Yo, yo, welcome to the culture shock show where we talk about everything in hip hop culture on the mic and off. Brand man Sean, how you feeling man? Good, good man. What's up with you Russ B? I'm good man. I'm your host Russ B. Welcome to the show. Let's jump into some of the most exclusive topics going on in the culture. Exclusive topics. All right. Damn man. What we out? So yeah. You know, Apple, Google Maps, they both are paying homage to Mac Miller and pretty much naming Blue Slide Park in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, they're naming it after him. So anytime you drive past there or whatever and you see him on the Google Maps, that'll pop up, which I think is good.  And I feel like there's been a lot of conversations about white rappers. And I think Mac Miller is on the higher spectrum of that category. And I think, you know, he's somebody who was, you know, he might have seen got a bit of criticism early on, but I think over time he really proved that he was dedicated to the culture. And he was somebody that, you know, we could all respect as, you know, one of our own almost, you know, so I think that's respectable.  And, you know, a culture voucher has been a term that's been used a lot during around the lot.  Yeah. And what makes a white rapper a culture voucher? Yeah. First of all, I think it's super dope that they did it in the first place. The fact that Google Maps and Apple did that, I thought that was interesting. I wonder if they came together, they actually discussed it, or one of them came up with the idea of the other one. Copy, either way it goes or something dope. Maybe, you know, maybe somebody behind the scenes probably got somebody's ear on both sides and thought that it would be dope as a tribute. However that came together, I thought just little stuff like that is always cool to pay tribute because Matt Miller has always been somebody that's just been respected. Even if you don't know him heavily lyrically or musically, just the way he's carried himself has always just been one of those, you know, just one of those personas that's heavily respected in a game from both sides, you know, whether he's white or not. And I would always love people like that, that kind of carried themselves with good energy. You know what I mean? Right. That is unfortunate that he passed, man. So young, for sure. So let's step away, let's step away from the rappers, right? And let's just talk about in general, race and hip hop. We've obviously been seeing the Yes, Jules conversation that's going on. She went on It's Biscuit and Murder Moog show. She, you know, in the past has been pinned a lot of different titles, one being a coach of Ocha.  But obviously, you know, this is black music, you know, or at least it was started as that. So when, you know, different people from other coaches do come in and into the culture and make their money, people are going to have their questions. You know what I'm saying? So what is the distinguishing point? You know, what separates it from, you know, a Mac Miller, who we can all accept and we can all say, you know, this guy is accepted versus a Yes, Jules, obviously is not very accepted the way Mac Miller is. Man, at the end of the day, it's all coming down to respect, you know what I'm saying? Because Mac Miller, as I said, he's always carried himself as somebody respectable in the game. He's always shown respect for the culture. Even when you look at Macklemore, right? He always bigged up the culture show. He studied it. Somebody like Yes, Jules, they've never really shown that and they've always victimized themselves when people show any kind of animosity towards them. Prime example, somebody that's like an ally that could come in, they respect the culture. As a matter of fact, when I did an interview with Wendy Day, one of the things she talked about, how she had a lot of pushback, white woman coming to hip hop, right? But at the end of the day, she paid her dues. She showed that she was there. She studied culture. She helped people out work their way up. And that's the difference between how Yes, Jules, you know, she kind of finessed her way up into the game. I can't knock anybody taking advantage of opportunities. But when people call you out for your lack of respect on things, you can't look at yourself as a victim. So that's like, that's one thing. They've been victimizing themselves and they don't show any understanding of the culture or any respect for the culture of people who have paved the way for them, right? Then you got other artists that is even like Post Malone, man. Like at the end of the day, acknowledge the fact that this is the way you dress. This is the way you look. This is the way you acted, whether it was your idea or not. It might have been your management, but you leveraged hip hop and black culture for your image, for a given period of time. So when you come and then when you double back and make all these comments against hip hop, right, people let it pass because of your talent, you know, just kind of like how they let our acrylic pass because of this talent for a given period of time. But at the end of the day, just show respect for what it is and it's not even like somebody's gonna make like hold it against you. Like you got talent, y'all got opportunities, y'all are making moves, no one cares. At the end of the day, all they want is the acknowledgement that it happened and that's because everybody's trying to prevent white, basically white flight into the game and taking over the culture and white washing every single thing that already existed, all the work that we did, just like what happened to rock and roll, right? People think of rock and roll as a white genre because it became popular, white people took it over and now that's a white drama, right?  Point blank. And I'm not saying close Malone is a culture, but there's been some culture, culture tendencies at the time. Yes, the Jews is a culture, those are from everything that I've seen and not. Yeah, I think it really comes down to intent. Like I think that's the main thing. I think there's some guys that get into the culture because just like us, they were, you know, into it from a young age and it was just like it was a part of them, you know, and then you get other guys who see it as a financial opportunity and things like that. And I think that happens like all across the board, you know, if you like, you remember in the mid 2000s when Pharrell really was kicking stuff off and everybody wanted to be like a skater, but all the real skating and then Lupe came out with kick push and everybody was like, yo, like skating was the thing, but the real skaters was like, yo, like, what are y'all doing? Like this, this isn't like, it's deeper than a Bay putty, you know what I'm saying? Like so. Yeah, perfect. That's a perfect example. I'm glad you said that, bro. Because culture, like there's, it's not just black culture. There's so many cultures to culture, bro. Like there's so many people, especially in today, we got artists or other people, just people in general trying to cap off of a niche audience. Yeah.  Everybody's trying to flip a culture these days and they're not putting in the work to be a part of that community in the first place. Right. I get it. And it's like that with everything. Like even today, like podcasting is cool. So there'll be some guys on here who aren't really committed to hip hop, you know, who might become a hip hop podcasting and they not really even, they just see it as a financial game and then that's gonna dilute the entire culture. That's gonna, so that's really where the cautiousness is. Is it's like, do you really care or are you just trying to make money? Because when you're just trying to make money, that's when the culture becomes diluted. Everybody didn't hate that Vanilla Ice was a white rapper. They hated that it was so evident that he didn't really care about hip hop. And hip hop just was blowing up and you just had the marketing dollars to really capitalize and make this song and do what you need to do. That was the problem. It was never his skin.   We don't have a problem. You know what I'm saying? Cause we understand that the respect and the love for the culture is no different from us. But when we feel like you're kind of just in it. And that's kind of my problem with like people calling Leo a co-inher, a culture voucher. Because I'm not really convinced Leo doesn't care about hip hop. I have a hard time seeing somebody that's been in the game for 40 years, 30 years, you know, well before, you know, we was even born. He's been in this game forever. And I just feel like, you know, he could have gotten money doing whatever else. You know what I'm saying? Like who spends 40 years in this, in one culture that they're not particularly interested in. You know what I'm saying? Some people bleed green if they're like, they're just true and blue entrepreneurs. Where they like, hey, I know how to get this check over here and I'm gonna keep blowing up and getting that check over here. I'm sure he has money in other places. But I'm not saying that just to say that I think Leo is, I honestly don't know, because I don't know enough about him. Like I know his history personally, but as far as why he gets called one, I honestly don't get that big effect. I make her like the specific reason that he gets called one. You know what I mean? Like damn, if you don't care about the culture, I don't see it, I never heard of an example. You know what I'm saying? I'm gonna tell you why. I'm gonna tell you why people call Leo a culture voucher. He's a 60 year old white man. So people look at him and he's out promoting, like back in his 300 days, he's out promoting like Young Thug or Day Day. And they like, man, this old white dude is not driving around listening to Young Thug. You know what I'm saying? And here's my thing with that. It's like we're all gonna get old one day. So yeah, you know, we in our 20s, music is made for us right now, but there might be a time when we 50 and the music ain't necessarily created for us in mind. But we might still wanna be a part of the music business and we might still have a perspective on what's going on, even though that's not our first pick when we put on some. What about Dane though? Dane never called, like, but Dane had been calling him a culture voucher beforehand. That's what I'm saying. Like, I don't know, I would have to hear more on that, but even Dane did an apology, which is weird. I don't even know if that's about, but like let's bring this back to this yes, drill situation though, because this man, Myrtle Moot, was Wilder, right? Yeah. You told me, I hadn't heard this. Like you said Myrtle Moot came out and said that he was just doing it for the views, but does that make it better for you? Nah, it absolutely doesn't. It's, this is really like kind of what we had spoke about before about just like the attention hoarding and the downside of it. I think this is a perfect example of like, you did more damage than you did good for yourself because the whole point of a podcast is credibility. And if you up there just kind of proven that you're not a credible source or that you don't really have like a backbone to really say the things you need to say in the time period given the same, people aren't gonna listen to you. You know, people, the whole point of media is for when a Yes Jules or anybody, or R. Kelly does an interview, the point is to get everybody who ever views this, the information that they wanna know. So when you get somebody where people wanna know information, it's very important that you don't let the person control the interview. You don't let those main points get lost.  