Month: December 2008

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News The Fly-By

Fly on the Wall

My MLK

The end of December really is the best time of the year. Not because of the stress-inducing holidays, mind you, but because it’s the time of year when critics around the world create list after list chronicling the best and worst of everything that happened in the preceding 365 days.

Coming in number one on The Fly-Team’s best lists of December 2008 is a list of marketing blunders compiled by Collateral Damage, a website known for its sarcastic takes on current events. CD’s list is chock-full of bad business decisions ranging from the manufacture of panties for tweens emblazoned with “Dive In,” the catchphrase from Disney’s High School Musical 2, to Hershey’s “Have You Found Mr. Goodbar” campaign that conjures up images of both a chocolate bar and a shocking ’70s-era film starring Diane Keaton. But nothing tops McDonald’s comparison of fast-food king Ray Kroc to Martin Luther King Jr.

From Open for Discussion, McDonald’s corporate responsibility blog: “Ray Kroc and Dr. King both demonstrated persistence and determination through their care for others and the sharing of the beliefs that shaped their philosophies.” McDonald’s has created the all-purpose template whereby anybody can compare themselves to the great civil rights leader. Seriously, go back and substitute the name of any person or group for Kroc’s: Hitler, Charles Manson, the Memphis City Council. It all works.

Crippling Abuse

Beginning in 2009, Memphis International Airport will charge disabled customers to park in convenient spaces created for the physically impaired. According to The Commercial Appeal, this decision will prevent airport workers from “hogging prime parking spaces.” Whatever happened to the good old days of ticketing, towing, and termination?

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

If the Shoe Fits, Throw It!

“This is a farewell kiss, dog,” shouted Al Baghdadia television reporter Muntadar al-Zaidi, while hurling his brogans Sunday in the general direction of America’s worst-ever president.

A relatively harmless gesture, yes, but a sweet one for millions of Iraqis, not to mention for hundreds of millions of other residents of planet Earth who, for nearly a decade now, have yearned for a nonviolent means of expressing their intense displeasure at the United States, because we’ve been governed by a mindless incompetent for eight ugly years.

But now that our long national nightmare of neocon nonsense is within weeks of ending, perhaps it’s time to congratulate Muntadar for setting the tone for the George W. Bush post-presidency.

Ah, and such a time that will be! With the complete sangfroid of the idiot non-savant that he is, always has been, and always shall be, the Decider joked about Muntadar’s shoe being a size 10, unaware, perhaps, that A) size doesn’t matter, and B) the die has been cast, and that he now has a special kind of foot-fetish future ahead of him on the hustings.

Remember the president’s famous “replenish the ol’ coffers” line in Robert Draper’s 2007 Dead Certain bio? Well, happily, Mr. Bush will now have more to put in that treasure chest than just dollars. Maybe he can cut a deal with Nike.

I suspect the Secret Service has a difficult task ahead of itself, one way or the other, as our immediate past president hits the road determined to make some real bucks. For wherever he goes on the post-presidential speaking-tour circuit, George W. Bush will have to duck for his supper as well as sing for it. Will his speaking tours require event organizers to tell attendees that they can only turn up at Bush-retrospective events if they come barefoot?

It’s no fun, but if and when you get hit between the eyes with a shoe, you hardly can call yourself a victim of armed assault. Yes, you’ll have a bigger shiner than if you were hit similarly with a cream pie, but the effect is more or less identical. The intent of the perps, in both cases, is to humiliate the recipient of their missiles, not injure them. The person “pied” or “shoed” is in no way maimed or incapacitated — rather, trivialized.

And has there ever been a public figure in American life more deserving of trivialization than George W. Bush? Has anyone ever been more worthy of complete humiliation on the public stage?

I think not. I do hope there’s a Herbert Hoover family reunion somewhere this holiday season, so that the descendants of our ill-fated 31st president can celebrate his escape from the moldy basement where the reputation of the “worst president of all time” historically gets put to rest. Someone should tell them to turn off the lights and move upstairs, before the celebration gets out of hand.

Poor W. There are an awful lot of shoes in his future.

Kenneth Neill is the founding publisher of the Memphis Flyer.

Categories
News The Fly-By

Q&A: Katherine Power,

In a recent study, the FCC found that 5 percent of Tennesseans weren’t prepared for February’s switch from analog to digital television. That number holds true for much of America, so the FCC has been sending its representatives to 81 “town hall cities” — including Memphis — to spread the word.

FCC attorney Katherine Power was in town last week to talk about the transition, how people can get government coupons for converter boxes, and how to hook up the boxes.

