NevadaBrad

I like Monopoly , but generally I don’t have the time nor enough interested friends to break out the board game on a regular basis. I usually play video game versions, which offer two significant advantages. First, you can blast through a full-blown game in 30-45 minutes. Second, you can be absoutely ruthless and don’t have to worry about offending the computer players.

Electronic Arts is the creator of the newest video game version of Monopoly, which I acquired a while back for the Wii . Unless you can pick it up for one or two bucks at a garage sale I wouldn’t bother purchasing this one. The game play is horrible and it just isn’t fun at all. If you want a fun video game version of Monopoly then grab Monopoly Party for Gamecube or PS2. ANYWAY, this isn’t a video game review, so let me get back on topic…

Born of the Great Depression, Monopoly is basically a caricature of capitalistic ideas. Now, EA has corrected that problem. Although EA’s Monopoly is horrible, they added a version of the game called the "Richest Edition", or as I call it, the "Obama Edition". In this version of the game, every time someone lands on a Community Chest space, the poorest player gets to take properties – including whole monopolies – away from the winning players. Additionally, the winning players are always put at a disadvantage when playing mini games as the start of each round. Often, the best strategy is to stay behind the other players so that you can be awarded all their property as the game goes on.

As frustrating as it is to always have your winnings taken away and given to the players who are not very good, it must be truly maddening to have this happen in real life. If nothing else, the game gives you a good taste of what life under Obama will be like. If Obama has a heart, he’ll take my Monopoly game away and redistribute it to someone else.

By no choice of my own, the show Whale Wars was on the TV this evening. This show featured Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, but was reminiscent of other groups such as Greenpeace. I will state that I didn’t watch the show long enough to speak with any knowledge of what the show was about. It essentially had something to do with terrorizing ships that were harvesting whales.

For the record, if a company is committing a crime then I don’t care what these people do. If Japanese whaling ships are whaling in Australian waters, for example, then do whatever you want to stop them. It isn’t a lot different from the Minuteman Project. If law enforcement is unable or unwilling to sufficiently police the territory, then let the citizens fill in the holes. If this is the full extent of the activities of these groups, then I’m behind them 100%.

Unfortunately, this is usually not the case. These eco-warriors often target ships simply because they disagree with the business of the ship, even though laws are being broken . I find it interesting that they often exhibit the cowboy attitude that these same people regularly accused George W. Bush of having. They do not respect the laws of country they are attacking and they themselves do not necessarily act within the confines of the law. In some cases they even endanger the lives of others.

It’s late and this is basically an incoherent mumbling. I guess the bottom line is that it’s awfully hypocritical for these people to go out and attack people that are performing business within the confines of the law. You cannot terrorize others simply because you disagree with them. Of course, this has always been a popular method for those on the left. As always, you can clearly identify their tactics simply by listening to what they are accusing the right of doing.

I just realized I never followed-up on a comment I received a while back. For a myriad of reasons it slipped through the cracks.

Anyway, in answer to my question about where Ira Hansen went, Mike at Lucid Enterprises provided the answer. The bottom line is that he quit to focus on his plumbing business.

You can read additional details here: http://www.lucid-enterprises.com/news001.htm

Well, it’s that time of the decade again. It’s time to go through and give my biased, uneducated analysis of the Reno radio market. Today’s information will be pulled from Arbitron’s ratings published February 2nd, 2009, which reflect ratings for Fall 2008. For the sake of consistency, I’ll include all the same stations I’ve discussed in the past, but really I only care about three specific stations.

KBZZ (1270 AM) - KBZZ had a nice little ride going from 1.7 to 2.1 to 2.4 before plummeting back to 1.6. We’ll see what happens when the spring 2009 ratings come out. I don’t really care about this station for reasons I’ve discussed in the past, so I’ll move on…

KJFK (1230 AM) - KJFK has stayed fairly static. Their market share seems to flutter between 1.6 and 1.7. Even if one subscribes to a liberal point of view, the personalties on this station are so extreme that it loses all entertainment value. It’s like listening to a liberal version of Michael Savage all day, every day.

KKFT (99.1 FM) - KKFT had a very healthy .7% increase between the spring ’08 and fall ’08 ratings period. Their most recent share sits at 2.3. There are several things that make KKFT’s rise amazing. For starters, they are competing against a mammoth 50,000 watt AM station that has been around longer than any other station in Reno. KKFT operates on an extremely modest 410 watt FM transmitter located in Washoe Valley. Michael Savage, who was previously on KKOH, was recently added to their evening lineup. I can’t imagine this will help them, but then again some people like Savage. I think.

KKOH (780 AM) - After some tiny fluctuations in KOH’s market share they now show a gain of 3.3 market share to put them at 13.6. They are still number one in the Reno market with ratings almost double that of the next closest station (Sunny 106.9 at 7.8, in case you wanted to know).

Both KOH and 99.1 FM Talk showed extremely healthy gains this time. KOH had an increase of a little more than 24%, while 99.1 FM Talk’s gain was more than 30%! Is it because it was election year and more people were listening to talk radio? If elections make talk radio more popular, then I find it interesting that KJFK showed no significant gain.

Other than Savage, none of the stations have made any significant changes worth discussing. I’ve already discussed my thoughts on Michael Savage.

Huge congratulations to Jerry Evans on the success of his station. I hope it continues!

We’ll be back to talk about this again when the Spring 2009 numbers come out…