Today's Issues continues on AFR with your host, Tim Wildman
>> Steve Jordahl: Today's Issues continues on AFR with your host, Tim Wildmon, president of the American Family Association.
>> Tim Wildmon: Welcome back, everybody, to Today's Issues on the American Family Radio network. We got 24 and a half more minutes left on the show today. Joining me in studio, or us in studio, rather, Steve Paisley Jordan. Good morning, Steve.
>> Steve Jordahl: Hey, good morning, everybody.
>> Tim Wildmon: So, Ed's here, Fred's here. I'm Tim. For those new to the show, the
>> Steve Jordahl: half hour, you're logging in at the right time, I gotta tell you.
>> Ed Vitagliano: Logging in if you're just new to the show. Oh, yeah.
>> Steve Jordahl: Starting to watch or listen.
>> Tim Wildmon: Right.
>> Steve Jordahl: You picked a good half hour.
>> Tim Wildmon: Right, so.
>> Ed Vitagliano: Because that Krish Woodward hour was Krish Woodward. That was. You can't. You saying it was subpar?
>> Steve Jordahl: No, not at all. Not at all. I'm just saying, you've picked a good.
>> Ed Vitagliano: That's a nice shirt you got on. That's a black shirt with the Beatles from. Is that their Abbey Road? Abbey Road album in a little bit of color. A lot of color. I like that.
>> Steve Jordahl: Yeah.
>> Tim Wildmon: Who's in order?
>> Steve Jordahl: Okay, so if I can see, it's
>> Ed Vitagliano: the one where they're walking across the street.
>> Steve Jordahl: Yeah. So, it is. If I'm correct, that is George. George Harrison, Ringo Starr, Paul. And then, John.
>> Ed Vitagliano: I think John Lennon.
>> Tim Wildmon: Which one was barefoot?
>> Steve Jordahl: George is George. Yeah, I have to look.
>> Tim Wildmon: Was barefooted. Were they all barefooted? We got to do a recreation of that out here on our street. Out here in front of the building
>> Ed Vitagliano: with you, me, Fred and Steve.
>> Tim Wildmon: Right.
>> Ed Vitagliano: We could. Because we have a crosswalk.
>> Tim Wildmon: That's what I'm saying. Yeah, I think that would be. Put it on a T shirt. You talk about selling. we'd sell out.
>> Steve Jordahl: All right, so it goes in order from, From my right to my left, it is George Harrison, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, and then John Lennon is the front.
>> Tim Wildmon: So that's an iconic photograph from the 20th century, the Beatles, crossing the street there. What's your first story, Steve?
>> Steve Jordahl: They continue to.
>> Tim Wildmon: Who's they?
>> Steve Jordahl: The, 18. they.
>> Ed Vitagliano: They who do everything.
>> Steve Jordahl: The, The NTSC.
>> Fred Jackson: NTSB.
>> Steve Jordahl: NTSB. Thank you. The National Transportation, Safety Board continues to investigate the accident that happened at LaGuardia Airport, on Saturday. was it Sunday? And, the, regional Air Canada jet that, crashed into a fire truck. they are, continuing to release information. One of the things they have just released is some more, atc, Traffic Control. Air Traffic Control audio. In this clip, you're going to hear the pilots themselves who tragically lost their lives. you're going to hear the traffic controller, I'm sorry. That instructed the fire truck to cross the Runway admit or say that he messed up. I don't want to say admit because the investigation is still ongoing. But let's listen to cut one. That wasn't good to watch. Yeah, I know, I was here. I tried to reach out to my stuff. We were dealing with an emergency earlier. I messed up. Nah man, you did the best he could.
Anthony Roman: Two pilots sacrificed themselves by remaining in straight path
so that's they're also finding that calling the two pilots that lost their lives as possibly heroes for saving other people on the plane. And Fred will talk to this a little bit more. But there is a story that they could have veered the plane away from the fire truck but that might have caused the fire truck to hit the wing which would have exploded and killed a lot more people. And I just want to hear. This is Anthony Roman, who's an FAA licensed commercial pilot talking about the pilots giving themselves opcut too.
>> Speaker E: Without question they did. And I believe they sacrificed themselves by remaining in a straight. They could have veered the aircraft to the right or left in an attempt to miss that truck. But that would have created a greater problem and probably more passengers severely injured and or lost. the pilots hit those brakes exceptionally hard and the passengers then knew something awful could happen.
>> Tim Wildmon: That was a. I saw the video from the side.
