Money or Influence?

It came up at lunch with a friend today - which has more power, money or influence? I'm not sure that we (or anyone) could answer the question, but it's intriguing to me. Money can sure buy a whale of a lot of influence. Influence can lead to money, but often the two are not that closely related.

It's not like one of those things like the old saw "the woodman says give me heat; the fireplace says give me wood". It may be more like the "nature-nurture" proposition. Having a lot of money can mean having a lot of influence, but having a lot of influence certainly doesn't mean you have a lot of money. And often, one does not necessarily lead to the other.

My lunch partner and I are both former broadcasters and news anchors, and have seen more than our fair share of how money can influence outcomes and attitudes. And we've seen plenty of cases where people with a lot more influence than money, have drastically affected outcomes and attitudes. You could say that a sitting justice of a state Supreme Court has a great deal of influence, but if you follow Wisconsin politics, you know that in the past two campaigns, it's been money by the boxcar-load that's determined the outcome of the election. I guess that's pretty much true for the past three or four Presidential elections, too.

Both money and influence are very powerful. We didn't come to any conclusions over lunch. I suspect the discussion will continue for some time, without conclusion.

The Gift That Keeps On Taking

A limited amount of ado is being made of the financial woes at Madison's Overture Center, or, as I called it in my editorial-writing days, "The Great People's Palace Of The Arts". The Center has been in financial trouble pretty much since the day it was built. Last night, the city's Board of Estimate(s) made it clear, without a vote, that they don't want the city to poke this hornet's nest with a stick, ten feet long or otherwise. The committee members are pretty much in synch with Mayor Cieslewicz, who wants no part of another refinancing plan that puts taxpayers on the hook.

The Center is a gift from a local businessman, Jerry Frautschi, who opened his wallet to the tune of more than 200 million bucks to get it built about 8 years ago. The usual hyperbole was associated with the project, from the initial announcement during the reign of Mayor Sue Baumann, to the hiring of the famous architect Cesar Pelli, to the day it finally opened. It was to be a great engine to drive the arts scene and downtown night-life of the central city.

Not so much, as it turned out. Ten times the newspaper ink (and broadcast electrons) have been devoted in the past several years to the problems the downtown gentry (a/k/a "condonistas") have with the drunken young folks who raise hell downtown at bar time, as have been devoted to the big arts engine. A couple years ago, when the financial woes of the Overture Center became evident, and there was a mandated re-financing round, the arts mavens again chose to put the bulk of the remaining Frautschi money into the stock market...hoping the returns would not only pay off the construction debt of the building, but also would be bountiful enough to fund the singers, dancers, and artists.

That's a huge part of the issue. The arts crowd that held the purse strings thought they could double-down on Frautschi's money...and, rather than pay off the construction debt, they decided to use some of the money to set up a financing package to retire the construction debt (how'd THAT turn out?) and the rest to incubate arts. (This is a huge simplification of the actual setup, but unless you want to talk about mezannine financing, tiered debt, PILOT's, and other arcane financial stuff, it'll suffice.) The national financial meltdown did the same thing to the Overture's financial structure as it did to our 401-K's.

There are those who say a big part of the solution is to bring in more stuff that "regular" folks will go to. I'm one of those folks. The only time I've been to Overture was for a Lewis Black show, a year ago. He was hilarious and it was a great night. The facilty was superb. I was impressed. But the larger issue now, is keeping it afloat...so if they decide more "regular folks" stuff should be booked, the Center will be there to open its doors to them. Largely, it's up to the smartest financial and management folks in Madison to figure out a way to get past this very large bump in the road. You can argue that the Center was built before there was a large support base of arts mavens created to push for construction, the way it is in most other communities that have a facility like the Overture Center, but that's the past, and Overture is forced to live in the now.

Until the money problem is resolved, and a clear plan for generating more attendance is implemented, one of the greatest civic gifts in history will continue to be the gift that keeps on taking.

And The Golden Globe Goes To....

One of the things happily married couples learn is the art of compromise. We agreed Sunday evening that after there was no doubt about the outcome of the Pittsburgh/San Diego game, we'd switch over to the Golden Globes. My wife had no interest in the football game and I had no interest in watching still another of the monthly self-congratulatory banquets Hollywood holds to reassure themselves that they are loved and live worthwhile lives.

Generally when these thoughtful marital compromises are reached about the activities of daily living, my wife will put half an ear on the TV and spend her time making jewelry. I'll generally fire up the laptop and catch the latest news or just surf the web. This allows us both to "do what we want" and still be able to catch the thread of what's going on, on the TV.

