Saturday, September 22, 2007
Football and Doug Wilder
Last night, 2007 September 21, Mayor Doug Wilder of Richmond, Virginia ordered the eviction of the School Board and offices from four floors of Richmond City Hall and move them to 3600 W. Broad Street, a long 6-story or so building three miles to the northwest. Mayor Wilder had been telling the School Board to do this for some time, claiming that it would cost $1 million more a year for them to be in City Hall. But is this the real reason?
In any case, the eviction started late last night and caused what the local media called "chaos in City Hall". The building was closed at 5 pm, press was barred from the building, and movers came in to box everything up and take it over to the 3600 building. In addition, Mayor Wilder said that there may have been porn in City Council President William Pantele's computer. He required city council aides to interview for their own jobs or lose them. The School Board hired former mayor Henry Marsh III as their attorney, and at the request of Mr. Marsh, Richmond Circuit Court Chief Judge Margaret Spencer issued an injunction against the eviction, and the flow of School Board property from City Hall to 3600 reversed and all the stuff went back into City Hall. Still, there's the chance that Richmond city schools may not open because the School Board can't get stuff straightened out by then in their offices.
This is really weird. It reminds me of some third world country.
Further, we can't find out much about it.
Why? Step back three decades or more. I remember, but I can't find anything on the Internet about, an incident that happened in the 1970s. An important professional football playoff game was being broadcast on some major network. At 6 pm (probably Eastern time), the game was close with less than two minutes to play. The network cut off the game and presented instead a children's program called, I believe, "Giants in the Earth". Almost immediately the network's switchboards in New York City lit up like a Fourth of July gone wild. People started complaining by the thousands, and when they got busy signals, they called the police and jammed their switchboards. The team from behind scored a touchdown to win the game during those two minutes that were not presented.
I believe that that incident has helped determine network policy of sports vs other programming. The policy, simply stated, is that sports takes priority, even over news. This was just about the most misguided action that could have been taken. The Challenger disaster, the Iran hostage crisis, the crash of an airliner over Scotland, and even the charges of infidelity against a Presidential candidate all are much more important than some football game. But since then, the networks have routinely footballed, basketballed, nascarred, and golfed out the 6 o'clock news. This meant that there was scant way of knowing about local news during the weekends; the newspaper and radio were about the only ways.
They are still doing it. This weekend is especially bad. Every single network including Fox is footballing out the 6 o'clock news, and ABC is even footballing out the 11 o'clock news. We are being shut out of an important avenue for obtaining local news. The Internet does not help. The local news sites are notoriously out of date during the weekends.
I am wondering if Mayor Wilder has anything to do with the footballing out of news this weekend. Did he make some arrangement with the networks to football them out so that news of what's happening at City Hall will not reach the public? Probably not. But I think his choice of time to evict the School Board was meant to suppress the dissemination of news of the event. He chose late Friday afternoon and evening to do it, and further I believe he chose this particular weekend because he knew all the news were going to be footballed out. I tried listening for what was happening on the radio. Even that got footballed out.
The local stations need to cut into football and other programming to tell us what is happening to the school system in Richmond. In the meantime, to find out what's happening, try CBS (WTVR) or NBC (WWBT) at 11 tonight, or Fox at 10.
In any case, the eviction started late last night and caused what the local media called "chaos in City Hall". The building was closed at 5 pm, press was barred from the building, and movers came in to box everything up and take it over to the 3600 building. In addition, Mayor Wilder said that there may have been porn in City Council President William Pantele's computer. He required city council aides to interview for their own jobs or lose them. The School Board hired former mayor Henry Marsh III as their attorney, and at the request of Mr. Marsh, Richmond Circuit Court Chief Judge Margaret Spencer issued an injunction against the eviction, and the flow of School Board property from City Hall to 3600 reversed and all the stuff went back into City Hall. Still, there's the chance that Richmond city schools may not open because the School Board can't get stuff straightened out by then in their offices.
This is really weird. It reminds me of some third world country.
Further, we can't find out much about it.
Why? Step back three decades or more. I remember, but I can't find anything on the Internet about, an incident that happened in the 1970s. An important professional football playoff game was being broadcast on some major network. At 6 pm (probably Eastern time), the game was close with less than two minutes to play. The network cut off the game and presented instead a children's program called, I believe, "Giants in the Earth". Almost immediately the network's switchboards in New York City lit up like a Fourth of July gone wild. People started complaining by the thousands, and when they got busy signals, they called the police and jammed their switchboards. The team from behind scored a touchdown to win the game during those two minutes that were not presented.
I believe that that incident has helped determine network policy of sports vs other programming. The policy, simply stated, is that sports takes priority, even over news. This was just about the most misguided action that could have been taken. The Challenger disaster, the Iran hostage crisis, the crash of an airliner over Scotland, and even the charges of infidelity against a Presidential candidate all are much more important than some football game. But since then, the networks have routinely footballed, basketballed, nascarred, and golfed out the 6 o'clock news. This meant that there was scant way of knowing about local news during the weekends; the newspaper and radio were about the only ways.
They are still doing it. This weekend is especially bad. Every single network including Fox is footballing out the 6 o'clock news, and ABC is even footballing out the 11 o'clock news. We are being shut out of an important avenue for obtaining local news. The Internet does not help. The local news sites are notoriously out of date during the weekends.
I am wondering if Mayor Wilder has anything to do with the footballing out of news this weekend. Did he make some arrangement with the networks to football them out so that news of what's happening at City Hall will not reach the public? Probably not. But I think his choice of time to evict the School Board was meant to suppress the dissemination of news of the event. He chose late Friday afternoon and evening to do it, and further I believe he chose this particular weekend because he knew all the news were going to be footballed out. I tried listening for what was happening on the radio. Even that got footballed out.
The local stations need to cut into football and other programming to tell us what is happening to the school system in Richmond. In the meantime, to find out what's happening, try CBS (WTVR) or NBC (WWBT) at 11 tonight, or Fox at 10.