>> Tim Wildmon: Not, not the, not the angle that the pilots would have had. Although I don't know if there's video of that. And you're right, two pilots, the pilot and the co pilot, sadly they lost their lives in this accident that took place. Now that first video audio we heard the air traffic where the guys who got says I messed up and then the other guy says you did the best you could.
>> Fred Jackson: Yeah, he was. But right after the impact, there was another airliner, a frontier airliner, that landed and this atc, the air traffic controller was talking to him and the frontier pilot tried to comfort this ATC guy saying look, you did everything that you could. And this ATC guy, he obviously feels bad. In an earlier audio you heard the air traffic controller calling out to the fire, truck, stop, stop, stop. And the fire truck did not. Now the investigation is underway. I'm not clear as to whether the ATC guy that we're hearing was on ground control talking to the fire truck because there's two different frequencies. When the airplane is actually landing, they are talking to tower. When you land the tower says switch over to this frequency, which is ground frequency. The the fire truck presumably would have been on the ground frequency. This all has to be kind of investigated as to. Because there was a rumor yesterday that because of an ATC shortage, that this one air traffic controller was dealing with both frequencies, both ground and both tower. That proved to be false. So there were two people involved. so it was a horrible accident. By the way, you always hear the miracles stories afterwards. The flight attendant appears. You know, there's a flight attendant that usually sits up near the front, right
>> Tim Wildmon: behind the cockpit, facing the, facing the crowd.
>> Fred Jackson: that flight attendant, because of the impact, the chair she was sitting on was thrown 300ft. They found her 300ft from the fuselage of the airplane.
>> Ed Vitagliano: You mean outside?
>> Fred Jackson: Outside.
>> Ed Vitagliano: She was jettisoned outside of a plane?
>> Fred Jackson: She was jettisoned outside. They found her in the seat with the seatbelt still on.
>> Ed Vitagliano: Alive?
>> Fred Jackson: Oh, yeah, she's alive.
>> Ed Vitagliano: That's incredible.
>> Fred Jackson: They've done interviews with her. Yeah, the impact threw her out. Well, if you look at the airplane, you can see the whole front end is just obliterated.
>> Tim Wildmon: That's why the pilot and co pilot died.
>> Fred Jackson: That's right.
>> Tim Wildmon: The impact there in the front of the airplane.
>> Fred Jackson: Yeah.
>> Tim Wildmon: And none of the passengers were hurt. Right.
>> Fred Jackson: There were about 40 passengers taken to, hospital and about 30 of them were released, pretty quickly. There's some more that had some more severe injuries. They're still in hospital.
Steve: It would seem to me that artificial intelligence could help in air traffic control
>> Tim Wildmon: Next story.
>> Steve Jordahl: Well, I do have. Can I ask one more question? It would seem to me that if there was ever a place where you could train artificial intelligence to help control a confusing situation, it would be air traffic control. because, there's it's.
>> Tim Wildmon: You first, you first, Steve.
>> Steve Jordahl: I know, I know.
>> Ed Vitagliano: It's all kinds of moving parts.
>> Steve Jordahl: And if we can get inside of
>> Ed Vitagliano: kind of a fail safe.
>> Steve Jordahl: Well, if we can get inside of diseases. It seems like an environment made for, for artificial intelligence, which can take a ton of data and analyze, it very quickly. And we're always hearing that the air traffic control systems are old and need to be replaced. has there been any talk, Fred, that you're aware of, of, artificial intelligence maybe being brought in and then
>> Tim Wildmon: I have an opinion. Okay, Come back to me.
>> Fred Jackson: Okay.
>> Tim Wildmon: Don't forget me over here. Should I keep my hand raised? Go ahead, Fred.
>> Fred Jackson: No, I have not heard. To answer your question, I have not heard, from Transportation, Secretary Duffy about AI being incorporated in that situation. But having flown some airplanes, boy, I would be Reluctant to be dependent on AI in a situation like this.
>> Tim Wildmon: that's what I was going to say. I appreciate what you're saying, Steve, and I know computers have changed the world overall for the better. And, and for, And I could see AI, entering the, entering the picture here. Don't. But don't tell me that before I get in an airplane because I, if I'm a pilot, and I've never been a pilot, but I, like Fred has, I want to talk to a person on the ground, in an air traffic control situation who's visit physical like we've always done it. Who's physically watching the planes. Yeah, they use computers themselves. I mean, but just to turn it just. It's almost to me like these driverless cars. Okay. I know they're going to tell me, well, driverless car is safer than you driving. Well, I don't care.
>> Ed Vitagliano: Until it's not.
>> Tim Wildmon: Yes.
>> Ed Vitagliano: Until you're waving your hand under a faucet that doesn't seem to turn the water on.
