Author Archive for Waldo Jaquith

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CTS’s GPSes Installed

Published by Waldo Jaquith on March 22, 2008 in Transportation. 69 Comments

The $500,000 Charlottesville Transit System GPS installation is done: now you can track CTS buses’ locations online or at dozens of bus stops. At least, it’s possible in the abstract that they can be tracked online. I wouldn’t know, because the site requires Internet Explorer and some Adobe plugin. (Install a plugin? Really? Didn’t we already do 1998?) Like one in four UVa students, I have a Mac–there is no IE to suffer through. Want to check your iPhone/Treo/Blackberry to see if you can make the next bus? You’re out of luck. Work in an office that doesn’t allow installing software? No schedule checking for you.

The significant upside, of course, is the remaining 95% of the system. Now CTS can track, coordinate, and adjust bus schedules in real-time to meet traffic demands. And the little screens at the bus stops sound pretty great. I’ll just have to abandon my hope of putting together per-line location-triggered RSS feeds and e-mail alerts. Cue the tiny violin.

Confusing News Over CARS Fee

Published by Waldo Jaquith on March 19, 2008 in Taxes. 9 Comments

It’s been tough keeping up with the news about whether Charlottesville and the Charlottesville Albemarle Rescue Squad have forged a deal to cooperate on charging for emergency service. First it was widely reported that there wasn’t a deal. Then that there was. Then that there wasn’t. What gives? Seth Rosen looks into the state of things for the Progress. There is clearly not a deal at this point; CARS’ Larry Claytor makes that clear. City manager Gary O’Connell has stopped talking to the media, presumably feeling cautious since he was the source of the false news in the first place. Apparently, CARS’ board hasn’t even talked to the city about a deal yet, leaving the rescue squad feeling puzzled about all of the news.

Maybe CARS will want to play ball with the city’s upstart rescue squad, maybe not. But this marks the second time that the city has put their foot in their mouth on this deal, which doesn’t put them in a great position to plead for cooperation.

NBC 29 News Trouncing Competition

Published by Waldo Jaquith on March 17, 2008 in Business and Meta News. 35 Comments

Somebody sent me the Nielsen numbers for the local news market for February 2008. I’ve got to provide the caveat up front that while I have no reason doubt these numbers, I’m not in a position to verify them, nor do I even know how I’d go about getting confirmation for them. (Stations like to keep these numbers close the vest.)

Morning News 6:00am-7:00am (Monday-Friday average total audience)
NBC29 – 16,282 viewers
CBS19 – 562 viewers
ABC16 – 193 viewers
 
Noon News 12:00pm-12:30pm (Monday-Friday average total audience)
NBC29 – 8,219 viewers
CBS19 – 956 viewers
 
Early Evening News 5:00pm-6:00pm (Monday-Friday average total audience)
NBC29 – 18,297 viewers
CBS19 – 1,028 viewers
 
Early Evening News 6:00pm-6:30pm (Monday-Friday average total audience)
NBC29 – 30,301 viewers
CBS19 – 1,468 viewers
ABC16 – 1,094 viewers (7:00pm-7:30pm)

10pm News 10:00pm-10:30pm (Monday-Friday average total audience)
FOX27 – 1,787 viewers
CW19 – 958 viewers

Late News 11:00pm-11:35pm (Monday-Friday average total audience)
NBC29 – 11,759 viewers
CBS19 – 1,661 viewers
ABC16 – 849 viewers

CBS-19 and ABC-16 have made some advances over 2005, the last time I saw any numbers, but it’s nothing to write home about. But Gray Television knew they had a hard row to hoe when they got started, so these figures may be well within reasonable expectations for the young stations.

Cav. Daily in Hot Water Over Comics…Again

Published by Waldo Jaquith on March 16, 2008 in Meta News. 49 Comments

In what’s becoming an annual flap, the Cavalier Daily has earned the ire of Christian groups across the nation for a pair of comics that they ran on Thursday and Friday. Eric Kilanski and Kellen Eilerts’ “TCB,” which appears daily in the student paper, had one strip showing Jesus telling jokes on the cross, and another showing a post-coital conversation between God and Mary. (The comics have been removed from their website.) As Brian McNeill explains in the Progress, the paper put a comics policy into place a year ago after a similar incident, in which Grant Woolard ran a trio of comics, two mocking Christianity and one making light of Ethiopian starvation. Bill O’Reilly got involved in that kerfuffle. Then, as now, the real problem was that the comics just weren’t very funny, but that’s life at a student paper. The paper is going to review their comics policy,

BoS Approves South C’ville Shopping Center

Published by Waldo Jaquith on March 13, 2008 in Development. 46 Comments

The Board of Supervisors has OKd a big retail development for 5th Street extended, Jeremy Borden writes in the Progress. (Or, as most of us will think of it, the long-needed road connecting Avon and 5th.) It’s a standard suburban shopping center — a sea of asphalt with a few single-story big boxes — with a LEED fig leaf. We discussed it here when it was first proposed in 2006. Charlottesville Tomorrow had the details.

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