As always around this time of year just about every year except for 2005 (at least recently), the NBA (Golden State Warriors-Toronto Raptors) and NHL (Boston Bruins-St. Louis Blues) have again reached their "championship" rounds; my personal "best" NBA Finals/Stanley Cup Final "duo" this decade, at least in part 'cause of just how plain exciting each series was that June, I'd have to say 2013 would win that award in a landslide, in my opinion, since the Miami Heat epically rebounded from being "on the brink" with just seconds remaining in game 6 that year to end up defeating the San Antonio Spurs; meanwhile, the Boston Bruins and Chicago Blackhawks both emerged from the lockout-shortened season a few months prior to square off in an insanely "back-and-forth" series and end up with an equally insane ending to the series, which saw the Blackhawks celebrating their (back then) second championship this past decade; combine that with a (relative) lack of "sweeps" (the same team winning all of the first four games of those series, out of a possible maximum of seven games per series) - in the NBA, the only one this decade was last year (Cleveland Cavaliers-Golden State Warriors) - before then, the most recent one of those came over a decade ago (Cleveland Cavaliers-San Antonio Spurs 2007), while the NHL rebounded from experiencing four consecutive "sweeps" during the last half of the '90s, three of which involved the Detroit Red Wings, to not have had any since then, while, in baseball, the only one of those this decade was back in 2012 (Detroit Tigers-San Fransisco Giants, a series that I, personally, remember completely missing, since this area got impacted by Hurricane Sandy that week; just like the NBA, the previous "sweep" there was also in 2007), along with my personal life being essentially as "carefree" as it had ever been, at least at the time, since I basically only had to worry about the last few final exams of my high school years, otherwise re-living old K-12 memories, which were pretty much the definition of the phrase "opposites attract" (more about that down below), for the most part, and June 2013 would end up being one of the most glorious months in my entire life so far!
...speaking of Canada, it seemed, growing up, that Montreal (which is at least close to Toronto...) somehow always end
This past weekend brought about the "end of an era" on local radio, as WPLJ discontinued music-based programming after almost a half-century of various of those types of formats; "PLJ", as its hosts constantly referred to the station on-air, was, quite honestly, the first station in quite a few years, at least around here, to change broadcasting formats, but merely one of many to have done so over the decades locally; in fact, I'd say that just within my lifetime, it seems like just about every station has changed formats - like, maybe a handful of them still remain the same as they were when I was born/barely "alive" back in the late '90s; WCBS-880, 1010-WINS, and WBBR-1130 have all had their various "all-news" formats my entire life, but older generations around here probably still remember when stations like WABC (770), WOR (710), and WNYM (970) still aired music instead of talk, as they have in recent years; also, WCBS-FM controversially changed from its "oldies" format between 2005 and 2007; also, many of the other FM stations around here were originally like that along with "CBS-FM", but have all since become "contemporary" in format, and, for that matter, if you've listened to 101.1 around here in recent years, you've most likely noticed that not even that station has its famous "oldies" format anymore, having moved exclusively to post-1970 playlists; for me, personally, as I'm sure you've noticed by now, since I keep talking about sports so often, those stations (WEPN and WFAN) have added "simulcasts" within the past decade or so, and, in WEPN's case, dropped its AM position (1050-AM) just in time for the 2012 college football season in order to move to 98.7-FM, which, in turn, ended up eliminating WBLS and WRKS-FM, both of which served the local African-American radio-listening community; also, WFAN moved to 101.9-FM right around that time, yet that station at least kept its 660-AM signal after doing so, so, with all the changes in radio around here historically, culminating, most recently, with WPLJ having left the air, at least as we all knew it around here over the decades, this past weekend, there have at least been a few "constants" remaining in local radio broadcasting in recent years!
Also, this month will have marked a decade now, if you can believe it, since television went "all-digital" in this country; that switch, postponed from its original date (2/17/09-6/12/09), happened so long ago, in fact, that I was technically still in middle school at the time, albeit with only a couple of weeks remaining in said "stage" of my life; the local television landscape, though, in contrast with the radio landscape, has pretty much remained constant, albeit with many more - perhaps you could even say hundreds, of various cable/satellite channels added over the years, but with very little of an "independent" presence, except for WLNY (channel 10), which kept its short late-night Long Island-based newscast up until 2012, although WMBC-TV, which once aired Asian-language newscasts, has maintained a 5 P.M. newscast these past few years; unfortunately, the timing of said newscast has led to just about no ratings being registered for that program; certainly, some of that must be due to channels 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 11, and (to a lesser extent) the various "public television" stations around here, although, later this year, channel 11 will change ownership for the first time ever, so not even those stations have remained "immune" to such massive changes in media...
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