“The problem here is not just our international competitiveness on math tests, is it?“
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I don’t have much to add to Elle’s brilliant post here, except to say that the manufacturing plant down the way — one of the largest employers in the area — is laying off 800 workers right before the Christmas holiday.
That’s a lot of families for a so-called imaginary crisis.
[cross-posted at Feministe]
HBO usually has a variety of great documentaries every month, and this month the one that caught my eye just happened to take place in Anderson, Indiana, a very blue collar area within an hour of my home. Anderson, like many manufacturing towns in the Midwest, is steadily heading towards the likes of Flint, Michigan: struggling, dying, devastated. But like many Midwestern areas, if you ask Anderson’s residents, they’re struggling but on the up-and-up, aiming to be positive despite the loss of jobs, staying afloat by focusing on family and other interests.
“Dirty Driving: Thundercars of Indiana” is about the struggling Midwestern middle class and the hobbies that take the place of work and career when industry dies, in this case the individual innovation that is a forefront in Indiana’s racing culture. When the auto manufacturing plants that pumped small towns full of money up and left, they also left behind the driving culture that so infects the workers that once populated their lines. In “Dirty Driving,” laid-off workers and their car-fanatic families remove all their ambitions from job and career and put all their knowledge and passion for the industry into their junk cars to race at the Anderson Speedway, talking shit and fighting over their victories and losses as the cameras roll.
Disney decided to get in on the couture noose racket with The Noose Necklace:
But despite all the race-related, noose-related threats on North American soil in recent months, it’s related to Pirates of the Caribbean so it’s no big deal. Also be on the lookout for the sterling silver SS belt buckle from The Sound of Music and, oh god, don’t even get me started on Disney.
via Problem Chylde
cross-posted on Unsprung
The Big Ten Network debuts tomorrow, piquing the interest of many a Midwestern college sports fan. The Big Ten Network is a subsidiary of media mogul Rupert Murdoch, who is decidedly evil and way too rich for his own good, in partnership with the Big Ten universities. The network plans to carry all kinds of sporting events from basketball and football to the vastly under-covered women’s teams and obscure events.
While I’m not a sports fan I’ve been watching the major fight between the Big Ten Network and the large cable companies with great interest. I live on campus in a Big Ten university town and work in a related field, not to mention that the corporate rhetoric and use of media in this fight is really engaging. It’s like watching two media conglomerates in a massive, public catfight, almost as exciting as the time Paris Hilton hit Lindsey Lohan in a fancy LA bar. But I digress.
The biggest problem is that the major cable companies don’t want to carry it — at least not as BTN wants. Aiming for market penetration in addition to quickly turing around the millions of dollars they’ve sunk into midwestern campuses, BTN’s business plan dicatates that the network will be carried in a standard analog cable package, what most people think of when they think of cable. Realizing that this means either eating the cost or raising the customer’s monthly cost by as much as $1.10 a month, the cable companies have resisted. Big companies like Comcast and Time-Warner (as well as the satellite company Dish Network) want to carry the BTN in a specialty sports package, putting the cost for digital services and specialty sports programming on diehard fans as opposed to millions of customers that may not be interested or don’t live in the midwest.
BTN has responded by penetrating local media with advertisements encouraging fans to switch to one of its carriers, Direct TV, which is not coincidentally also owned by Rupert Murdoch.
In this case I sympathize with the major cable companies, which is truly uncharacteristic of my beliefs, in that I and many others with low incomes and limited funds are tired of being nickled and dimed to death with rates that seem arbitrary to most but can be crucial to some. And although cable isn’t a true utility, it’s considered a utility to people of low-income, the elderly, and the infirm, people who need to fit entertainment into a tight budget, and people who rely on static rates to keep tight budgets within reason. I figure while most people really don’t care about Podunk U’s lacrosse team and don’t want to spend the additional cash, the diehard fans will find a way to pay for the additional programming, and BTN will have to settle for a business plan that doesn’t turn around its expenses quite as much as they’d like.
On the other hand, this is also an opportunity for lesser-known and lesser-lauded athletes to get major coverage and money for their efforts — and a huge portion of the reported events that will be covered by the BTN are women’s sports, a huge chunk of the athletic populace that has historically been ignored and ridiculed. What better way to get them extra attention and encourage more young women into college sports? Unfortunately the BTN isn’t capitalizing on these kinds of athletic underdogs, instead positing itself as a victim of unfair contracts and legal obligations, leaving out the fact that it’s fourth in line to pick games to carry after ESPN, ESPN2, and network TV. Have a kid on the college swim team? You want the Big Ten Network. Want to catch your favorite team’s basketball game? It’s probably on ESPN.
[Further compounding the situation is the typical consumer argument that cable companies should be offering channel by channel plans, a technology that isn't possible until all services are offered digitally instead of analog. Editorial opinion pieces in newpapers across the region lament that companies aren't providing services that don't exist yet, and customers agree. Someday, someday, but until then content has to be affordable.]
At the time this piece is written, Comcast has ended negotiations with BTN and Time-Warner and Dish Network haven’t been able to reach a distribution agreement. Meanwhile, BTN is flooding the market with a lot of noise implying that the cable companies are being greedy and that Big Cable will lose subscribers to its sister company Direct TV. Never mind that the cable companies have already offered to carry the network in a specialized format.
I don’t have any dog in this fight other than resisting another rise in my monthly cable bill, but I’m sure others have opinions. Any sports fans in the audience?
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