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"Len" =3D=3D Len Over writes:

[...]

Len SO, WHERE ARE ALL THE MOVIES AND TV SHOWS FEATURING AMATEUR
Len RADIO...AND ESPECIALLY MORSE CODE?

Where are all the movies and television shows featuring normal
families with normal marriages and normal children? Where are all the
movies and television shows featuring normal employees working for
normal employers? Normal is boring. Conflict is exciting.

American culture considers CB radio to be used mostly for evading
speed-traps. This illustrates a basic conflict (man versus society)
which is featured in forms of entertainment predating the Trojan war,
let alone CB radio. This particular conflict also appeals to the
American mind-set of bending the rules and avoiding punishment.

Amateur radio is used for extending the state of the art, for
expressing international goodwill, and for emergency communications.
The first two make for bad theater, but the last has potential.

Movies and television shows have been created around this type of
topic for quite some time, with man versus nature being the most
relevant conflict in this case. Amateur radio is usually only used
when normal communications systems are unavailable. This doesn't
exactly happen on a weekly basis, so it'd be difficult to make a
television show based on this scenario. As for a movie, well,
the potential is there, but I haven't seen it used effectively. It
was a gimmick in _Frequency_ but personally I'd rather see something
like the story of the operators lost from Mount St. Helens, or maybe a
disaster flick covering The Big One out here in California.

Oh, yeah, Morse code. I got a kick out of the satellite scenes in
_Enemy of the State_. Dahdidahdit dahdadidah.

Jack.
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Jack Twilley
jmt at twilley dot org
http colon slash slash www dot twilley dot org slash tilde jmt slash
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