Just caught a piece of rage-inducing news: a Washington State House bill proposing
selling naming rights to elements of public transportation to raise money. As he almost always does, I think Goldy
says it best:
Personally, I'm opposed to selling the naming rights on state bridges and highways because I think it cheapens the commons and
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The only people not making a ton o' cash from this situation are the sport fans. There is no "work-around" for them. They either grumble and accept, or pound salt, as the expression goes, and give up watching sports altogether (which I have done).
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I simply seek to find an entry threshold that more of society can agree is fair.
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But then again, I wouldn't be surprised if PepsiCo designed all their road signs in loud, obnoxious colors.
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Ah, but what if the naming rights does not reduce that cost?
The local naming rights offenders offered to pay a certain percentage of costs. Only after the obnoxious permanent billboards went up (often ones that violated light regs, regs excused by the public/private partnership contracts) did the voting public realize clauses gave the naming rights to the private entity. I don't believe that detail was ever disclosed in the ballot authorizing the construction.
Since the issue was never discussed, I feel it needs to be. My initiative would simply require naming rights to meet a certain price threshold.
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I would agree with that. Sadly, that is the situation we have.
But it's still going to be voluntary revenue.
Only on the collection end. Those that must endure the continuing insult of the ad/name did not volunteer to be so dunned. My proposed initiative seeks redress for that point.
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It takes a willful act of removing yourself from the deluge, usually several weeks of an ad-free environment, to actually perceive the assault when you return.
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Hopefully, though, a society is more than simply a reflection of the commercial enterprises trucking and bartering within it.
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There's a Sean Penn movie out there called Bad Boys that illustrates this nicely. Throughout the flick, boys in a juvenal detention center constantly go to a vending machine and suck down RC colas. Ah, but when it comes time for Penn to go violent, he buys a bunch of no-name brand colas from the same machine, loads them into a pillowcase, and uses it as a bludgeon. (Ever see a generic cola in a vending machine?)
That's a problem for directors. As long as the action depicted sells the product well, take the money. When the product is paired with Teh Bad, what happens to the project? What happens when a movie signs a placement agreement and decides to rewrite midstream, which happens all the time?
Woody Allen in The Front has a similar problem.
Need to see Greatest.
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Define "risk."
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