Snow on the satellite dish
Goodbye to snow on the satellite dish. The snow will still be there, but we'll never know. Because we'll never have to shovel the dish again.
For a long time, you see, the Associated Press wires came to us from the sky. They beamed from the AP — located nowhere and everywhere — into deep, dark outer space and bounced back to Earth and Virginia and McLean, and we grabbed the copy when needed for the site and paper. Wars, inaugurations, celebrities, tragedies, victories, and all the mystery that's news landed in big dishes pointed at particular clouds.
Except when it snowed.
When it snowed hard, the wires stopped. The snow covered the dish, and we had to send someone with a broom to knock the snow off the dish. Seriously. Someone went to the roof with a broom and cleaned the dish. And we weren't alone. AP would sometimes send instructions across the wires on what to do with the broom. We would laugh and feel sorry for AP Cleveland and other cold parts of the wire network.
The wires going forward will come to us through the Internet — not quite wires but closer to wires than satellites were. As friend Bob at work put it, we'll just have to watch for blizzards in the server room.
I'll be rooting for that.