>> Tim Wildmon: You know me. So I don't, I don't, I don't want to drive with this car.
>> Steve Jordahl: Right.
>> Tim Wildmon: I want to drive myself. so I'm going to be. I don't know about turning over our air traffic control.
>> Fred Jackson: I could see AI possibly being used for traffic at altitude. so reading where planes. Like I've shown you guys the flight of where on any day there's a lot of traffic at 30,000 plus feet. I could see perhaps AI helping out in separation of traffic. But for when you're landing an airplane.
Do pilots actually take off and land or when does autopilot come in
>> Ed Vitagliano: All right, so let me ask you on that. Do pilots actually take off and land or when does autopilot come in? Do you know?
>> Fred Jackson: Well, autopilot, on takeoff, the pilot has control.
>> Ed Vitagliano: Okay.
>> Fred Jackson: All right. but soon after takeoff, you get up to, you know, three, 4,000ft. You can press a button and then the computer takes over. basically.
>> Tim Wildmon: But that's when they play video games.
>> Fred Jackson: ATC may be still talking to you because there may be a variation between the time that the flight plan was filed and now you have a new situation out there.
>> Tim Wildmon: Yeah.
>> Ed Vitagliano: So these pilots can't walk off. They can't go and make a sandwich.
>> Fred Jackson: No.
>> Ed Vitagliano: They're always in their seats prepared to take over.
>> Fred Jackson: Now, you do have technology today that, that does allow for what's called zero. Zero landings in other computer can land the airplane. but again, I think if you talk to most pilots, they don't want to give up that to a computer at that Point.
>> Tim Wildmon: You know what's so cool, too, is things are computerized. I know we were. I was on a jet with an approach to, our airport here in Tupelo. And. And this is true all over the country, but this was at night about two months ago or so. And the, pilot control the, lights on the Runway.
>> Fred Jackson: Yes. Dial in a frequency.
>> Ed Vitagliano: so he turned it on because he was coming.
>> Tim Wildmon: Coming in so he could see the Runway. You know, he lit up the Runway, and then when he landed, it turned off.
>> Fred Jackson: Yep.
>> Tim Wildmon: Pretty cool. Pretty, pretty cool. Next story. Steve.
Tim Miller: Local television news is in decline, ratings are declining
>> Ed Vitagliano: All right.
>> Steve Jordahl: Hey, let's talk about local news.
>> Tim Wildmon: Let's do that.
>> Steve Jordahl: Tim, you sent around a story. it was titled, what's behind the decline of Local TV News? I was involved in some local radio news back in the day, and I found it incredibly fulfilling and important, and it is in decline. TV news stations are struggling, with, Their markets are declining, the ratings are declining, the revenue is not coming in like it is. The whole news landscape has changed so much that you can get news in so many different places that nobody's tuning in to either, the television or maybe even radio. Local news to get there. like weather. You can check weather on an app. Right.
>> Tim Wildmon: Aircraft is. Sadly, in my opinion, I'm kind of nostalgic here, but this is a. This. We're seeing a change, an era, I guess, of the way things were in America for 100 years or more. Well, television didn't start Television. Yes. Televisions are getting 70 or 80 years old anyway, as far as mainstream. But the newspapers I went to, I, grew up reading the newspaper, as did many people listening to me right now. And, that's where I got. That's where I got a sneeze and waits on no man. So, glad I got a cough button here. But, so I, But also the local television news. Right. We all. Most. If you're a baby boomer, you grew up on that. Your, Your parents watched, you watched your local, televisions. Your favorite television. Sometimes you only had one channel, maybe two. If you lived in a big city, you had maybe three. but, And then you had your newspaper. Well, the newspapers are. And I majored in journalism in college, so I love newspapers. You know, I didn't mind my hands having ink on them. I would just, read everything. Start with the sports, which is the most important part of my world growing up. And then. And then the news and then the editorials and the letters to the editor. Now that, now that I reached my age, I'm 63. And Allison, my wife, 63, now she reads the obits first. See who died. Uh-huh. That's morbid. But.
>> Ed Vitagliano: Yeah, but you become. Because you know more of the people who are in the obits.
>> Tim Wildmon: That's right, yeah. How'd you know that? Well, same with you.
>> Ed Vitagliano: Yeah, Well, I don't, but my wife does.
>> Tim Wildmon: Right.
>> Ed Vitagliano: Hey, did you hear who died? No, I don't want to know.
>> Steve Jordahl: I don't want to know.
>> Ed Vitagliano: I want to say, hey, where's so and so years ago.
>> Tim Wildmon: So bits like three columns long.