Remember: If you’re still watching your favorite shows via airways and an antenna, come February 17th, your television will go blank. — by Mary Cashiola

Flyer: Why the switch to digital?

Katherine Power: The switch is taking place, for one reason, because Congress mandated it. The reason Congress mandated it is it’s a much more efficient use of the spectrum.

The digital signals are compressed so more can fit in a smaller space. With what is left over after the switch from analog, there will be more spectrum to use for health and public safety and for even more wireless devices, if you can imagine.

What difference will it make to viewers?

Your picture is going to be much improved. We really want to emphasize the positives with this. People will find they have better reception, the sound is better, and they will have more stations because there is more spectrum to use. A month afterward, people are going to forget what it was like before they’ll be so pleased.

Even if someone uses “rabbit ears” and a converter box, they’ll see a much better picture in February?

They should plug it in now. Don’t wait. Digital television is on the air now.

The coupon program allows each household to get two coupons [worth $40] to redeem for two converter boxes.

So you buy your converter and you take it home and you stare at the box, but you shouldn’t. You should get it out and plug it up.

What will happen to the portion of the analog spectrum that television stations currently use?

Some of it already has been sold. Health and public safety has a certain part of it. There’s already been an auction. One thing people may not realize is that the coupon redemption program is not taken from tax dollars. [The money] has been taken from the sale of the spectrum.

Why give people converter box coupons?

Television has been free for all these years for people with analog sets. To incur a cost for these converter boxes, we felt the coupon program would help people make the transition for economic reasons.

Categories
News The Fly-By

What They Said

CREDIT: by Greg Cravens

About “Facing Financial Peril, Lambuth University Looking for a Way Out of the Crunch,” by Jackson Baker:

“I don’t know how you can run an institution of higher learning on just 815 students. That wouldn’t pay the salary of the president at many colleges.” — Jeff

About “Abroad With Cher,” a photo exhibit featuring a Cher doll posed at various locations around the world, by Susan Ellis:

“I realize people are desperate for money, but for you to be a Cher fan I find it hard to believe you would want to profit from her fame. … Albeit not an original idea, I think the experiences you had with it are kinda funny.” — The Cher Fan

About “Mandarin, Anyone,” by John Branston:

“What have you got against Arabic in particular? If you don’t care for it, don’t bother learning it.” — stork

About “Commissioner Mulroy Honored for Reform Efforts”:

“Typical — debate avoidance via demonization. THAT is a tactic of the tinfoil-hat-wearing crowd. People do need to wake up. Most of them don’t understand what [instant run-off voting] is. IRV is not reform — it’s regression.” — dmirth

Comment of the Week:

About “What’s That Smell: River and Harbor Users Would Like to Know,” by John Branston:

“It’s instant runoff from City Hall.” — Jeff

Categories
Opinion

Away All Boats

Beale Street Landing, the Riverfront Development Corporation’s $30 million project at Beale Street and Riverside Drive, has a serious problem before it even opens.

The riverboat cruise business is disappearing. The Majestic America Line steamboat company in Seattle is going out of business. Two years ago, Majestic America acquired the New Orleans-based Delta Steamship Company and three steamboats — the Delta Queen, the American Queen, and the Mississippi Queen — that docked in Memphis en route to Cincinnati, New Orleans, and Baton Rouge. That leaves RiverBarge Excursion Line and its floating barge hotel as the only overnight touring boat on the river.

A statement posted on Majestic America Line’s website says: “At this time, Majestic America Line has completed the 2008 cruise season. Several credible parties have expressed an interest in acquiring some and/or all assets of Majestic America Line and building upon our efforts in delivering unique cruise experiences that celebrate American history, culture and our magnificent waterways. Due to sale plans, Majestic America Line will not be operating cruises in 2009 or beyond.”

There is no reason for optimism, however. The 80-year-old Delta Queen, which is made out of wood, is forbidden by federal regulations from making overnight cruises. And the recession has hammered tourism companies and the stock market. The parent company of Majestic America Line is Ambassadors International of Newport Beach, California, a publicly traded company whose stock has fallen from $16 to 74 cents in one year.

“Our investment in the domestic riverboat business was a very bad investment,” Ambassadors CEO Joe Ueberroth told reporters and analysts recently. “We flat-out got it wrong. Our investment in the domestic river cruise business has caused deterioration of shareholder value and has put a real strain on the other three good businesses within Ambassadors.”

The Delta Queen, American Queen, and Mississippi Queen are now docked in New Orleans. Could one of them find a new home in Memphis as a floating museum and day-tripper at a bargain-basement price?