The first award they passed out on this show last night was for best supporting actress, and the woman who won, Kate Winslett, did not disappoint. She was a complete, unmitigated disaster. Couldn't talk. Couldn't compose herself. Kept saying "I'm sorry". And her profession is.....acting? So I guess either this was supposed to be a great acting performance...or further evidence that unless somebody writes something for them and they memorize it and the director tells them exactly what to do, they're not "acting". If you brought in the folks from those Burger King virgin ads, and showed them a clip of such a performance and asked them what they thought was the occupation of the person clutching the statue and stammering, the last thing they'd likely say would be "actress".

Later, another young woman interrupted my web-surfing with a similar performance. I don't recall who she is or which category she won, but she got up there and stammered and blubbered incoherently for about two and a half minutes. My wife knew what was going through my mind as I peered over the laptop, and said "she's just very high-strung". Whatever.

To me, performances like the ones so frequently seen on these awards shows just add to the common speculation that actors, like TV news anchors, are completely dependent on their writers.

What's a "deadline"?

As a former broadcaster, I have a pretty solid idea of what a deadline is. For thirty-some years of my professional life, I lived by the clock. When you have a newscast that starts at 6:05:00, that's when it starts...ready or not. Young broadcasters learn quite quickly that when a network newscast starts at the "top of the hour", it doesn't mean AROUND the top of the hour. It means X:00:00, as defined by that famous atomic clock at the Naval Observatory.

So, it is with disdain that I view the Obama soon-to-be-administration's request to congress that it change the "deadline" for digital conversion of TV stations. I have a huge number of friends involved in television broadcasting, chief among them my wife, who was an on-camera TV reporter for 15 years. When TV stations were given a DEADLINE for digital conversion by the FCC, they knew exactly when they had to "make the switch". The TV stations here in Madison have invested millions and millions of dollars in making the switch from analog to digital. That's money they won't recover through ad sales or in any other way. They were simply mandated by the FCC to buy the equipment and make the change, which is a little over a month away.

The Obamian view is that not enough people will be able to avail themselves of the federal "cheese" to get a debit card to help them buy an analog-to-digital converter, because the federal program to help them is out of money. Please note that the broadcasters did not ask the feds for any bailout money to buy the new transmitters, and in many cases, erect the towers necessary to meet the digital deadline.

I saw an interview on the local CBS affiliate last night with the head of the Wisconsin Broadcasters Association, and she said no matter when you establish a deadline, there will always be people who don't know about it, aren't aware of it, or for some reason will "miss" the deadline. This, from a woman who really knows what the word "deadline" means.

Rather than "move the deadline back", the Obama soon-to-be-administration should urge congress to dip into that 715-billion-dollar slush fund, and make the "cheese" available to the people (estimated to be 7% of the national TV audience) who will wake up the morning of February 17th and wonder why they can't get their TV to work.

You see, to a broadcaster....a deadline is a deadline. And I'm pretty sure my many friends in the print media have just as clear an understanding of the word.

Welcome "IN" to....

Welcome IN to Sports Center, I'm (jock-sniffer of the hour). Ever notice how all the sports announcers and sports announcer wannabes copy the "signature" phrases of the guys (and gals) on ESPN?

I do. It's part of my obsessive-compulsive disorder, I guess.

Did you ever have anybody welcome you "IN" to anything? Didn't think so. "Welcome to the family". "Welcome to our home". "Welcome to my world". Never an "IN" in the mix!

Last night during half-time of the Badger game on the Greed Network (BTN) the studio announcer welcomed us "IN" to the half-time show. Then, after the game was over, the studio announcer welcomed us "IN" to "Big Ten Tonight".

There's a fellow who's the ringmaster/announcer/cheif-cook-and-bottle-washer of a local morning radio show, and my wife says every morning he welcomes the listeners "IN" to the morning show. Methinks he's a sports announcer wannabe.

Somebody once told me that the fastest way to be out of fashion is to be totally in fashion. Back when I was doing sports play-by-play (for the Wisconsin Flyers of the CBA) it was fashionable to copy the signature phrases of the Milwaukee Bucks' announcer, Eddie Doucette. "J" was jumper, or jump-shot. There were jacknife j's, leapin' leaners, rock-back-pop-j's, and all manner of Doucette-isms. Many of the guys doing sports play-by-play copied Eddie. They wanted to be him. It was all about THEM....not all about accurately describing the game to the listener. Radio naturally lends itself to more colorful descriptions, but the fundamental skill is to clearly translate action into verbiage. Doucette did it with tremendous flair, accuracy, and with a style so unique it became widely imitated.

Sports announcing has its own lingo, and to be regarded as "serious" in the biz, apparently now it's infra dig to be original....you must copy what's said on ESPN. There's a particular lady (Cindy Brunson) who does some of the weekend sports shows on ESPN who has mastered all the latest cliche's the weekday fellows use. In baseball season, as she does the highlights of the various games, it's never "bottom of the fifth". It's "bottom five". Never "top of the eighth", but "top 8". Every time.