That's the whole point of an interview in the first place. So when you- That's a very sound, logical, level-headed explanation.  It was trash. I didn't believe like coming up, being a young boy, listening to murder moot, battle freestyle, stuff like that. I couldn't believe that this is the same dude. The way he was coming off and the way he was encouraging and abling and almost just in defending her, even at points that she didn't think. But there was some points where she was like, yo, no, not exactly. But she was like, no, I'm white. Like he was like, you white? No, you are not. Like you are not white. She was like, yeah, I'm white. Like, no, you ain't white. Like he was like, dude, what are you doing? Like you, once you sacrifice like your respect for the cloud, like that's when it starts to, you lose the credit. Now you're moving on a different time period. That's when that whole trolling thing, like it goes out in the water.  And that shit's short lived, right? So I don't think that's the right space for buddy. You need to figure out a different platform because like that, like Jules is coming at it. Two very well respected black women.  Like that came out, that came up for real, for real in terms of hustling their ways up. It's a lot of great white women in hip hop. They are, but yes, Jules for one is party culture, not hip hop culture. And people don't understand there's a difference between party culture and hip hop culture. Yeah, yeah.  It doesn't do you any good. Just throwing those names, trying to say they're the jealous of you and things like that. And there's a lot of other things that Jules got going on as far as rumors and things like that. As far as how she gets in the game and how she made her way up the ladder, I don't really know those kind of details. I'm not gonna get into those alleged accusations of sleeping your way up to the top and all that stuff. But at the same time, when you've got certain paths or certain lack of credibility in certain spaces, you gotta tread water, you know what I'm saying? Like you can't just go out around people. And I think that's the problem. Like when a yes Jules could go on these platforms and speak wrong about Karen, that's why she feels that way. Because there's not enough of us correcting that. You know what I'm saying?  Because in reality, her and Karen are nowhere near the same, they're not in the same world really. The atmosphere of, they're not in the same world really, but because Yada and allowed her to think that, she thinks that like this is like a, you know, me versus her, her versus her type of thing. So it's like, nah, Karen's on a whole, Karen's on a whole different level, man. You talk about somebody who's worked on presidential campaigns, man. Like you talking about somebody, a black woman from, I believe New Jersey, you know, the hood, like different. People of Northern New Jersey. Yeah.   Well, a lot of black women, but like they're not being treated as queens. Right? We call these other women and we allow them, we enable them and all that kind of stuff. And like, I get it. And when I see moments like that, at the end of the day, that goes back to, even if it was, you were just trying to do something for clout, that isn't one of those things you can do for clout. There's some things where integrity shouldn't allow you to do. And I don't know. I don't know what his integrity or what he's about. He's like, everybody has a different version of those. But there's certain things that I won't do, even if I know it'll blow me up or give me certain views because at the end of the day, like I got certain things that are more meaningful than a quick little pop in the view count on YouTube. You know what I'm saying? And I'm gonna be real with you, man. Like, certain people like, I heard Joe say on a podcast, everybody don't need a podcast. Everybody don't need a platform. And if everybody do have a platform, make sure your platform is something that you well-versed in. Like, I'm not listening to no Murder Moog podcast. No, no, it's Biscuit podcast. For real. I don't know any podcasts, so I guess it won't. Like, if I'ma listen to Murder Moog talk about anything, it's really just gonna be like battle rapping or basketball or something. I don't really care to hear his angles on like anything particularly important. You know what I'm saying? Like, for real. And it's like, for real, especially with Biscuit, bro. Biscuit is like, Biscuit is a funny dude, man.  I really do. I just, I laugh at him, man. He's funny. He's really a funny guy, but he's, again, he's not somebody who, I didn't even realize they had a podcast and I'm curious to who watches it because it's like, he's not people that I would ever consider like really listening to an hour, two hours, up to three hours of content from. To me, that's ludicrous. Biscuit, that's a black dude. Who was there?  I don't really know who he is. He, they had some rum on the table and he's like a brand ambassador or something like that for that company. Okay. Yeah. I don't know what made him choose these two people. I guess he just looked at the Instagram following and said, hey, let's do it, but nah, this is like, nah, nah, man. Biscuit is not somebody that I would be listening to for two, three hours. To me, that's crazy and murder moog as well. Like, now you talk about like a Nori. Nori is different. Nori is a beast, bro. Nori's a beast at the interview and the radio, all that stuff, man. He a beast. Different beast. Different. He has his flaws, but he's a beast. And speaking of white people, I know you had Yellow Wolf as a topic that you wanted to talk about. Yeah, yeah. So I guess you put all that stuff out the way, man. Yeah. What did you think about Yellow Wolf's did this? Oh, I really felt indifferent towards it. I really thought Yellow Wolf overall has kind of been an artist I've always felt indifferent about. I never really heard a Yellow Wolf song that I've particularly liked, but I've also never really, yeah, I mean, I never really been, I never really done like a real strong deep dive into his catalog or anything like that. But the record was cool. The record was cool.  But I definitely, I respect his perspective, you know, on how he feels about the climate and all of that. All right, well, first, I wouldn't consider myself a Yellow Wolf stand, but I did appreciate, like when I first heard Yellow Wolf, man, I remember being like back at Georgia Southern University, I ain't go there. I was like business and homies and truck music that came out not long before that. I just had to be like 2010 or something like that. Truck music has tracks for that project that adds tracks. I was like, I rock with this dude, but I haven't followed him heavy. I remember when he started to rebrand and to bring the cowboy thing and it was more so like an honor as parents, apparently that was kind of the culture he grew up in, something similar and all that stuff. So I respected that he was staying true and integrating more of where he came from versus trying to like pander to black people, you know what I mean? Or take too much of that image. He always felt like he was authentic and what he was doing. And I felt similar about MGK and stuff like that, but as well, but not to the extent that Yellow Wolf had been. My thing about that diss, when I first heard it, I thought it was kind of wack, honestly. Like I just heard like the second half of the song. Cause, and then when I say wack, I'm just talking about the actual flow. I wasn't liking how things got delivered. I listened back again, started from the beginning. And it seems like he's taking shots on a lot of people. Like people that I don't even know and understand, but it sounds like he's taking shots the entire song. It wasn't just directed at those people. Obviously it's a play to get views for his upcoming project and everything. But I would like to see post Malone reply. I would like to see MGK reply. I know post did reply like on Twitter, stuff like that. But I don't really care. Of course, overall I don't care about the beat, but I think it'll be interesting to actually see an actual battle of lyrics. That part I can always appreciate. And I love, and he did have a lot of dope flows. I take the fact that it was wack, back, back. It didn't like impress me heavily, but he had a lot of dope flows. I don't understand the beat though. I really don't understand. Cause they don't even seem like these white boys know each other in terms of like, I don't see them together. It doesn't seem like anyone has done anybody super wrong, but a pan is his whole, there's some kind of beef going on, like in the white underbelly that I don't know about. Yeah, I think overall though, one thing I could say is that he can rap, you know?  And I think in general, it's not really, they not really given a respect as far as like, I do think as far as from a technical aspect, white rappers usually like, stereotypically do really hold the technical aspects of rap to a higher regard and really try to be like a very traditionally lyrical, you know, approaching rapper. So in that respect, I do really respect that about white rappers. But I think, you know, that's enough on that topic.