“I am obviously concerned [about being able to sell the vessels] due to current economic conditions, the state of our financial markets, and the lack of available financing,” Ueberroth said before he resigned as CEO. “We’re preparing to lay up our vessels for an extended period if necessary.”

The man had obviously never been to Memphis.

The Majestic America announcement means the Riverfront Development Corporation (RDC) is building a giant dock when there are no replicas of steamboats, which is sort of like building an airport when there are no jets. Beale Street River Park would be a more accurate name than Beale Street Landing. Beale Street River Pork would be even more accurate in light of RDC officials’ repeated insistence that the oft-criticized project made sense because of $10.5 million in federal and state funds.

Local taxpayers are footing $19.5 million of the cost of the project, which is under way at the north end of Tom Lee Park.

From the inception of the RDC, steamboats were a fundamental part of its vision and reason for being, as evidenced by renderings on its website that show paddle wheelers next to the dock. At one time, the RDC hoped to lure the headquarters of the Delta Steamship Company to Memphis. When that fell through, the RDC continued to hold out hope for steamboat traffic.

“Because the Beale Street Landing project is under design, the former Delta Steamship Company has increased its dockings in Memphis by 40 percent,” says the RDC website. “They are trying to build their market here in anticipation of the docking facility.”

The RDC website also says “approximately 50 stops are made by three major vessels each year … a modern docking facility is needed along our waterfront.”

The lone survivor, RiverBarge Excursion Line, has been docking at the Mud Island River Park boat ramp in the Wolf River Harbor. The company touts its Memphis-St. Louis trip as an adventure “From the Arch to the Pyramid”:

“Two monuments, standing like sentinels on the banks of the mighty Mississippi River, represent humankind’s ability to tame harsh environments and build impressive civilizations.”

Not to mention wasteful and failed projects.

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We Recommend We Recommend

Oy to the World

What do dreidels and dim sum have in common? Well, let’s see: They’re both smaller than an adult fist. And they weigh only a few ounces each, and … that’s about it. The dreidel is a Hebrew invention: a four-sided top made of wood, paper, or — according to the famous Hanukkah song — clay. They are central to a traditional Hanukkah game wherein little girls and boys take turns spinning the top to see who will win small prizes and jackpots of chocolate money.

Dim sum, on the other hand, is the phrase used to describe an array of succulent steamed, boiled, fried, or baked Chinese dumplings that are stuffed with vegetables, meats, and occasionally sweets. They are often rather sticky and don’t spin very well at all.

“When you ask the question ‘What do Jews do for Christmas?,’ ‘Eat Chinese food’ will be one of the answers,” says Temple Israel’s assistant rabbi Adam Grossman. Grossman is a co-founder of “Dreidels and Dim Sum,” a Christmas Eve party for Jewish adults between the ages of 22 and 39.

While “Dreidels and Dim Sum” is hosted by Temple Israel, the event is open to all Jewish congregations. “It’s about community,” Grossman says. “[It’s] about creating fresh ways for Jewish people to gather together as Jews outside the temple walls.”

The dreidels start spinning at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, December 24th, at Dō and the Beauty Shop. The event features heavy appetizers, a cash bar, and live music by Mojo Possum.

“Dreidels and Dim Sum,” Wednesday, December 24th, at 7:30 p.m. at Do and the Beauty Shop. For additional information,

e-mail Celia Mutchnick at celiam@timemphis.org. RSVPs must be received by Saturday, December 20th.

Categories
We Recommend We Recommend

Black Christmas

“I had a lot of anger back then,” says Hattiloo Theatre’s founder and executive director Ekundayo Bandele, reminiscing about the first production of his original script If Scrooge Was a Brother, in 1994. “People would leave saying, ‘I thought this was supposed to be a Christmas show,'” Bandele says.

Bandele, who is mounting a retooled version of the show this week, says the original script came to be because he wanted take his family to the theater. When Bandele surveyed traditional holiday fare such as The Nutcracker and A Christmas Carol, nothing addressed the African-American Christmas experience.

“So I flipped the script,” Bandele says. He uprooted Dickens’ beloved holiday nightmare and plopped it down on the poor side of town. “I remember thinking about Scrooges in the black community. Just like there can be racism between lighter- and darker-skinned blacks, even the most impoverished communities have a caste system.

“I was pretty deep into Afrocentrism back then, and I was trying to use the play to score political points,” Bandele says of the original script. “With this new version, I’m trying to score cultural points.”

In addition to smoothing the play’s rough edges, Bandele has also developed the new Scrooge as a musical.

