Longren.org has been really, really slow the last week or so. This site has never been this slow to load, even when I was hosting it out of my house on my cable connection. Granted, I didn’t get the traffic back then that I do now, it still shouldn’t be this slow.
Last time longren.org was being slow as shit, I posted an image of a graph from Site24×7, like I’ve done in this post. The response time in the earlier image is horrible, 4510 ms, but that’s a lot lower than I’m seeing now. As you can see from the image above in this post, the current average response time over the last 7 days is 6614 ms.
This has to be a result of something going on at Dreamhost. I say that because sometimes pages on longren.org will load up in a snap. Most of the time though they take between 15 and 30 seconds to load. Even sending queries to the database is slower than normal. Database queries are usually done being executed within 1 or 2 seconds. Lately, it’s been taking 5 to 9 seconds. Something is definitely up. Perhaps I will submit a support ticket to Dreamhost tomorrow. Yay.
The audio clip I posted yesterday of Sinclair CEO David Smith was pretty outrageous. He basically said losing Meidacom customers won’t have a noticeable impact on Sinclair’s business. It gets down to Sinclair not caring, they should want to provide their programming to as many households as possible. The clip is right below for you to hear if you haven’t.
Anyway, Mediacom and Sinclair have agreed on a deal that will keep Sinclair stations such as KDSM Fox 17 and KGAN on Mediacom’s lineup until the beginning of 2007. Here’s some info from Mediaweek:
Mediacom Communications has gotten a one-month reprieve in one of the industry’s most contentious retransmission battles. Only hours before Mediacom would have been forced to drop Sinclair Broadcast Group’s stations from its system, the two companies came to a temporary agreement that allows for the continued carriage of 22 Sinclair stations in 16 markets through Jan. 5, 2007.
In the last two days, negotiations played out in press conferences and releases. Things looked bleak for the 700,000 Mediacom subscribers (about half of Mediacom’s subscriber base) that would lose the stations, until yesterday morning in a press conference when Sinclair said it was considering a short-term extension to provide a final chance for the two companies to reach agreement.
This other Iowan went to the local Mediacom office and discovered what I hope Sinclair also discovered:
I asked for an antenna kit, as they were giving them to their customers to be able to get KGAN. The clerk told me I didn’t need one, because they had been able to find away around the restrictions that were prohibiting them from simply swapping KGAN with the CBS affiliate in the Quad Cities. I’m sure that was a come to Jesus moment for the folks at Sinclair. If Mediacom can do that, it pretty much makes KGAN irelevant.
Another update, Mediacom reached a deal to carry WHBF out of Rock Island (IL/IA border) in place of KGAN as of today, so Sinclair caved and decided not to pull out of negotiations. Sinclair will postpone removing KGAN until January 2nd, hoping to continue negotiations. Mediacom has the upper hand now. If they do indeed replace KGAN with another CBS affiliate, this will essentially destroy KGAN, because a huge chunk of their viewer are Mediacom subscribers. Sinclair has no choice but to decrease its asking price. This will still mean a rise in cable rates, as Mediacom was not previously paying for Sinclair broadcast stations at all, but Mediacom should be able to minimize it.
I started wondering if some sort of deal had been made when I came home at lunch and noticed KDSM Fox 17 was still on. Looks like we’ll get to keep it until January 1st for now. Hopefully before the beginning of 2007 Sinclair will come to their senses and agree to a sensible deal with Mediacom.
Longren.org has been really, really slow the last week or so. This site has never been this slow to load, even when I was hosting it out of my house on my cable connection. Granted, I didn’t get the traffic back then that I do now, it still shouldn’t be this slow.