We're going to get started with our last panel of the day before we break into small groups for additional training. It's now my. What happened to seeming the best for last? I was just going to say that. Yeah. We all know Jerry. Is that going to pass? It is now my pleasure to introduce two individuals that I work with almost daily. Jim Horwood, his partner of Spiegel McDermott, has been in private practice with the law firm since 1973. Yes, please give him a round of applause. Concentration is in representing municipal and cooperative electrical distribution systems, associations of systems, municipal joint action agencies, and generation and transmission cooperatives and energy matters, as well as advising cities and nonprofit organizations on communications issues. His work often concerns questions involving interpretation and application of federal communications law. The US Constitution, including the First Amendment, federal and state antitrust laws, and utility regulatory laws. In addition, Jim serves on the board of directors of the Alliance for Community Media as a special appointee for legal affairs and provides advice to organizations that manage access centers and to others interested in promoting the use of public educational and governmental access. Next to Jim is Jerry Letter of Council, Best Best in Krieger. You can give him an applause, too. I shouldn't have to ask him that. I'll remember all of you. Jerry is a well-known advocate for the rights of public and private property owners with respect to issues of law and policy arising from federal, state communications, legislation, and regulation. He developed the first model license agreements for access to buildings and rooftops to assist both telecommunications service providers and property owners protect their interests. He has served as the executive director of advocacy and research advancement for the Building Owners and Managers Association International, executive director of government affairs, the United States Telephone Association, and general counsel of the US Conference of Mayors. A member of the Federal Communications Bar Association, Jerry received his law degree with honors from Temple University in Philadelphia and his undergraduate degree also with honors from Haverford College in Philadelphia. He serves as a public policy advisor to the Alliance for Community Media and its members. We're going to start out with giving a brief overview of the CAP Act and kind of putting it in a historical context. For those that may not be as familiar with the CAP Act, I've asked Mr. Harwood to talk a little bit about how the CAP Act came to be and why we're all here today. OK, to start out, historically, Cable's been around since the early 60s. It started in New York, Pennsylvania. New York City was early. Back in 1968, the FCC had initiated a rulemaking proceeding which resulted in rules in 1972, which caused the FCC to be regulating Cable. Subsequently, the US Supreme Court found that the FCC was exceeding its authority because they were treating Cable as a common carrier and that was prohibited under the Communications Act. But during that period of time that the FCC was regulating, they had required pay access channels on all cable systems with various amounts depending upon the size of the community. And they provided for a franchise fee of 3% to go to local governments plus an additional 2% if the additional 2% was used for cable-related purposes, which was pretty much considered to be peg access a little bit for administration. After the FCC was found not to have this authority, there were efforts for federal legislation that brought us to the 1984 Cable Act. There, kind of as either the Grand Bargain or the Devil's Bargain was reached with local governments in the industry, which said local franchising authorities can get a franchise fee of 5% without any restriction on how it should be used. Had we stuck with the 3%, 2%, we wouldn't be having the problems we would have today because there would be this 2% of gross revenues devoted for peg access purposes. Initially, most local governments, or I guess I wouldn't say most, but many would continue to vote 2% of the 5% franchise fee, which is actually 40% of the franchise fee, 2% of gross revenues, four peg purposes and as pressures on local governments kind of got eroded because of, I'm sorry, revenues got eroded because of other pressures. There is more of a temptation to use a franchise fee for other competing governmental purposes. The one other background was back in 2001, the FCC and the cable modem proceeding ruled that revenues received by a cable operator for delivery of cable modem service over the internet did not constitute cable or did not constitute revenues from cable service. So those revenues, which weren't that large back in 2001 but have since grown, couldn't be touched and as part of the franchise fee. That was, the FCC's determination was appealed to the Ninth Circuit together with other determinations. The Ninth Circuit is the most reversed circuit by the Supreme Court, but this was the one time the Supreme Court didn't reverse a decision and they wound up upholding this part of the FCC's regulation, so you have the fact that you aren't guaranteed the full 5% and the total pot of gross revenues wasn't growing as much as it might have. I think it's probably still greater than it used to be, but not nearly what it might be. In addition to the 5% cap of the franchise fee, what was excluded from the cap was money used for peg capital which concerns both buildings and equipment, so you could have additional payments over and above the 5%. Many franchises that were negotiated after 1984 continued to provide for some money for operating funds even though the literal language of the act said you couldn't use it there. If you had a good consultant or good lawyer, you could still negotiate some way of obtaining operating funds. And actually, you still can under some circumstances, but it has become more difficult, particularly if you don't have local franchising. This attempt to get money to be available to use for peg operating funds was a major impetus behind the cap act or the predecessor act. What was the predecessor to the one? Oh, the Bits and Sunabits? Yeah. Sunabits Bill, yeah. That's actually what we call it. While this was happening, we then had AT&T. There's the author right there, Hap. No, the good parts of it. I'm not thinking the co-pact. The co-pact. The co-pact. While this was happening, AT&T decided to go into the cable business. They didn't call it the cable business, and the video delivery business. And they were delivering video over an IP platform, which is their U-verse system. When they designed the U-verse system as best we can tell and rolled it out in Texas, they hadn't thought about peg access. So they designed it in a way that they would deliver something that was pretty much equivalent to commercial television. Then when they found out they had to provide peg access, they adopted a kind of fix that would deliver the peg channels but in a much less robust way than the broadcast channels. So we had that going. We, the Alliance and a number of other access organizations, state chapters, local governments, some of the Natoa chapters filed a petition for declaratory relief at the FCC, which is what Jerry asked Commissioner Cops about, which had been sitting at the commission for 32 months and saying, gee, what AT&T is offering is pretty much is video service that ought to be treated like cable. You ought to make sure that the peg access channels are delivered with the same functionality and accessibility as the broadcast channels. The only thing you might want to add there, Jim, is we actually got hit with two challenges.  So at that same time, we were seeing the AT&T Channel 99 solution. At the same time, we saw Comcast and some of the traditional folks moving the peg channels up to the stratosphere in a digital format only, though. So we had a number of petitions that were filed at the commission at the same time. There were actually three files. There was the Alliance one, another one filed by Lansing, and then one filed by a city of Dearborn and Meridian Township. Meridian Township was lead. And they also had litigation going. And that got settled favorably for those communities, although it doesn't necessarily apply to other communities. And we've seen this kind of channel slamming taking place elsewhere. So while the FCC could have fixed that problem, the FCC hasn't been dealing with it. So the CAP Act is attempting to deal with both issues. It's trying to deal with the revenue problem. And it's trying to deal with the functionality problem. Essentially, you try to come in and say that, gee, we really ought to have video delivered the same way and as robustly as it had in the past. We've seen a change in the part of the cable industry as becoming more resistant to providing peg access. And I guess now perceiving it as competing with some of their other services. So we've seen pushback from them. So the CAP Act is intended to fix these problems. If we could get the FCC to rule on our petition and rule favorably, we wouldn't need half of what's in the CAP Act. We'd still need the revenue issue because that can't be fixed by the FCC because that can only be fixed by Congress. So I think that kind of brings us up to where we are today. Thanks, Jim. Any questions of Jim? Question in the back. Hi, I'm Koresi Frame with the Median Democracy Coalition. Mr. Horwitz, I want to make sure I understand this correctly. So when we're talking about what the CAP Act wants, what language in that bill would help make peg channels more available? I understand about the AT&T U-verse petition, but I'm curious as to what we're actually asking for beyond the U-verse petition. Can I just ask that we defer that because that's my job. Jerry's going to give us a run through of what's in the CAP Act. What if I don't? Please make sure that you give me holy heck. Jerry, I'm going to turn it over to you. Sure. I don't know how this is working, so I'm supposed to go here and there's a clicker. Cool. Great. A clicker. You can see I'm in charge of all the highly technical terms in this. OK, am I pointing this somewhere? So that's the three of us. You've heard us. First of all, and I'm so happy that we have this because it was part of the discussion I heard from the professionals earlier this morning about what it is we want to make sure everybody knows that we have. The bottom line is with the alliance, we want you to make sure whether you're here in the room or you're watching this on the stream, that you're not alone. You're not alone and we're here to help. So if you need a copy of the legislation, if you need a letter, a model letter to ask folks to be a cosponsor, it's on our web page. Again, there's a summary of the CAPAC. We're going to go through it. It's there. There's a sample letter that you can go and ask the FCC to act on our petition. That's there. And then finally, what Sylvia has brought to us is the voter voice. And what's so important about that is it's not just there for the alliance member, but it's there for the alliance producer. It's there for all the alliance clients who hopefully we will be educating that they're as at risk as we are. And a responsibility for fixing this or remedying this is as much theirs as it is ours. I mean, if they truly want to continue to be able to deliver their message. And then one of the things that we've been sort of, people have given us a bit of a hard time with over the years is that they say that our agenda is all over the place. No, it's not on one page. And there it is right there. That's our agenda right now. Our agenda is to make sure that we can pass the CAP Act. And right now we think that that means driving for co-sponsors on the House, finding a Senate champion. And we want to pressure the FCC to act on the alliance's petition. Again, as Mr. Horowitz mentioned, if we could get that petition resolved, an awful lot of alliance members around the country would be benefited immediately. Now, that's not to say that that's all we're looking for. And we'll go through the CAP Act in one second to talk about the things that only Congress can do. And we'll highlight those. And then again, Mr. Horowitz talked about the peg petition. It's been there for 32 months. And we've been waiting for it. But the other thing that we've learned, and again, this is a real compliment, I think, to Sylvia's leadership, is that I heard the professionals today say, do your colleagues, do your users understand the challenge that you're facing and have you enlisted their support? The fact that we're here today at the New American Foundation and we've got Madco and we've got all the other folks that were kind enough to come here today and to put the CAP Act on their