Damned Yankees
Until yesterday's broadcast of the NY Giants game, I had yet to see a Lamont ad on television. I suspect the reason for this is that Lamont has been advertising on local radio and local television. And by "local," I mean Connecticut TV and radio stations. The Giants broadcast was a New York regional buy, and those spots are very, very expensive and, obviously, full of waste (yeah, New Jerseyans, I'm looking at you). Truth is, I've seen -- and heard -- a lot more Menendez and Keane Jr. (the New Jersey senate race) ads than I have Lamont (or Lieberman, for that matter). In the Jersey race, the candidates have understood they have to cover both the New York and the Philly stations to get their message across.
There's a huge problem with a fairly little known candidate such as Lamont confining himself primarily to CT media.
It's called DirecTV.
In March of 2002 the YES Network was launched, a place where you can see that night's game, yesterday's game, game five of the 2001 World Series, and lots and lots of David Justice. All things New York Yankees (and Ivy League football, for some reason). When YES was formed, the local cable power, Cablevision, decided that they wanted to make YES a premium channel, as opposed to Basic cable. They wanted to make up the revenue they lost when the Yankees cut ties with another station, MSG, that was owned by Cablevision. YES balked and the two sides remained deadlocked even as Opening Day approached.
No lover of Cablevision to start with, I and thousands of other Yankee adoring households grew more and more nervous as March gave way to April. So, over about a 10 day period around the first and second week of April, all across our great southern CT region, dishes began to sprout on roof tops, apartment balconies, motor homes, bars, etc. Satellite dishes.
DirecTV picked up thousands of new subscribers (I remember calling Cablevision to cancel my service, and the operator asking me why. "Yankees," I said. "Oh," she replied). Eventually Cablevision did relent, but in the meantime they'd lost many subscribers who found that their reception was much better with the digital satellite and, anyway, it was fun to say "Screw you" to the cable monopoly.
Cable had always tried to scare people away from satellite TV by saying that only cable carried local channels. DirecTV made a big selling point of saying that they did, in fact, offer local channels. Trouble is, by "local," they meant New York.
DirecTV does not carry the CT stations, so those of us with a dish on the top of our roofs have been spared any CT political ads this season.
And that's a problem for Lamont, whose campaign has made many informative, tough, and funny TV spots that most of us can only see by going to YouTube.
I'm not sure Lamont, a cable executive, understood this.
There's a huge problem with a fairly little known candidate such as Lamont confining himself primarily to CT media.
It's called DirecTV.
In March of 2002 the YES Network was launched, a place where you can see that night's game, yesterday's game, game five of the 2001 World Series, and lots and lots of David Justice. All things New York Yankees (and Ivy League football, for some reason). When YES was formed, the local cable power, Cablevision, decided that they wanted to make YES a premium channel, as opposed to Basic cable. They wanted to make up the revenue they lost when the Yankees cut ties with another station, MSG, that was owned by Cablevision. YES balked and the two sides remained deadlocked even as Opening Day approached.
No lover of Cablevision to start with, I and thousands of other Yankee adoring households grew more and more nervous as March gave way to April. So, over about a 10 day period around the first and second week of April, all across our great southern CT region, dishes began to sprout on roof tops, apartment balconies, motor homes, bars, etc. Satellite dishes.
DirecTV picked up thousands of new subscribers (I remember calling Cablevision to cancel my service, and the operator asking me why. "Yankees," I said. "Oh," she replied). Eventually Cablevision did relent, but in the meantime they'd lost many subscribers who found that their reception was much better with the digital satellite and, anyway, it was fun to say "Screw you" to the cable monopoly.
Cable had always tried to scare people away from satellite TV by saying that only cable carried local channels. DirecTV made a big selling point of saying that they did, in fact, offer local channels. Trouble is, by "local," they meant New York.
DirecTV does not carry the CT stations, so those of us with a dish on the top of our roofs have been spared any CT political ads this season.
And that's a problem for Lamont, whose campaign has made many informative, tough, and funny TV spots that most of us can only see by going to YouTube.
I'm not sure Lamont, a cable executive, understood this.
posted by John at 4:49 PM
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