Had an interesting e-mail last week that didn’t seem quite right but after checking it out, it was. Thought I’d share it with you. It came from Mike Schaffer in Tampa, Florida.

Dear GM: Just wanted to report to you that I picked up your WRTV channel 6 station down here in Tampa, Florida during the early evening hour between 6:30-7:00 PM ET tonight, Saturday, June 16, 2007.

I recall a man standing to the left side of the US Capital (sic) building with what appears to be the US flag waving between them.

After that image was the National Association of NAB Broadcasters (sic) with the American Cancer Society logo on the bottom left corner. On the right side was your station logo “rtv6″.

After that a Time Life – The following is a paid advertisement showing early band entertainment singers and groups.

I have calculated that the distance was 841 miles with a heading of 347 degrees.

Have any other viewers reported to you they have seen your station from afar?

New viewer,

Mike Schaffer

RTV6’s Director of Engineering Brian Vetor says it’s very possible due to what is called an “atmospheric skip.” Basically, everything was in alignment for a few moments in the atmosphere to allow our analog signal to “skip” all the way to Florida!

Pretty amazing…it generally doesn’t last long (a minute or two) but it can happen. And apparently did.

So, I watched online Friday night KOTV’s coverage as Tulsa took the wraps off the 1957 Plymouth Belvedere that was lowered into a “time capsule” 50 years ago. Seems now it would have been better off in a barn out on Highway 33 for that half century.

Time capsules had not been quite perfected, I guess. The car was a mess, rusty with the steel peeling off. The engine was a mess, too and they had to pry the doors, hood and trunk open.

I remember clearly when they put the capsule into the grounds of the court house in June of 1957. Today, I’m trying to remember why Tulsa’s city fathers chose the contents of the capsule and what they thought those of us opening it in 2007 would think.

1957 was certainly a different time. Only a handful of people had heard of John F. Kennedy and Vietnam was not in our vocabulary. Although it was just around the corner.

I wasn’t old enough to have read George Orwell. But his warnings of life in 1984, written just nine years earlier, made people fearful of that time 27 years away.

The Cold War was growing more intense; Soviet Secretary Khrushchev was four years into the job. When the Tulsa ceremonies were held, Sputnik wasn’t in our vocabulary, either. Nuclear war certainly was, especially with all the drills at school and the CONELRAD emergency alert system.

Perhaps Tulsa’s city fathers thought those artifacts might be uncovered following some disaster.

There were other items chosen to place in the car to give the folks of 2007 an idea of life 50 years ago. A case of Schlitz beer (in tin cans) was stashed in the trunk, in the glovebox was a women’s purse with typical contents, fourteen bobby piins, a ladies compact, plastic rain cap, serveral combs, a tube of lipstick, a pack of gum, facial tissues, bills and coins ($2.73) and a pack of cigarettes and matches.

Also included was a five gallon can of Sunray DX Boron gasoline and a jar of Oklahoma crude oil.

Anyway, it was fun and brought back a lot of fond memories of a great time in our lives, even with all that was going on. I’m not sure that will ring true for today’s kids. But, I’m betting it will.

(Note: I need to give proper credit to the donation of the 1957 Plymouth. I had remembered it as one dealer. It was actually supplied through the cooperation of the Plymouth Division of Chrysler and Tulsa Plymouth dealers Wilkerson Motor Company, Cox Motor Company. Vance Motor Company, Forster Riggs and Parrish-Clark.)

I’ve been looking forward to this week for fifty years. And, it appears I’m in for a big disappointment.

Back in 1957, as part of the semi-centennial of the state of Oklahoma, my hometown, Tulsa, put together a “time capsule” and buried it in a concrete vault. There were several items put into the capsule to be dug up in the distant year of 2007 for the folks of the future to marvel over as the Sooner State celebrated its centennial.

The featured item was a brand new 1957 Plymouth Belvedere Sport Coupe donated by Parrish and Clark Motors (long gone from Tulsa). The finned gold and white beauty was wrapped in a protective plastic and lowered into the vault on the southeast corner of the Tulsa County Courthouse lawn. Gazing into the future and imagining hovering cars and electromagnetic power, the city fathers put a can of gasoline in the trunk so they could start the car in case cars of 2007 didn’t use petroleum. Good old naive 1957.