legislative agenda reflects that Sylvia is living the message that we keep being told. And that is enlist your allies, marshal your assets. Who's out there that's impacted negatively if this thing doesn't get fixed? And do they understand that they're impacted negatively? So Sylvia's gotten it done at the macro level. It's up to us now to get it done at the micro level to get this thing done. So let's go through the CAP Act. It's HR 1746. And as you see, this year it is bipartisan. So it's Mrs. Baldwin, a Democrat from Wisconsin and Congressman Steve La Tourette, Republican from Ohio. So the way I'm going to try to explain it is talk about what the problem is that we see in the community and then the solution that's posed or is present in the CAP Act. So the biggest problem for every single peg center in the country is that there is a limitation in the act as to what you can use the peg dollars for. That is any dollars over and above the 5% franchise fee. Thank you. Limitations in present law. In present law. Thank you. Limitations in present law. So in layman's understanding, any use of the 5% franchise fee is legal. You can do whatever you want with the 5% franchise fee. It can all go to the general fund. It can all go to peg. It can all go or it can be split even. Whatever you want to do with the 5%, there are no limitations on that. You can demand in a franchise if you can document needs and interest. You can demand funds over and above the 5%. But that money has to be used today exclusively for capital expenditures. And what happens if it's not used for a capital expenditure is that the cable company can engage in self-help. They can come in and they can say, uh-uh. You used a percent, right? You used half of that 2% we're giving you. You used half of it for operations. Therefore, we only owe you a 4% franchise fee because that other percent that you're using for operations, we can take as a credit against our franchise. And that was one of the difficulties with a FCC 621 order, 621 being the franchising section of the act. And that's been one of our problems so that, and we've seen operators threaten this around the country. I'm not sure that we've actually seen one follow-through with it yet, but we have seen the threat. And it's something that Mr. Horwood and I and his colleague Tim Lay and my colleague Joe Van Eaten, it's something we have to tell franchising authorities around the country. It's a very real risk. If you use the capital, if you use peg funds, that is those amounts of dollars over the 5% of franchises, if you use those for operations, you could in fact have the company demand a credit. What the ACT does, what the CAP Act does, it demands, and I see what Mr. Horwood was saying. When I was saying ACT earlier, I was referring to the Telecommunications Act or what we know is, but I think he's right. Let me refer to present law and I won't refer to the CAP Act as the ACT. So what the ACT does is it amends current law to ensure that peg fees can be used for any peg purpose, i.e. capital and or operating. And if you look in the CAP Act, you're gonna read it and you're gonna say, where does it say that? And in fact, what it does is it eliminates the definitional limitation to capital that's in the ACT and you'll see it right in there. You'll see there's a definition fixed in. That's where this gets done, which is kind of interesting a little bit of a lesson about sometimes how the law works. Please. Historically, which I did forget to mention, is when the 1984 ACT was passed, it allowed payments for peg operations for grandfathered franchises, for franchises that existed as of the day of that ACT in 1984. And through the expiration, those franchises have now expired. So what we did in drafting the CAP Act is we kind of combined the provision that tied to pre-existing franchises with those for the new franchises and eliminated the date and we treated it the same as it used to be for the pre-1984 franchises. And again, sometimes we rush through these things, but we've got time, it's worth talking about this. Why is it that we see this as a problem today and we didn't see it as a problem in the past? Well, in the past, the cable operators wanted your peg stations to work. It was important to them. And why was it important? Because they only had one competitor in the marketplace and that was the satellite dish. And what did the satellite dish not have? It didn't have you, right? It didn't have Johnny's football game. It didn't have your daughter's ballet recital. It didn't have the city council. It was the thing that distinguished them from the satellite dish. It was the thing that said, you wanna purchase our service because it makes you more a member of the community. Today they look there and they say, well, we've got these other competitors out here, whether it be the local telephone guy or it be online or over the top programming, whatever you wanna call it. And they say, hey, they don't have this expenditure. So we're at a market disadvantage. They don't see it the way that they used to see it. They don't see peg programming as being an instrumental to their success. The other thing is when you only had 12 channels of programming and you had three peg channels, you then had a 15 channel system you can market. And that 3%, those three additional channels are pretty darn cheap. You know, they didn't create C-SPAN out of the goodness of their heart. They created C-SPAN because it was a penny a subscriber to do it for a year. That's pretty good programming, right? Little did they ever know. Now, my friend Susan Swain would punch me in the nose if she ever heard me say that. But it's the truth. I mean, peg and things like C-SPAN were really inexpensive programming outlets when they didn't have the money or they didn't view it. And today, they really view, again, today, the channel capacity that your peg programming occupies could either be occupied by another home shopping network where they can make money or it can be rolled into the broadband that's being used for their high-speed internet. So there are so many more competing demands on that space, they really do have a market incentive to move you off and we need to recognize that. So what's the other thing, the other major problem that we've seen and Mr. Horwood went through this is the discriminatory treatment of peg channels. So again, just for simplistic state, there are two different types of problems that we're seeing in discriminating against peg channels. There's the channel 99 AT&T and from what we understand, the century link will be following the same model. And then there's the slamming issue. That is, there's the moving the peg programming to a digital tier first to see how it works out. We're gonna move peg over and if that works out okay, then we'll take the rest of the basic tier there. But they tried to move the peg and there's where Deb and the folks in Michigan were integral in coming in and fighting Comcast because Comcast was really the first one to do it. Well, the first one we could fight because Brighthouse was doing it down in Florida. Unfortunately, the Florida franchise law down there said they could do it. So Meridian Township and Dearborn and a few other communities up in Michigan took on the fight. And while we got a temporary restraining order up there, which was terrific, we really, what all said and done is that was resolved through an agreement of the parties. And I think that agreement, now I don't want to undercut what ACM and Mr. Horwood was able to negotiate with Comcast as part of the Comcast universal merger, but I really think that the terms and the ideas that were committed to in the resolution of that Michigan legislation really were the basis an awful lot for the merger terms with respect to peg that they said that they wouldn't move the peg channels until they moved the whole basic tier. And again, that's all we ever wanted and you're gonna hear more about that later. You know, I mean, people will try to paint us into the corner and say we're being Luddites that we don't want to go digital. That's just not the case. We do want to go digital, but we want to go with everyone else. We don't want to be the only ones going so that you have to purchase a box to see peg programming, a box that you don't have to purchase or rent to see the rest of the basic tier. The other thing is the loss of peg support and localism. An awful lot of the state franchise laws said we can reduce the expense, we can reduce consumers costs for cable programming if we get rid of this peg support. They really don't need it anymore. You know, so we can eliminate it. And in an awful lot of states, peg support either went to zero immediately or typically what happened is is peg support was to be honored until what would have otherwise been the natural expiration of the franchise and then it would go to zero. Now some states do better than that, right? I mean, Michigan, California, none of them actually do provide a peg support. So Michigan and Michigan, it's two and California people argue that you can get up to three. You know, again, I'm not trying to say which it is. I'm just saying that there are states that have preserved it. If the state has not preserved it, right? If the state has not preserved it, what the CAPAC says is that the cable operator must provide the greater of 2% of gross revenues or the historic support received, i.e. that amount that was received prior to a state franchise, or three, the state financial obligation. Again, our goal here in crafting this language, and when I say ours, I mean, whole bunch of folks in Washington, whether it be ACM, Natoa, ACT, an awful lot of organizations put together on this, our first goal with respect to the financial terms was to do no harm, was to do no harm. So we tried to craft it as broadly as possible to say, look, we can guarantee you a 2% floor, but if you did better than that, we don't want to harm that. So you can go ahead and you can get it, and that's what the ACT would do. And then is the loss of actual channels. We've got state legislation that eliminates channels themselves. And so what the solution is, and it's important for us to remember this because this is one of the primary criticisms that NCTA leveled against us. The solution is really very simple. It said that if the law took away your right to demand peg channels, we're gonna turn the clock back to the day before the state legislation was passed, and how many did they owe you then? And if they didn't owe you any then, then you can ask up to three. Now you might say, well, why might they not have owed you any then? Well, your community may not have been in existence then, or you may not have had that, you might have separated out your franchise. So that additional point is very important. But again, we're not, it's all we're simply doing, and I think that this is the bottom line for the CAP Act. What the CAP Act simply does is it turns the clock back to the day that local governments or local communities sat down with the cable operator and negotiated a franchise and said, this is what you were willing to give us when you were at the table and negotiated with us. Oh, and by the way, you've done very well with these terms. All we're doing is making you honor the commitments that you made, because we're still giving you the same thing, right? The community is still providing access to the rights of way for them to provide their service. So we're still providing the real estate. The question is, how did the rental terms get so turned around? The CAP Act would revert back to the rental terms that everyone agreed to voluntarily. So finally, AT&T, and Mr. Horwood referenced this when he said video provider. AT&T, and we think others as days go on, will claim that the Cable Act doesn't apply to them because they're not a cable provider, they're a video provider. And as such, they don't fit any of these categories. Well, we actually took a page out of AT&T's playbook again, Beth McConnell mentioning this this morning, sometimes they've got real pros on their side, so let's steal their words. In almost every one of the state bills that was passed, AT&T created this category called video provider. And a video provider was basically somebody that was employing IPTV technology but was still using the rights of way to deliver their video programming. And what the CAP Act says is that we don't care what technology that you use, if you use the rights of way, i.e. you're on a wire over the rights of way to deliver your programming, then you're a cable operator for purposes of the obligations created in the CAP Act, and so that's what it does. Now, I wanna thank Mitzi Horada, Mitzi when we were looking at him getting ready for this thing, said what happened, NCTA had that paper out last year, did we ever put a rebuttal together for it? And