Curtis Hauck says local television news is going out of business
anyway, so, but the, the tele. I do think it's kind of sad that our local television news is going out of business.
>> Steve Jordahl: I spoke with Curtis Hauck of Media Research center about this yesterday and here's what he had to say about this. Cut 12.
>> Curtis Hauck: Smartphones have created the ability for us to get the weather right outside our window or look at Google Maps without having to check the local. Yeah, it's a combination of the rise of the Internet and also amusing ourselves to death situation. The payment structure, just isn't there as what it used to be. and I think a lot of Americans increasingly are also nationally focused.
>> Tim Wildmon: I do think weather over the last 60 years has been a big draw for the local news. Yeah, yeah, the weather, and kept them alive.
>> Ed Vitagliano: These stations.
>> Tim Wildmon: Oftentimes your 10 o' clock news, that's what we experience here in the central time zone. Maybe in the eastern time zone they do 11. And now sometimes you got your local news you're doing at five or six o'. Clock. That became a trend. But nowadays I know as much as my meteorologist, by clicking on my weather channel app. Yeah, I know what the weather is going to be 14 days from now, 10 days from now. You can look at the radar you get. I mean, so the weather, everybody has access to the weather. So that's not a, that's not a draw for the, news, for the local television news. Unless you have a personality that people like to tune into. Maybe. Yeah, something like that. but, but now sports, I don't know. Sports, you get your local high school sports, maybe.
>> Fred Jackson: Go ahead. No, I have some really fond memories of, of local television. Local radio.
>> Tim Wildmon: Yeah.
>> Fred Jackson: they brought.
>> Tim Wildmon: You do local radio yourself?
>> Fred Jackson: I did local radio and had, some experience with television. But it brought the community together. It really did. It brought the community together. my local TV station when I was growing up, for instance, at Christmas time, they would invite school Choirs in.
>> Steve Jordahl: Yeah.
>> Fred Jackson: And they would do Christmas carols live. Live.
>> Tim Wildmon: Yeah.
>> Fred Jackson: In fact, I have a funny story about my dad. He was so excited live. His son, you know, I was part of the choir, and he tried to take a picture with a flash camera and he put a Christmas ball of it instead of the.
>> Ed Vitagliano: What happened?
>> Fred Jackson: It's so.
>> Ed Vitagliano: Oh, man.
>> Fred Jackson: Anyway, he missed the moment, but it was great. And. And the local radio station where I. Where I worked, had. At 10 o' clock in the morning, the station owner had his own show, and it was called Swap Shop.
>> Tim Wildmon: Yeah, I remember those.
>> Fred Jackson: And you could call in and you could. I have a dog for sale. Or whatever the case may be. A cow, whatever.
>> Ed Vitagliano: Those are the days, man.
>> Fred Jackson: It was fantastic. and everybody kind of listened for that because it was local, live radio. It was wonderful.
>> Ed Vitagliano: Well, I just have a little funny story about that. So it's the 70s. I probably late junior high, maybe early high school. And my dad, every time I would come down for breakfast on a school day, my dad's already up. He's been up for an hour to whatever. He would always watch for us. The local news came out of Boston.
>> Fred Jackson: Yeah.
>> Ed Vitagliano: Okay. So we were 35 minutes away. WLBZ, WBZ was one of them.
>> Fred Jackson: Yeah.
>> Ed Vitagliano: And so, he would always watch the Boston news in the morning.
>> Tim Wildmon: Yeah.
>> Ed Vitagliano: I come down for breakfast and the news is on. Well, he started switching over, or maybe they started switching over to the national broadcast of the Today show.
>> Steve Jordahl: All right.
>> Ed Vitagliano: I had never watched it. My dad had never watched it. The first couple of days it was on, they would open the show with this. you know, today is March 20th. No, it says it's March 24th. welcome to Today. And my dad and I would just laugh. We would say, well, what day do you think it is, genius? Captain Obvious? Then we figured out, embarrassingly, that the name of the show was Today. The Today Show. Welcome. No, he's saying, welcome. This is today. We just say, ah. Ah, the dummies.
Steve: Local TV, local radio made me fall in love with radio
Well, we were the dummies.
>> Steve Jordahl: local tv, local radio. that's what made me fall in love with radio. And I was in love with radio growing up through high school. It was a different day. We didn't have national news. Yeah, I mean, there was three channels, and you got. You got it at five or at six or whenever, you know, Walter Cronkite came on. But.
>> Ed Vitagliano: And those shows initially were only on for 15 minutes.
>> Steve Jordahl: Right.
>> Ed Vitagliano: And then they moved to a half
>> Steve Jordahl: hour, half hour back when I remember.