I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of sports announcers who really know what "prolific" means. The vast majority think it's the same as "proficient". It's never "the following play", it's "the ensuing play" or drive. It's a rule, apparently. And Lord spare us from the sports announcers who tell us something "really puts that into perspective".

We need a whole lot more Grantland Rice and Jim Murray, and a whole lot less of being "welcomed in".

Take Cover NOW!

God save us from the consultants! Last night with great fanfare, another one of the local TV stations "re-branded" its weather product. They are now the STORM TRACK station!!!!

A few days ago I blogged about how everything's a storm now. An inch of snow? STORM! A couple tenths of an inch of rain? STORM! A good day to fly a kite? STORM!!! And your family will not be safe unless you are tuned to THIS station, to get the latest breathless information from our fully-professionally-trained-and-credentialed SCIENTISTS.

As my wife, herself a recovering TV reporter, dead-panned to me last night during the big re-branding announcement, "prepare for constant interruptions every time it gets cloudy this summer". We have a huge-screen HDTV in our media room, and she knows one of my pet peeves is the constant interruptions from the local weather folks every time there's a thundershower within 275 miles of Madison. "It's headed right at us! It will be in Sauk City at 7:57; in Middleton at 8:01; and in Madison at 8:04!!! Keep your dial set here!! We'll break in immediately if necessary!!!" And seldom is it not necessary for several break-ins.

Here's what probably happened. The folks at the (now) Storm Track station were barely recovered from their Thanksgiving turkey hangover when their consultant flew into town, and realized that the other station now goes into STORM MODE when flakes of snow are falling from the sky. "Why was I not told about this!!! You can't sit back and let them take the weather position in this market! We'll need to blunt this thrust by coming up with something even more scary!!!". Or words to the effect.

Hence, STORM TRACK is born, and rolled out shortly after the demise of the New Year hangover.

Years ago, a man named Elmer Childress did the weather on the Storm Center station. I don't think he had a degree in meteorology. He had a couple decades of experience watching the weather carefully in Madison, and more than a passing acquaintance with fronts, troughs, isobars, and things like that. He never said stuff like "putting our super doppler radar into storm detection mode, and advancing it through future-track and pinpoint doppler rainfall indication mode, it appears that the estimated chance of measurable precipitation will be in the 10 to 20 percent range for the next 12 to 18 hours". Elmer would say "looks like a nice night and a good day for a picnic tomorrow". I'm pretty sure he understood local weather just as well as the young folks today with their UW degrees and multi-million-dollar weather systems. Probably better.

He just made it a lot easier to understand, and never ever exaggerated any aspect of the forecast. Consultants would hate him.

Pampered Jocks

The way some people fawn over jocks is disgusting. I'm a Packers fan and my wife is a Bears fan. It has more to do with where we were born and raised than anything else. So, we don't have a team to follow in the NFL playoffs, but we had the tube on yesterday afternoon. Come to think of it, I guess it's really not a "tube" any more. It's more an arrangement of shining lights and mirrors, I suppose.

Since I'm not involved in the pretend football that so many younger guys invest hours in, I really don't know many players from other teams. I pointed out to my wife this fall that really, she's a Brett Favre fan more than a football fan. She was in New York City in October and had on her #4 Packers jersey, and had lots of Jets fans say "thank you!" on the subway. The local CBS affiliate carried the Jets broadcasts this year, for all those who discovered they are Favre fans, rather than Packers fans.

One thing that has annoyed me for the past decade is the way we pamper these jocks. What set me off again was seeing one of the Eagles' players come off the field, tilt his head back, and have some toady sycophant squirt water into his mouth. I'm disgusted not only with the players who are so catered-to that they won't find a water bottle on their own and take a drink, but with the gigantic losers who do the water-squirting, just to be close to their beloved jocks.

Here in Madison, the UW jocks are so catered-to that we've invented an entirely new system of criminal justice for them. Of course, to give the illusion of fairness it applies to all, but the biggest custormers of the so-called "First Offenders Program" are the jocks. Essentially, you can do whatever you want short of actually killing someone, and you're placed in the "First Offenders Program" and everyone pretends it never happened. Of course, if the "first offense" is serious enough, like armed robbery, the jock will be suspended - but the suspension will almost never involve missing an game. Just a practice or two.

The pampering begins in High School, where athletic talent is recognized and developed; continues through the college years, where everything is free, including the special tutoring and other personal services (at the UW, the jock department has work-study students who are paid to "walk jocks to class" to make sure they actually go - I'm not making this up); and the pampering is taken to new heights in the pro ranks.

God forbid your kid should show talent for mastering differential equations, rather than running pass routes.