we sort of did, but it got lost. So yesterday, Sylvia, Jim, Mitzi and I got together and we went through the NCTA paper and we outlined why it's just misleading at best, specious probably being more accurate. I'd use the word specious, Mitzi, but I can't spell it. So I'm misleading, I know how to spell. I've got to get that blackberry, I guess. So the first claim is that Peg is fine, we don't need legislation, things are going along just fine. And we would say if you say Peg in August 31st, 2007 was fine, we'd say, yeah, on September 1st, however, the Texas law, the first in the nation went into effect and things got dramatically worse. And so all you have to do is look at the Alliance for Community Media's research, the Benton research that'll document the loss of channels, the loss of centers and the loss of staff across the country. I mean, this is laughable, this claim that Peg is fine. It's not, it's not, and we can document the losses that are happening every single day. The other thing is that the CAP Act imposes an unfair burden on cable operators as opposed to dish and IPTV providers. Again, this is the standard playbook, right? One, you don't need the legislation. Two, well, if you put the legislation there, it's unfair to us compared to our competitors. I remember I used to explain lobbying in the telecommunications world to folks that were really intimidated by it, and I'd say, well, how many people here in this room are parents? Oh, let me ask, how many people in the room are parents? Okay, and if you only have one child, put your hand down. If you have more than one kid, keep your hand, all right? If you have more than one child, then you know absolutely everything that you ever will need to know about the dynamics of telecommunications legislation. Okay, and here's the deal. You like him better than me, okay? Every single message the industry ever claims can be reduced to that single human emotion. You like them better than us, right? And here it is here, right? If you do this, you're liking them better than you like us, and it's just wrong. One, dish networks have a set aside for public interest programming. And if you took that percentage, which I believe is 4%, if you took that percentage and measured it against the number of channels, a typical cable operator has, the number of channels, even in a Montgomery County where you've got 11 channels, doesn't rise to the level of capacity that a dish provider has to set aside. So it's specious. No, it's just not there. And the other thing is that the act clarifies that IPTV providers are cable for purposes of the act. So it does apply to them. So what they're talking about when they say it doesn't apply to dish and it doesn't apply to IPTV is just wrong. It's simply wrong. Now, and if they'd like to strengthen the language to make sure that it does apply to IPTV, we'd welcome their guidance, okay? It says that the CAP Act will result in higher cable rates. Well, to me it's pretty simple across the country when Peg disappeared from the bottom line. The answer is no. The other thing is that cable typically now, increasingly, is an unregulated entity. So the idea that somehow a regulatory, regulatorally imposed fee will increase rates is again, it's misleading.  It's simply misleading. The last thing is that a 2%, even if it was, that a 2% contribution to this programming is so much less expensive than they're paying for other programming. Finally, there's no rule that says that you have to pass it through. There's not an obligation that says you have to pass this thing through. So if you choose to pass it through rather than, you know, giving the CEO the 12th million dollar bonus that year, then that's on you. But we're not putting you at a competitive disadvantage. We're not saying you have to do it. Oh, and by the way, we are applying this to all of your competitors. So again, it's not a competitive disadvantage. You know, they say that it overrides state law. Yep, yes it does. We're guilty. It overrides state law. But what does it do? It re, all it does is it reinstates the level of support for Peg that was in place that the cable operator negotiated. Again, we're not imposing anything on them that they didn't agree to at the bargaining table. And they've done pretty well under those terms. It keeps us from going digital and mandates channel positioning wrong. Understand that, that's wrong. The CAP Act does not ban them from going digital. It does not mandate channel positioning. All it says is that the cable operator cannot charge a customer for additional equipment to see the Peg programming. They want to go, if they want to go digital with their Peg and they give the equipment away then under the CAP Act we have to live with it. And we're willing to. Our point is do not, do not tell us that I've got to pay an extra $10 a month to see Peg programming if I don't have to get that to see the over the air or the must carry type programming. That's what the CAP Act does. And so the idea that we don't want them to go digital, wrong. The idea that we're mandating channel placement, wrong. It's just not the case. So I'll take, Jim and I or Sylvia will take questions. I hope that we've answered the question, what's in the CAP Act, more importantly, I hope we've answered the question, what's not in the CAP Act. And then finally, please note, I wish I knew how to skip back to a slide real quick. You're not alone. I mean, the alliance is here. The alliance is here to help you in any way, shape, or form that you need to be helped. But you're not alone as well in the people that are being impacted. You've got to find the others in your community that are being impacted and work with them to carry our message. Richard. Question on. Equal treatment of the channels. Previously, it was easier in the analog spectrum to do both quality testing and be assured that your signal is being delivered a specific quality now on digital to a little bit more challenging or to have new tools to be able to do that. So one is, you know, the concern has been when going to digital, I've raised this concept before, of the concept of bit starving, that the operators can essentially starve out the amount of bandwidth for channels so that our channels look degraded as a result in what are the measures of standards of equal treatment when it comes to signal standards. And second is the technologies that are included in the new platforms, such as widgets and other streams of data that are respective of, for example, closed caption, description channels, et cetera, and ensuring that our channels have the capacity to deliver that to important audiences that have been the base of our serving the public interest. Again, we couldn't agree with you more. The mission of the Alliance is to have, to ensure that we don't wind up in a digital ghetto, right? We wanna be our programming once that the same robust presentation as the over-the-air broadcasters are receiving as part of the MUST channel. And we continue to be guided by that. We continue to strive for that. Can I tell you that all that is in the cat-back right now? No, no, but we've got a good start and we continue to work on it. Again, we think that an awful lot of that can be resolved with the FCC's petition or at least get us a significant way down the road. I will tell you that the city of Portland has just, I guess it's not finalized yet, but we're gonna have a nice model out there for the types of things to be talking about in franchising because one of the missions for the Alliance is not just advocacy at the federal level, but also is to equip our members with what they ought to be asking for at the local level. I mean, you heard a terrific presentation this morning about how DC Channel is involved intimately in the needs assessment that's happening in DC as they go into their franchise renewal. We're hoping that ACM members across the country are sitting at the table with their local governments when they're doing their franchise renewals to say, we know Portland got this, why aren't we asking for something similar? So we agree with it, I can't promise you that it's all there, but we're moving in that direction. So Jerry, this whole cat-back issue has been around for a while. What's the hang-up? It's a very fair question. This is our second Congress that the cat-back has been introduced. So it's the third year. What's the hold-up? The hold-up is that we haven't carried the ball well enough. We haven't shown enough members of Congress the risks of losing Peg that we all see.  It's on us, it's on us. The fact that the Peg, the fact that the cat-back hasn't moved, I believe, is an indictment of our efforts. And until we get our acts organized, that's the only thing that we can blame. We're just, we're not doing a good enough job educating the members of Congress at the threats that exist to Peg and the fix that the cat-back presents to those threats. I can be overridden on that answer, by the way. Not that I don't love you, Jerry. There's an additional component and it's the elephant in the room. And we've all got acknowledges and I don't disagree with Jerry about carrying the ball. I don't. But the elephant in the room is who is sitting on the other side of the cat-back? One massive corporate entity that has tremendous influence that is not going to be in favor of the cat-back. We all have to recognize this. I'm incredibly sensitive to it because I have lived this since 2005. And we just have to be honest, I think, about carrying the ball and about who's on the other side of that line of scrimmage. Yeah, you know, if I could happen. And the reason Eric got so slow in answering is because for the first time ever, I mean, I think Sylvia's probably sitting down there laughing and it'll teach you, Jerry, not to put your famous light in. I mean, I usually have a slide when I do a presentation that says the fundamental understanding of any political decision, whether it be at City Hall, the State Capitol, or up in the Congress, the fundamental sort of formula for every one of those decisions is a risk-reward ratio. Every decision-maker has to understand that the failure to act provides a greater risk to them and to their community of interest than action. And so when all is said and done, that's a terribly difficult message to hear because when all is said and done, it's not that necessarily AT&T or some other corporate monolith is on the other side of the table. It's that we're not being a big enough monolith on this side of the table. It really falls on us. It falls on us. So that's Eric getting back to your question and HAP is absolutely correct. But I would say HAP's point, if I could put it into context in my world, and that is, okay, I'm looking at that risk-reward ratio, I know I got to work pretty hard because they've done a good job. They've done a good job of demonstrating the risk for supporting us. The question is, have we done a good enough job to demonstrate the risk for supporting them? And I don't... Let me toss in a couple of thoughts. HAP's wrong saying it's the monolith on the other side because it's two industries on the other side. It's AT&T and it's cable. But that just makes a job a little bit harder. But if we are to prevail, it makes it much more satisfying. And I feel like we're at... Let me push in three. You're forgetting Verizon. Hey, hey, hey, you're right. A good example is what happened with LPFM, which you heard about this morning. They were up against the National Association of Broadcasters and public television. And, you know, those are two groups that are probably as powerful as those opposing us. And they were able to prevail. And they were able to prevail through lots of the kinds of things we're talking about, which is grass roots organizing and talking to members of Congress and finding champions. So if the LPFM people could do it, so can we. Yeah, absolutely. Anybody else? And it took them a long time. Hi, Mitz. Okay, so I guess I'm going to focus on the same... Well, a couple of things. First is that Zaneda and I had a conversation at lunch. I don't know what she is. And so there's a couple ideas that we'd like to organize, particularly around aggregating the list of religious organizations who are users of the station so that we can try to compile that. And we talked about, I think there already are some videos but pushing the idea of people running PSAs on their channel now, so we will work on that. But the question I have for you, Jerry, is Chris Van Hollen is a member from our district who sits in the number four position in the House leadership. We've already had a meeting with their office. They weren't able to meet on Wednesday and we had a conference call with them. And the question that they raised for us is, well, what is the strategy? What is Baldwin's strategy for passing this bill? And frankly, what they said straight out to us was, you don't necessarily need to have every member, you don't need to have that many cosponsors, what you need is a vehicle that you can attach it to. But we don't even have, right now, I don't think we have a, we just got Markey, who's gonna need somebody else. We don't have the right people in that committee pushing that. So what's our strategy? I mean, we're sort of all of us working to raise the background noise. We're looking to add sponsors. But what is the strategy for moving it in a way that you actually need to move bills in this Congress? The easy answer is to get those people, right? We know who those people are, that is subcommittee members that have to be our cosponsors and they're on our target list. So again, I think the point that, you're making lots of good points. The point I want to convey to all of us to make sure everybody understands it is that cosponsorship is not the be-all and the end-all, right? And the lack of cosponsors does not, in any way, shape or form limit our ability to move forward. So I think that's lesson number one. Lesson number two is that, you know, all members of Congress are created equal. Just some of them get the vote a little bit earlier in the process, right? So it's that subcommittee that we really need to target and do the best that we can. The third message that I take from your question is that there are shortcuts. There are shortcuts in the legislative process, right? I mean, we can all go back to Schoolhouse Rock and remember the song about I am a bill, I'm only a bill. I'll sing it for you if you like, no. I'll quit today, though. Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha. For those of you in the online that couldn't hear that, the question was it's a shame that your voice isn't as good-looking as you are. Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha. You don't have to go through every step, right? I mean, there are opportunities to look to amend other legislation that's moving. You know, so we will look to all of those. This is a confusing year. I mean, I'll be honest, and Sylvia and I have had this conversation. And we have looked at that amendment strategy. Our problem is we just don't know a bill today that gets there. The only piece of must pass legislation out there, whether there's a continuing resolution and they're not really very agreed on that. And then the other thing is whether or not the super committee comes out with something. And we are investigating opportunities to see if there's anything we can do there. The real problem is on that super committee, congressman Upton sits. And if it's something that's in the jurisdiction of his committee, it's gonna be a little hard if he hasn't had the opportunity to see it. Yeah, well, I'm trying to be polite. So- It's all on you, Hap. Yeah. That's it, Hap, we've got Van Hollen. You know, all we need is the Republican. Where are you, pal? So, again, so our mission near term, find a Senate champion, build co-sponsors. That's the mission of the alliance membership and our allies. The mission for Sylvia and Jim and I is to continue to look for opportunities to fast track the legislation in any way that we can. And the real truth of the matter is our responsibility is to work with Representative Baldwin and Representative La Tourette. Cause sometimes in Washington, we get this silliness that we talk about in the first person singular, we're working through the member of Congress, it's their call and just keeping them informed. Anybody else? Yeah, Jerry, Bill Co-Attendant, just one question. Appreciate that no piece of legislation will have all the words in it you want. Assuming a Cap Act does pass, attached to something else or a standalone, is there currently a legislative history for it to help the FCC implement or is that going to be a lot of other effective competitions and things that we'll have to fight the next time? It's a terrific question. Yeah, for folks that may not understand everything we're saying, typically legislation is pretty bare bones, right? And then behind the legislation, there's something called a committee report or a conference report or whatever the report might happen to be that sometimes explains, it's called the legislative history, it explains some things. And so those are typically written as the process goes along. So there's nothing I can point you to right now. It's typically done by the committee staff with outside assistance. So yes, there are a number of issues. For instance, if you talk to the folks in Kentucky and the folks in Florida, the Alliance membership from those two states, they would say, we need to make sure that there's something in there that ensures that we're part of the Cap Act because we don't necessarily have a franchise fee, we have a tax. Now they've converted our franchise fee into a tax and we need to somehow make sure that we're aware of that and we're committed to working to addressing that. That's why it's the other thing is that we do not, let me put it in the positive, we welcome input from Alliance members and our allies around the country. As you look at the Cap Act, if it doesn't work perfectly for you, please let us know so that where we can address that in committee language or legislative history, we will. Any other questions? All right, please join me in thanking Jerry and Jim.


Nice new brother WP1 word processor. I could connect the Raspberry Pi up to the UART I am actually going to take the time to write a whole new terminal emulator Well the cursor keys don't seem to want to work in VI, but this is loads of progress Certainly less snow I'm gonna have to do something about that things remaining to do are snow fix the state machine issues character attributes and See if we can bump the board rate up After the abject failure of the video capture quality in the last couple of videos I put some time into getting direct video capture actually working So the video output from the board here is now being sent to the PSOC board where it's being reformed into something a bit more similar to CGA so that my OSSC and CGA to RGB are actually capable of capturing it. It's not quite right You can see that the text quality isn't brilliant But this is so much better than just filming the screen directly and The frame rate is such that actually keeps up with my typing, which is nice So where were we well there's some bugs you can see that deleting Text with control you Causes the cursor to go into the wrong place. That should be a fairly minor state machine Thing I believe I know what's going on there those are arrows of beeps But the biggest one is the snow which you can see at the top of the screen Now I have also bumped the board rate up to nineteen point two killer board Which makes the system so much more responsive as you can see Yeah, you can see the the dropped characters causing the columns to misaligned there Now the good news is that I think that The same problem is causing both the snow and the dropped characters which is that the Software on the brother is spending too long doing things Isn't responding to incoming bytes quickly enough and Isn't responding to v-sync pulses quickly enough So I think that I may be able to fix both of those at the same time But this is going to require some experimentation So I'm going to go over to the PC and take a look at the code So Here is our program's main loop. This is the thing that drives the way the entire terminal works what it does is it loops forever it Attempts to update the screen if we're in the vertical blanking period It then attempts to read and print a byte from the interface if there is one present It tries to read a byte from the keyboard and If the interface is writable it tries to push it it's possible for keyboard push here to push multiple bytes into the ring buffer and This will then pull a single byte each iteration out of the ring buffer and write it to the interface Now I expect these to be pretty quick as they're not actually doing much most of the time is going to be spent in This routine because it may have to do stuff like memory shuffling to scroll the screen and This routine which is going to be flushing the display It has to copy all the data from the back buffer onto the front buffer Now I believe that the reason that we are dropping characters is These routines specifically this one display flush is Taking so long that by the time we get back to here and pull a byte out of the interface the Interfaces own FIFO has filled up And has dropped bytes in addition there is another problem Let me just sketch out a bit of a diagram so Imagine a graph with time going down this way a Frame extends from here To here The vertical blanking period Is here So all of this stuff down here is data We can only update the screen in the in during the vertical blanking period which is here and what we expect to happen is update starts Update returns However We when update returns we finish this routine We go through to the end of the loop we jump back to the top and Hey look We're still in the vertical blanking period so it runs the update again Which is because it takes so long It overlaps into the actual display period and generates snow And there is another another possibility Which is that the update just does still run once but takes so long That it doesn't fit entirely in the vertical blanking period so Let us do a bit of work Here is our update routine Here is the chunk of code that actually checks to see if we're in the vertical blanking period Now What I'm going to do is add a variable Into which we are going to store the previous state of the vertical blanking period So that would be Let me think how we're going to do this So we get it fetch it into a We fetch the address into HL We load it like so So now here in the comparison code we have access to Both the previous state and the current state We only want to run dpy flush If the previous state is False and the current state is true. This means that it will run once The first time into the vertical blanking period It then won't run again Until we exit the vertical blanking period and enter it again so What we want to Do is We do a red Z So if we're not in the vertical blanking period at all, we don't need to do the rest of the logic We then want to X or the current state with No, we don't that's over that's overthinking it At this point, we know that we are in the vertical blanking period All we need to do is check to see if the old state is False Wait true. So a here is Zero if we were not in the blanking period or to if we were so Return if zero if we're not in the blanking period So that we now know that we are in the blanking period We want to return if the previous time round we were in the blanking period and therefore C must be non-zero Okay So that might help The other thing we're going to do is speed up the actual refresh. There's several things we can do We could use the DMA engine to copy the data, which is much faster than just doing an LDI are It's more code But it should be faster so much faster that it will pay for itself But the simplest thing we're actually going to do is To remove this So what these two lines do is they advance DE to point to the next row of video memory using arithmetic BC is a HL is advanced for us by LDI are in fact, this is a waste of time. We don't need to do that Because since the loop is unrolled we can just load the correct value here which gets calculated Yeah, so we just duplicate that bit of code like this and This should give us Well, this D line is three bytes our previous code where we called add a HL was four bytes Five bytes Two to load a with the value to increment three to call the subroutine And in a reasonable number of cycles because we have to do the call and the return Which will stack operations stack operations slow.  