiring managers from Resume Builder, the career site. Fake jobs, in this case, refer to online listings for roles the company isn’t actively hiring for but wants to use to collect resumes, among other reasons. (Fake jobs that turn out to be scams are another issue entirely.) It’s also worth noting that while this proportion of companies say they’ve posted a fake job, that doesn’t mean the same share of their listings are fake. The strategy, frustrating as it is, isn’t entirely new, says Stacie Haller, chief career advisor at Resume Builder. For example, temp agencies ‘constantly need new talent and are always running new job ads because, if a client needs someone, they need (a candidate) who’s already vetted,’ Haller tells CNBC Make It.” (Insert “The More You Know” .gif here.)
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Jimmy Boegle
Jimmy Boegle is the founding editor and publisher of the Coachella Valley Independent. He is also the executive editor and publisher of the Reno News & Review in Reno, Nev. A native of Reno, the Dodgers...More by Jimmy Boegle