“My music director, Damion Pearson, has gone back to a lot of the old Christmas songs and rewritten the music. We want to do for Scrooge what The Wiz did with The Wizard of Oz.”

“If Scrooge Was a Brother” opens on December 18th and runs through January 4th at Hattiloo Theatre. Tickets are $15.

Call 502-3486 for additional information.

Categories
News The Fly-By

A Green Christmas

Animated riverboats, swans, peacocks, butterflies, and even a fishing Santa Claus light up the night at the Memphis Zoo’s annual SunTrust Zoo Lights display.

But while visitors delight in larger-than-life holiday displays, the zoo’s carbon footprint is growing by the second.

The zoo estimates it uses about one million lights in its display. Like many smaller light displays, the Memphis Zoo uses mostly incandescent mini-lights because replacing the bulbs with more energy-efficient LED lights can be expensive.

According to an estimate by Memphis Light, Gas, & Water “Energy Doctor” Janice Smythe-Tune, it costs the zoo about $46 an hour to run the display at MLGW’s commercial utility rate.

“With over a million lights at Zoo Lights, energy use is definitely a concern,” said zoo CEO Chuck Brady. “We’ve started replacing older displays with new, more energy-efficient LED lights. Being a nonprofit, we’re always looking for corporate sponsors to help fund the very expensive transition.”

Zoo spokesperson Drew Smith estimates it cost the zoo about $1,000 to switch the grand tree near the zoo’s entrance to LED lights this year.

Though initially expensive (a 25-foot strand can cost between $15 and $25), making the transition to LED lights pays off in the long run.

“LED lights have about 50,000 hours of life and use about 2.5 watts of electricity per strand,” Smythe-Tune said. “That costs homeowners about a nickel per strand.”

Compare that to round outdoor bulbs, which use about 125 watts per strand and cost $2.67 per strand for a month’s usage at eight hours a day. Incandescent mini-lights, the most commonly used lights in outdoor displays, use about 0.4 watts and cost 88 cents per strand for the same time frame.

Midtown homeowner (and MLGW employee) Bill Bullock has been replacing incandescent lights with LED strands as his old lights burn out each year. He says the quality of LED lights has improved dramatically over the last several years.

“The first white LED lights we bought a few years ago have a blue tint to them,” Bullock said. “But the new LED lights have a color that more closely resembles the traditional soft white light.”

Each year, Wes Brown decorates the yard at his Midtown apartment with inflatable Santas, polar bears, penguins, and even a snowglobe. He runs an extension cord from his apartment to his 15 inflatable lawn ornaments, which are powered by small fans.

Smythe-Tune said energy usage from inflatables varies depending on their size. But the average 4-foot inflatable costs about $1.26 to power for eight hours a day. Brown’s figures vary in height from 4 to 6 feet.

“Last year, my utility bill went up $45 to $50,” Brown said. “It’s worth it to me, because I love watching kids walk by and stare in amazement. People stop their cars and take pictures. Everyone in the neighborhood enjoys it.”

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

Connecting the Dots

On a cold, gray afternoon last week, John Malmo brought heat to the Memphis Rotary Club’s weekly lunch meeting with a fire-and-brimstone take on the state of the American news industry.

The elder statesman of Memphis’ advertising industry, whose business column ran for 11 years in The Commercial Appeal, had some tough love for his former publisher, but in the end he promised to deliver a formula that could save newspapers from going the way of the telegraph.

Malmo’s speech was timely; it just wasn’t up-to-date. News is big news at the moment, with the CA‘s parent company, E.H. Scripps, attempting to sell the Rocky Mountain News, industrywide layoffs, and the Tribune Company’s bankruptcy making national headlines. The Daily Show‘s Jon Stewart may have said it best when he riddled, “What’s black and white and completely over?”

Malmo’s criticisms of Internet content were reminiscent of Steve Allen back in the 1950s, calling rock-and-roll a fad and Elvis a talentless flash in the pan. “I went to Digg [digg.com, a news-aggregator site]. I saw the top story was ‘Awesome Old Lady Goes Berserk,'” Malmo said, with an eye-roll, as though that was somehow relevant to the fact that the way people access information has changed forever.

Malmo’s plan to save the newspaper industry required three basic steps: First, he said that regional papers should get out of the national news business and focus on their own backyards. Second, papers should invest in good human resources who can provide comprehensive local coverage and, more importantly, expertise. And finally, raise the price of papers and subscriptions — “double the price,” if necessary. Malmo’s stated goal was not to saturate the market, as papers have tried to do in the past, but to capture only that share of people who are willing to pay more for a quality product.