Anyway, this week officials in Tulsa opened the vault in preparation for hoisting the Plymouth out on Friday. And they discovered the vault partly filled with water, soaking the Plymouth. As you remember, Chrysler products of that, and later, eras didn’t handle moisture well and rusted easily. I’m guessing this car’s not cherry.

It looks like the folks that put the concrete vault together may be related to the guys that did the concrete work on the Marion County Library.

So, tomorrow’s the big day. I have planned to be there for the past fifty years. But I won’t make it. Which probably isn’t a bad thing, considering the water-logged vault.

However, there’s one technology they didn’t have an inkling about back in 1957, the Internet. The ceremonies will be streamed live and then available by video on the local CBS affiliate’s, KOTV’s web site.

I’ll be tuned in.

I’ve written a lot about the upcoming date in February of 2009, when TVs all across the county will go dark. That’s the date set by the Congress for broadcasters to turn off their current analog transmitters.

As part of that transition, the Federal Communications Commission has set rules requiring that all analog-only sets on store shelves sport a prominently-displayed warning label. The new requirement became official May 25. This past Monday, FCC Enforcement Bureau officials went hunting and caught six retailers with their labels down. And these aren’t Mom and Pop shops. These are the big boys: Kmart, CompUSA, RadioShack, Best Buy, Circuit City and Target.

Each was slapped with an official citation and warned that if they get caught again, their wallets will be a bit lighter; actually a lot lighter. Fines for violation of the labeling requirement amount to a maximum of $11,000 per instance, up to $97,500 for a single continuing violation.

The retailers were invited to respond to the citation via personal interview at an FCC field office convenient to corporate headquarters or via written statement. We’ll see what happens.

The takeaway? The FCC is serious. And, no doubt, still smarting from the rejection of their obscenity rulings by the federal appeals court.

Looks like sanity has prevailed. Today, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found that a Federal Communications Commission (FCC) policy penalizing expletives that were “accidentally” broadcast was invalid. In a fervor started back during the Janet Jackson “wardrobe malfunction” at the Super Bowl, the Commission has taken it to the limit, trying to sanction content of which the broadcasters had no control

Included in the arguments were references to a broadcast of the Golden Globes awards show by NBC when U2 lead singer Bono uttered the phrase ”f*****g brilliant.” That broadcast was in January 2003. A year later, the FCC declared that the ”F-word” in any context ”inherently has a sexual connotation” and is subject to enforcement action. They also ruled in March of last year that Fox had violated decency rules when Cher blurted “f***” during the 2002 Billboard Music Awards and actress Nicole Richie used a variation of the word and “s**t” during the 2003 awards show.

So, today, the court declared the FCC action ”arbitrary and capricious” and said it didn’t think the action could survive First Amendment scrutiny. They didn’t outlaw the policy outright, but they’re headed the right direction.

The court ruled in favor of a challenge led by the Fox Network, sending the case back to the FCC to let the agency attempt to provide a ”reasoned analysis” for its new approach to indecency and profanity. Although Fox was the plaintiff in the appeal, representatives of other networks were interested parties and submitted written arguments to the court. Broadcasters had asked the appeals court last year to invalidate the FCC’s conclusion that profanity-laced broadcasts on four different shows were indecent, even though no fines were issued.

In a majority opinion, the court said all speech covered by the FCC’s indecency policy is fully protected by the First Amendment. ”It appears that under the FCC’s current indecency regime, any and all uses of an expletive is presumptively indecent and profane with the broadcaster then having to demonstrate to the satisfaction of the commission, under an unidentified burden of proof, that the expletives were ‘integral’ to the work.” (In other words, we can’t tell you what’s obscene but we know when we hear it)

”In the licensing context, the Supreme Court has cautioned against speech regulations that give too much discretion to government officials,” the court said. They gave a nod to what the court called ”today’s realities” citing the ability of parents to limit what their children see using technological tools recently made available.”The proliferation of satellite and cable television channels—not to mention internet-based video outlets—has begun to erode the ‘uniqueness’ of broadcast media, while at the same time, blocking technologies such as the V-chip have empowered viewers to make their own choices about what they do, and do not, want to see on television,” the appeals court wrote.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not hiding behind the First Amendment. But, when the government gets involved in dictating what can be broadcast or printed, I get concerned. You should too.