>> Ed Vitagliano: And then they moved to an hour.
>> Steve Jordahl: but there was a massive storm that hit the Bay Area sometime in the late 70s. And the big station, KGO radio up in San Francisco started doing call ins and it's like all the power was out, so. But if you had a battery radio, you could still listen. And someone would call in and said, listen, my mom lives on, Fordyce Road. And I heard that it's underwater. Anybody have any information about that? And then someone would call in and say, fordyce Road is fine or whatever, or I can't reach my in laws, I can't reach out to my family. I want them to know I'm okay. And to me, the immediacy of that, the utility of that, the helpfulness of that, it wasn't just like my favorite song. It was important to know. And I fell in love with radio right then. And it's been a lifelong love of mine.
>> Fred Jackson: Yeah.
>> Tim Wildmon: Yep. Yep. Well, time didn't, Don't you think Facebook changed a lot of that too?
>> Ed Vitagliano: Well, just the Internet.
>> Tim Wildmon: Internet in general.
>> Ed Vitagliano: Just the Internet. To Steve's point and the one Fred's making too, we were more community centric back then. Now, hardly anybody. I don't say hardly anybody, but so many people, especially younger generations, they think about their communities in terms of their friends in school, but the focus seems to be on more national and international things.
>> Tim Wildmon: You know, I was thinking too about like when we were back in the 70s and even till the Internet came up, you look in the newspaper for movies.
>> Fred Jackson: Yeah.
>> Tim Wildmon: You wanted to go to. Want to go to movies on Friday night or what? Ah, Saturday night, whatever you had to look in the newspaper to see.
>> Fred Jackson: Yeah.
>> Tim Wildmon: What theater if you had more than one.
>> Ed Vitagliano: Right.
>> Tim Wildmon: And then what time the movie.
>> Ed Vitagliano: Yeah.
>> Steve Jordahl: And then you paid your $3 to get in.
>> Tim Wildmon: And I'll tell you another thing I appreciated about 70s too.
>> Steve Jordahl: Yeah.
>> Tim Wildmon: There wasn't 30 minutes of ads before a commercial movie came on.
>> Ed Vitagliano: In fact, you got. Usually got little car. you got cartoons, got a couple car cartoon or, or Three Stooges or something. Before the movie, sometimes you had two movies. I remember back when you double feature. double features?
>> Tim Wildmon: Yeah, double features. Yeah.
>> Ed Vitagliano: I paid 75 cents back in the day.
>> Tim Wildmon: Do what now? 75 cents to get in the movies.
>> Ed Vitagliano: Yeah. My dad remembers a nickel.
>> Fred Jackson: Oh my.
>> Ed Vitagliano: Back in the 30s now I'm older than.
>> Steve Jordahl: Am I older than you? I don't remember. I remember about $3 is when, when it started. For me.
>> Ed Vitagliano: This might have been a little bit of a discount theater. I, I don't remember, I'm guessing maybe.
>> Tim Wildmon: Yeah.
President Trump has placed a statue of Christopher Columbus outside Eisenhower executive office building
Got about a minute to go here. Reminiscing here. Well, the good old days.
>> Steve Jordahl: Donald Trump continues to tear down or reverse all the woke that's going that went on in the 2020s. He has placed a statue of Christopher Columbus outside the Eisenhower executive office building. One was torn down in, 2020 and tossed in Baltimore's harbor during the. Yeah. So, we're getting back to.
>> Tim Wildmon: That's good. It was disappointing. It was thrown in the harbor, but somebody retrieved the actual statue.
>> Steve Jordahl: Yes.
>> Tim Wildmon: And President Trump put it back at
>> Steve Jordahl: the, It's a replica of the one that was turned, in. I think they. They kind of defaced it to the
>> Tim Wildmon: point or Anyway, Christopher Columbus deserves. It's called the District of Columbia because it's a. That's after Christopher Columbus.
>> Steve Jordahl: Right.
>> Tim Wildmon: He was a great explorer that, led to the Americas at Italian, if
>> Steve Jordahl: I'm not mistaken there, Ed.
>> Tim Wildmon: Right.
>> Ed Vitagliano: Yes. Genoa, Genoese.
>> Tim Wildmon: We're out of time.
>> Ed Vitagliano: Like the baloney. I'm not making a political statement block.
>> Tim Wildmon: No, that's in, Italy.
>> Ed Vitagliano: It's not.
>> Tim Wildmon: Jeff, we're out of time. We thank you for yours. my thanks to Steve, Ed, Fred, Brent, Cole and Krish. We'll see you tomorrow.