Malmo’s basic assumption is correct: Even in a sour economy, people will spend a little extra for a quality product. While retail sales falter and newspapers across the country bleed subscribers, iPhones are selling briskly this holiday season. It’s an unmistakable signal: People want to get their old media in new, more convenient ways.

Nostalgia and tactile pleasures aside, today’s newspaper is already delivered by telephone. The digital and cellular revolutions have already happened, and as content providers, newspapers have adjusted sluggishly but thoroughly. Online, they function as TV stations, documentary film producers, blogs, vlogs (video blogs), and repositories for traditional newspaper reporting. Best of all, content arrives several times a day, is never soggy, and anybody can get it anywhere in the world without delay.

Content-wise, newspapers are ready to get out of the tree-killing business. Only the revenue model hasn’t made the jump to hyperspace.

“Subscribe to The Commercial Appeal,” Malmo implored his audience. But, even if everybody heeded him, a few hundred subscribers won’t do much to save the CA, which recently ceased home delivery to nearly 10,000 households because it cost more to create and ship the product than the company could recoup.

It’s time to abandon the fable that there will be less available information when picture-padded daily papers deliver a physical product three times a week instead of seven. There will simply be fewer opportunities for broadsheet advertising.

According to Malmo, the time that Americans spend reading newspapers has slipped from 18 minutes a day to 13. He attributed this to papers being smaller. That’s a bad metric. Chirographic forms of communication are actually surging because of text messaging, e-mail, social networking sites, and the simple fact that more and more people are reading newspaper content online. If anything, that’s the positive newspapers and their supporters should be cheering instead of constantly accentuating the negative.

Perhaps it’s time to call the newspaper crisis what it really is: an advertising-sales crisis. And if “double the price” is the best sales pitch a lion of the persuasion industry like John Malmo can come up with, then there are indeed more difficult days ahead.

Chris Davis is a Flyer staff writer and proprietor of the Flypaper Theory blog (thepeskyfly.blogspot.com).

Categories
Editorial Opinion

Rescuing Bob Corker

Late last week, Tennessee senator Bob Corker made a much-ballyhooed and well-noticed speech on the floor of the Senate proposing what purported to be a compromise resolution to the congressional debate over extending a federal bailout to the automobile industry. The reality

was what had been close to a done deal, a $14 billion package agreed upon by the White House and congressional Democrats, was all but undone by the “compromise.”

General Motors, Chrysler, and Ford could have their $14 billion, Corker said on Friday, so long as they agreed to lower the wages and to discontinue various other obligations to their workers. All these reductions were to happen by March 31st and to a benefits level equivalent to what employees of foreign-owned automakers were entitled. Otherwise, the Big Three would be forced to take bankruptcy, meaning that restructuring would render their pre-existing labor-management agreements null and void, in any case. In other words, take the deal and bust your own unions. Or leave the deal, and we’ll bust them for you.

The provisional rescue package was suddenly ancient history as negotiations on the floor broke down.

There matters stood, and part of the fallout was that Corker, who had acquired a reputation as a reasonable centrist, was suddenly recast as an arch-foe of labor and a hardline obstructionist. An ominous coincidence was that Volkswagen, one of the foreign automakers that presumably would profit from a weakening (or worse) of the Big Three, is about to build a new plant in Corker’s own backyard of Chattanooga and that two other foreign manufacturers already have plants in the state.

Never mind that, as 9th District congressman Steve Cohen pointed out in a speech to the Memphis Rotary Club on Tuesday, a shutdown in the state’s only General Motors plant, at Spring Hill, would be a serious blow to Tennessee’s revenue base. Never mind, too, that a shutdown to the Big Three nationally would create such economic havoc in the world of automotive suppliers — not to mention in the economy at large — as to penalize the interests of VW, Nissan, Honda, and whomever else.

In a curious way, then, we are grateful for a constituent service performed for us here in Tennessee by a senator from another state. That would be Carl Levin, the veteran Democrat from Michigan, who, on Meet the Press last Sunday, did what he could to absolve Corker of excessive partisanship and, worse, of a contemptuous attitude toward a vital sector of the American workforce.

Appearing on the program along with Corker, who contended that the recommendations he’d started with were hardened by other members of the Republican caucus, Levin agreed that, as originally formulated, Corker’s plan had been “helpful” and lacked the hard and fast demands and timetables it ended up with.

Fine and dandy, and even finer and dandier that President Bush will evidently complete the automakers’ bailout from funds already set aside for the larger financial bailout. Bob Corker should breathe a sigh of relief like the rest of us, but henceforth he should be more careful about the company he keeps. And about sticking to his blueprints.