This should be a Big improvement So I am just going to try it and see what happens Okay, well, we're still getting snow Just wait for there we go What happens if we do this we're still dropping characters Okay, so this Suggests Hmm, so you've got three lines of snow and we're using less code. I Cannot remember how much love how much snow we had previously So was this an improvement or not? I'm going to have to go and check the video footage If it's less then it has actually helped So we can do more. I think this is going to need the DMA engine Yep, okay, I'm going to go check the footage and see how much that's improved by if at all and Let's try the DMA engine and see what that does 10 frames per second. Why is it recording at 10 frames per second? I told it to record at 30 This is bizarre anyway The resulting video does actually work even if it is only at 10 frames a second and it's showing Three lines of snow. So this hasn't made any difference at all, which is interesting Anyway, let's Go find some Brother WP one Z80 So this is the code needed to run a DMA if you compare it to what we've got here three bytes three bytes two bytes this is Many bytes but It should be so much faster that even though we're doing more work It will do the copy faster So let's give this a try and see what happens So we want to it's actually just copy all of this over here the DMA engine works with physical addresses So the source is going to be the back buffer address Which is at This offset I believe We are loaded at Yep, that's correct target physical address is Here That's where the video memory lives. In fact, it's going to be here number of bytes we want to copy is 91 so So we need to calculate the back buffer address and we have a line to do that here and then we Output it to the we configure the DMA source We then want to do the same thing for the destination address the This is the top byte of the address. So in this situation, it's a two in this situation. It's a one the Video memory is mapped so that e OOO is it goes to physical address one? OOO so we don't want to add anything on there 91 bytes 91 Actually, we're gonna do Width. Oh, yeah, and I also change the syntax Here slightly. Yeah, I found a new copy of Z Mac that does proper Z 180 instructions so we don't need the old macros anymore and Rather than out putting everything through a it's cheaper to load a 16 bit value into HL and emit it like this okay now So we start the DMA, but we then need to wait for the DMA to finish before we can reprogram the The DMA engine for the next line so we need a Loop I think These I think we want to do D stat to a and It with Oh, it's one of these flags and it with something and then branch back to dot one if The flag is set and I will just go and look at that up Actually from looking at this code When the DMA engine is in burst mode Which has got this M mod bit in the Mode register is this one set to one Then the CPU will halt Until the DMA transfer is complete So I don't believe we actually need any logic down here however We probably also want to control the wait states in D control Because I don't believe we want any and if there are and by default you get some and I believe this will slow things down a lot. So Up here, we only need to do this once We load a with you see these are the wait state registers Number of weight number of weight states introduced to CPU or DMAC address cycles Wait insertion bits, so I think you want those to be zero DMA sense bits. We're not using external DMA. So that's irrelevant mode bits This is for memory to IO transfer modes. We're not using those either. So that's just zero a and write it to D control and I think I've got all of these backwards Yeah, I always get the order of parameters mixed up. Yes, that's better Oh, I've got to change this one. Oh, it's not D control, okay so Let's see if this is any faster or indeed if it works at all Turns out that the wait state stuff was wrong and I do need some wait states. Otherwise nothing happens at all But it is doing something. It's not very useful So I think that It's copying the wrong data onto the screen, but it is at least doing something and the terminal stills Still works. You can see the the cursor move However, there's still some snow Which is annoying. We only have one line of snow. So this is faster So I Need to try and speed up the DMA stuff a little I know how to shave a few cycles off I think I'm gonna have to do some experimentation with the wait states To see what we can get away with Nope that hasn't worked We now have only one line of snow using one wait state, but if we go down to zero wait states then the system crashes and I still haven't figured out why it's writing bar eyes to the screen So given that This basically isn't working We just don't seem to have enough time in the v-blank interval to update the entire screen We're gonna have to be a bit cleverer and Update the screen over multiple v-blank cycles And if we're gonna do that then there's not really much point using the DMA stuff Which I can't make work anyway. So let's just go back to using the LDIR stuff also the way the screen is Flickering every now and again is a capture issue There's something not quite right about the about my OSSC settings the OSSC doesn't really like this really strange screen mode Okay, so we back out all of our code here by holding down the undo key All right, let's just go forwards a bit so that we have our new Only run the routine once code and Let's grab the the update Code Okay, and this is the point where I start to work on the DMA stuff right What we're gonna do is We are going to track the dirty state of each scan line The number of routines we have that actually draw on the screen is quite small So that's fairly straightforward and then in our flush code We are going to test to see if any individual scan line is dirty and only update it if it is dirty and Also give up if We see that we're not in v-blank anymore Right, this does mean that the last update is Going to Overlap with the end of the v-blank No, we're going to have to be a slightly cleverer than the than that What we're gonna do is Is We are going to track we are going to keep track of the Number of scan lines the number of rows that we're actually going to update So that each time round will only update so many rows To keep the redraw time below the limit so it all fits in the v-blank so Let's go for eight because this routine is actually going to be slower So our redraw loop we are going To just thinking of what we're going to set up. We want to look at Okay, this the Z80 doesn't have any decent indexing operations or any comparisons Because I want to work through the dirty buffer until you reach the end But I want to avoid having to do a 16-bit comparison, but I don't think we can So This isn't annoying. Okay, I'm going to do this thing unrolled so We're not updating in order anymore therefore we can't rely on HL being Automatically set so we have to we have to set it here so that every row We are going to Get the address of the relevant slot in the dirty buffer Load it if it is zero meaning the row is not dirty We jump forward Otherwise we can do better than that We unset the dirty bit We then do the copy We decrement the number of rows left to update and give up if zero This needs to be a local Label I can't remember how to do that local to their file Macro labels Labels starting with a dot a temporary reset whenever a non-temporary label is used a Macro call expands the text of the macro's body Which each local simple question mark SK? Can I do that? Oh, or I can do something simpler Let's try this. Nope. That's not working Rept is obviously not really a macro. So we're going to have to Make one by putting all this code in here Like this. Okay, and what does our listing? It's more than what I wanted that was what I wanted. What does our listing say? It's definition of the macro invocation of the macro so Load address of dirty buffer plus line number load it into a skip to yep a One which is here cool We don't have to unroll this we could use actual code we could use a loop, but that would be slower, and it would use up I am It just be generally more annoying Alright, so when we now need to set the dirty buffer so print a Actually, let's not do that Okay so print a We are going to dirty the row This touches no registers other than HL HL and a The input character is in C. Therefore that is safe This is going to want to do the same thing we haven't done that bit yet move the cursor Delete a line. We can just do that so This is copying mold. This is moving multiple rows. We're going to have to Dirty multiple lines So that's going to be so this is going to Set the bit for line Y and leave the appropriate address in HL Okay, I need to figure out how many bytes we want to update So to delete a line It's from here to the end of the screen. In fact, the same code is going to be needed by this so let's do Dirty to end of screen so the so We put that in B Because this then allows us to do right, so this will set all Dirty bytes from the current row to the end of the row to One so and again, we want this here Dirty to end of screen Clear a line again. This is just going to be dirty row This is used to clear everything. So that should be everything we need so Let's try and see what happens. Well, it's a nice steady screen no snow That was a There's a capture dropout. So let's try a scroll Kind of working to be honest Yeah, okay Right, there is snow when it does that update So maybe I need to reduce the number. We are doing quite a lot of extra work between each scan line and There are fewer dropped bytes as well because we're doing less work Let's just try clear Row that didn't work at all interesting that we get about a second worth of snow after each call So I think it's trying to do something Right. Well, I think I've broken clear line No, do not save Vi. Yeah, that's upset too Okay, I think there are some bugs But on the whole it's mostly working So let's go and take another look at the code Yeah, clear line failed because I called dirty row that Modifies HL. So what this is doing here is it's writing lots of spaces to the dirty buffer That's never gonna work. So we actually want to put that up there so Think that's safe I don't want to decrease update rows too much to be honest Because The lower this is the higher the number of frames it will take to to update the screen a frame We have sixty two point five frames per second. It's actually pretty quick Let's Let's set this to one and see how bad it can be I think so Was I oh, yeah, the other thing I wanted to do was to clear the What's the set to the dirty buffer on? first Run so I thought that happened in TTY in it actually Yeah, do ED all Clears the whole screen it calls clear L for everything, but of course clear L was broken So, yeah, okay. This is this ought to be this ought to be working now Okay, how's this behaving? Yeah Let's try clear Yeah, you see updating one row at a time scrolling is slow and kind of weird Yes, you can see how strange things happen as it updates part of the screen at a time So we definitely need to be faster than that on the other hand it does not appear to be dropping bits nano works more or less Okay, well whatever's going on there is not Pissed to be not updating Not scrolling that part of the screen No, let's try vi Let's try vi with a What's a decent sized file see local There we go. Yeah, that's that's very unhappy. Oh I know what's going on. I know what's going on Or do I did I remember to set the tty size? I think I actually have You have to do this every run stty rows stty calls I Cannot type Okay, I cannot remember the command to get it to tell me the screen size Also, I cannot Reliably type in this thing while staring down that little phone screen which is down here Which is what I'm actually seeing the output on at a certain amount of delay Okay, so it's better. We're gonna have to up the update count But it's definitely plausible and with a reasonably steady image No snow even when it's busy. That's a good thing here it is with update rows set eight as it was before and It's oh, there's snow. Yeah eight is a bit too optimistic But it's definitely working excellent and You do need to fix some of the escape codes you can see the the man Prompt at the bottom is truncated at the beginning. Oh, I see missing characters Cursors Well, actually, it's not it's not the end of the world There's a simple fix we can do for that So we've got this instat here that tests to see whether the interface is writable well What we're gonna do is I rather want to inline this to avoid the call ret overhead Right, let's move these into Constants we then need to go to interface and Max the constants Yep, and what we're gonna do is go here to display and every iteration through we are going to see whether the interface is readable and Give up if it is So what this will do is if it ever sees the interface is readable it immediately stops Returns to the main loop Where we read the byte from the interface and then we continue with the redraw The next frame it will glitch the It will glitch the redraw six actually a little But I don't think anyone will notice this So Yeah, we're still in the man page control L to redraw That's not great Yeah, what this is doing is it's drawing a few is updating a few rows Then a character comes in so it stops redrawing The character is processed through the state machine This Causes the screen to scroll which dirties everything Therefore when it does the redraw it starts again at the top of the screen So that's not brilliant. I mean it's producing correct results It's just not a very nice user experience So in fact we want to prioritize redrawing the screen over Running the TTY state machine But we can do that By adding another ring buffer


