Good morning, two stories have me scratching my head and wondering why people who should know better, just act stupid.
1. The President's latest jobs plan and the announcement thereof. Anticipation has been building for weeks. The President wanted to announce it before a joint session of Congress next Wednesday, September 7th. Fair enough but it's the same night as the GOP presidential debate at the Reagan Library. The White House of course, knew this all along.
Speaker John Boehner officially gets to decide who speaks in the House of Representatives, although as a rule, you don't turn down the President of the United States. But the President put Speaker Boehner in a bad spot, who in turn asked the President to address Congress, and oh yeah, "We the people" on the 8th instead. It's my House and I'll cry if I want to.
Late night night it was announced the President will now deliver his speech on the 8th. All this creates another issue, the 8th is the opening night of the NFL season. Green Bay vs New Orleans. Cheese, Gumbo and rotten politics. Pass the Tums please. The White House says the speech will end before the scheduled kick-off, my guess without enough time for a response from the GOP.
Frankly, the GOP should have agreed to Wednesday, then just backed up the debate until after the speech. What an opportunity! Run clips from the speech, then have the GOP have at it. Don't like the President's plan? Then tell us how you'd do better. I think we'd be well served by this sort of thing.
But no, cheap political partisanship by both sides is once again put ahead of the best interests of us folks who live on Main Street, USA and who of course, pay the bills. Wasn't August wonderful? September and beyond, not so much.
Shameful.
2. Let move on to college football. Earlier this year, the University of Texas announced an exclusive broadcast partnership with ESPN to create the Longhorn Network. All orange all the time. Great expectations Texas-style. This disclaimer: I'm a proud Longhorn Dad and we've lived in Texas twice. Everything is bigger in Texas, especially football. We heart the 'Horns.
All good right? Nope, quite the opposite. The season opener has Texas hosting Rice at Austin. Broadcast rights are exclusively on the Longhorn Network. One problem. As of now, other than a few tiny cable outlets, no major satellite or cable provider has reached an agreement to carry the network. Not even in Austin.
So we have a television network that makes it impossible to watch the team it was designed to cover.
LHN and ESPN are demanding lower tier coverage on all carriers and want (according to one report) 40 cents per subscriber whether or not they actually want to watch LHN. When you have companies like DISH Network or Time-Warner, you have customer bases of tens of millions of people and, well, you do the math. Those costs have to be passed on to those customers. But who cares about them?
So here we sit on Thursday morning, game day is two days away and it's quite possible most Texas fans around the country won't be able to watch their team on TV, since TV was invented.
LHN is urging fans to put pressure on the program providers. Flood the phone lines and their social media pages demanding they carry LHN! It hasn't worked.
Come on Texas. Put your money where your swagger is and while you're at it, put your fans first. If LHN is so good, offer it up to carriers at no charge and go out and sell advertising to pay for your $300 million investment. As an aside, most start up networks actually pay carriers to be included on their channel line-ups.
So here we sit, stuck in the middle again. In Washington, the people's needs are put last. In Austin, the fans needs are put last.
It's wrong, but sadly these days, business as usual.
Brian Olson
Owner/Consultant
Conversation Starters Public Relations
1. The President's latest jobs plan and the announcement thereof. Anticipation has been building for weeks. The President wanted to announce it before a joint session of Congress next Wednesday, September 7th. Fair enough but it's the same night as the GOP presidential debate at the Reagan Library. The White House of course, knew this all along.
Speaker John Boehner officially gets to decide who speaks in the House of Representatives, although as a rule, you don't turn down the President of the United States. But the President put Speaker Boehner in a bad spot, who in turn asked the President to address Congress, and oh yeah, "We the people" on the 8th instead. It's my House and I'll cry if I want to.
Late night night it was announced the President will now deliver his speech on the 8th. All this creates another issue, the 8th is the opening night of the NFL season. Green Bay vs New Orleans. Cheese, Gumbo and rotten politics. Pass the Tums please. The White House says the speech will end before the scheduled kick-off, my guess without enough time for a response from the GOP.
Frankly, the GOP should have agreed to Wednesday, then just backed up the debate until after the speech. What an opportunity! Run clips from the speech, then have the GOP have at it. Don't like the President's plan? Then tell us how you'd do better. I think we'd be well served by this sort of thing.
But no, cheap political partisanship by both sides is once again put ahead of the best interests of us folks who live on Main Street, USA and who of course, pay the bills. Wasn't August wonderful? September and beyond, not so much.
Shameful.
2. Let move on to college football. Earlier this year, the University of Texas announced an exclusive broadcast partnership with ESPN to create the Longhorn Network. All orange all the time. Great expectations Texas-style. This disclaimer: I'm a proud Longhorn Dad and we've lived in Texas twice. Everything is bigger in Texas, especially football. We heart the 'Horns.
All good right? Nope, quite the opposite. The season opener has Texas hosting Rice at Austin. Broadcast rights are exclusively on the Longhorn Network. One problem. As of now, other than a few tiny cable outlets, no major satellite or cable provider has reached an agreement to carry the network. Not even in Austin.
So we have a television network that makes it impossible to watch the team it was designed to cover.
LHN and ESPN are demanding lower tier coverage on all carriers and want (according to one report) 40 cents per subscriber whether or not they actually want to watch LHN. When you have companies like DISH Network or Time-Warner, you have customer bases of tens of millions of people and, well, you do the math. Those costs have to be passed on to those customers. But who cares about them?
So here we sit on Thursday morning, game day is two days away and it's quite possible most Texas fans around the country won't be able to watch their team on TV, since TV was invented.
LHN is urging fans to put pressure on the program providers. Flood the phone lines and their social media pages demanding they carry LHN! It hasn't worked.
Come on Texas. Put your money where your swagger is and while you're at it, put your fans first. If LHN is so good, offer it up to carriers at no charge and go out and sell advertising to pay for your $300 million investment. As an aside, most start up networks actually pay carriers to be included on their channel line-ups.
So here we sit, stuck in the middle again. In Washington, the people's needs are put last. In Austin, the fans needs are put last.
It's wrong, but sadly these days, business as usual.
Brian Olson
Owner/Consultant
Conversation Starters Public Relations
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