well boys there was no trailer in the state of play very sad ironically enough however like two minutes into this data play a new poster got leaked for the game so that's that's fun another leak can you guess who did it this time it's trends again trends and Funko or the only two people that just don't understand what keeping a secret is I am so frustrated I honestly am so frustrated because this is yet another leak for FNAF security breach it's just really annoying like it seems like we cannot get a break like every month there's a new leak whether it's with Funko on their list of new merchandise or you know the calendar by trends couple months back and now they're doing it again but this time with a poster now I made a community post about this not too long ago but I am lifting the spoilers for FNAF security breach on this channel so we've done a lot of videos on the leaks and all of them I've always blackened out the characters in the thumbnail to avoid people getting spoiled but now at this point it's like what's the point you know it sucks honestly I wish we didn't get all these spoilers I would love to go into the game not knowing what the characters look like and I think that applies to basically everyone but at this point there's been so many leaks and they're all out there now it's like you know even the subreddit has lifted the spoiler tag like last month I want to say let's all smash the like at the same time three two one go go go go go so before we get into the actual poster I want to talk about another leak which if you can't tell from my hand gesture it's not an actual leak it's another hoax so in a previous video we looked at some leaked screenshots of security breach but in actuality all three of the images that we looked at were fake two of them were from a PlayStation 4 dreams fan game and then another one was just made by a couple of friends so I actually almost missed this one it came out yesterday on August the 5th and this is what it is so as you can see when the mall it looks like we're being chased down by Montgomery on the escalator and it looks like Freddie is up top on the second floor we have a lot of rooms to look through we have the ice cream room don't know what that necessarily means maybe it's an ice cream parlor not just you know a room filled with ice cream we have two waiting areas not sure what we're waiting for in a mall and then we have a VR arcade up top now right off the bat this does look pretty real you know like the models look cool the location looks alright I guess it's nothing too spectacular I would be very disappointed if this is what it looked like but it still doesn't look that bad it even has the PlayStation VR which we now know that security breach is not going to be in VR upon release but you know and based on the PlayStation state of play it seems like we could have expected to see this in a trailer for the state of play however of course the state of play came and it went without any mention of security but this was proven fake way before the state play even happened according to Kane Carter which is where I actually found this leak yesterday Kane says that after some research he can conclude with confidence that this is sadly a fake it is using some private fan-made 3d models as far as I'm aware Kane does not say where these models came from but it seems like they came from some other person in the modeling community because there were some modelers in the comments of Kane's post saying oh this looks like mine but Kane says it's not Kane says that he isn't talked to someone that knows where these models came from and he says that they are in fact private so anyways I just wanted to cover this really quickly before we hop into the poster so if you see this going around the internet it's fake don't believe it just like the past three images so now that that is out of the way let's move on to the official poster for FNAF security breach so again this was leaked by trends over in the Star Wars saga of their website for some reason the first thing that everyone cares about is how big is it it is exactly 22.375 inches horizontally and then 34 inches vertically I know everyone wanted that information let's see what is actually on the poster so of course we have the logos down at the bottom for FNAF and security breach and then we have the main gang of the game we have Vanny in the top left we have Glamrock Chica Montgomery Glamrock Freddy Roxanne and security girl it was kind of hard to say based upon her previous teaser but I think it's pretty safe to say with this new poster that has been leaked that we will play as whoever this female security guard is in the game I have no clue where we are on this poster if that matters at all we definitely do seem to be inside the mall maybe one the stage but all of the characters honestly look really fucking good we finally now know what Glamrock Chica looks like we have not had a teaser for her yet all we had to go off of was her Funko action figure she honestly looks strikingly similar to the action figure of course with the exception of the reused parts for the figure but you know it does look like what she looks like we also have a better view of Vanny she was in a previous teaser but she was just a silhouette show so we couldn't quite see what she looks like and of course she has a knife because she is going to be the villain in this game yeah so Vanny is ready to get killing and it looks like if we zoom in real quick I don't know guys that mask it does have a stitch but it doesn't look like that stitch is colored in just saying also the eyes are glowing red so of course that's another sign that you know she's gonna be the villain looking at the background a bit better it does appear that we are in the mall like I said it looks like we are on the stage looks like there are lights overhead there's a backdrop with some stars on it if you look closely I think there's also a human off to the left near Glamrock Freddy's head so if that guy has any significance I have no clue but he's there she's there they are there so again the designs look fantastic I honestly love this poster and would love to have it on my wall when it gets released it doesn't have a release date I know I probably should have mentioned that earlier all it says is coming soon so looking at the security girl for a quick second she does have a flashlight like in her teaser did she have a cab in her teaser I have no clue she did so she's lost her hat now what lower significance that has I have no clue guys speculate in the comments yeah so it appears that she's running away from the characters it looks like she's not hanging out with them she's running away from either the animatronics or just Fanny and the animatronics are just there I will say something that sets me off with these characters is just how little they look like animatronics you know like especially Roxanne honestly like have a good look at them at first glance they don't look at all like the traditional FNAF animatronics so I think that is very interesting to note I don't know if that is a design thing for the poster or if they will look more like robots in the game Vanny of course is not a robot she is wearing her full bunny costume with the blue bow tie as well again going back to Glenrock Chica she has her feathers up top in a bow tie she has her green Dorito earrings Montgomery looks exactly the same as his teaser and his trends calendar that might even be the same model honestly like it looks strikingly similar Glenrock Freddy he's doing his traditional pose where he's grabbing his microphone on his stand he's got his fist in the air he's ready to sing I still think Freddy looks more like a leopard than a bear but he still looks great there's not really much to say besides hey we finally know what most of the characters officially look like it's hard to know if this poster is going to be the final product because last time with the trends calendar Scott said that these that it wasn't the finished artwork so if this is finalized I have no clue as of the recording of this video Scott has not said anything that will probably change very soon but as of now that's where it is so guys there's only two more days until August the 8th and I am 99.9% sure that we are going to get something whether it's just something as small as Scott saying hey here's an updated list of all the current projects we'll get something security breach trailer security breach teaser teaser for Scott's game that he's making by himself update on the movie whether it be a teaser but I feel like that's gonna be unlikely I think at the most if we get movie news Scott will come out and say oh you know the movies going great or hey we're working on yet another script update on the triple a game because that is going to be getting into development sometime soon Scott said that it was delayed until late 2020 to start development so that should be starting soon if I remember correctly universal is making it and it's going to be a multiplayer for an af game so that's exciting how late I will get book news that's boring no one wants that but we will get something so yeah that's basically it keep an eye out on the 8th for all of the wacky stuff that's going to hopefully be released and I will see you all on the flip side goodbye


So first of all it's to recognize and accept the fact that it is a struggle, it's not easy for us and the thing is the reason why it's so difficult is because we're the first generation going through it. You know I was just talking to my friend yesterday and you know and I said to him you know for my parents it seemed like it was easier because you know yeah they raised us you know they provided for us they were amazing parents but you know in the afternoon I would go out and play with friends and that was fine you know I would play soccer and hide and seek and you know go to friends place and they would come to our place and you know it was basically you know do whatever and you know that's how I learned empathy and that's how I learned how to negotiate and resolve conflict and such important life skills you don't develop those life skills when you're on social media you don't develop it when you're playing video games some of it you do but most of it you don't another very troubling study is about the levels of empathy among the young generation they've gone down and and again as a result of too much time on the screen not enough time playing in the sandbox together so today we're making it up as we go along and and and it is very so first of all as parents you know to be easier on ourselves first thing second just to put boundaries and you know the boundaries have to be whether it's around x number of hours in front of the screen and there are more and more programs today that can limit screen time you know from within the smartphone so utilize those and another thing and this I owe this to my to my brother-in-law you know when I talked to him about it and he said wow you know you sound like the you know the prophet of doom you're a happiness professor come on and and and then he said you know instead the way I think about it instead of of thinking about it in terms of what they don't do think about what they do do in other words create alternatives and what that means is that we need to put more time so okay so they won't be on the screen but what will they do instead will they play you know ball with their friends great if possible more challenging now in times of corona but maybe play a board game with their family and that means with you too and that means we can't use the screen as a babysitter we just need to become more involved and and you know the nice thing about it is that as we become more involved we also potentially find treasures of happiness the number one predictor of happiness is quality time we spend with people we care about and who care about us and many of us have forgotten that it is an incredibly important thing to remember and when I look into the future knowing that the next generation has less less empathy it terrifies me because I know how much and how important empathy has been for us to create what we have created for ourselves so it makes me a bit nervous in fact uh every time our producer gets somebody else who's wants to send books I always make sure that I get a physical copy because I'm so tired I stare at my screen enough and to be able to close my computer and go on the porch with a with a coffee and an open a book it is I look forward to those moments in in my day just talk about an island of sanity and serenity and for myself who grew up as Gen X normalcy you know having the computer open is is a work thing where kids now it's it's a mishmash of that's where they play that is where they're going to be working that's where they study uh that's an that's an incredibly it seems to me to be to be messy with all of those things connected to the same mechanism