Screwing the Commons and All Things Civic

[peristaltor]

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

Comments

[peristaltor]

Who is "they" here, the sport 'casters? The television stations/networks (that built their business models on pernicious ads)?

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).

[peristaltor]

Sports have; stadia have (like Wriggly Field). What has changed is the threshold for advertising entry. A company can pretend to be Mr. Wriggly without paying anywhere near the full cost of construction.

I simply seek to find an entry threshold that more of society can agree is fair.

[rimpala]

It would be nice if they can at least be tasteful about it and name it after a person instead of the product.

But then again, I wouldn't be surprised if PepsiCo designed all their road signs in loud, obnoxious colors.

[peristaltor]

I don't see any downside to having rich sponsors help pay for things that then help reduce the cost to taxpayers.

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.

[peristaltor]

If they're not going to reduce the cost somehow (either via lowering the out of pocket cost of this project, or another later project), then there's no reason to do it.

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.

[peristaltor]

I'm not surprised. I see the problem very clearly because I am sensitive to it. Many see no problem, their minds accepting the daily onslaught of ads with the numbness of the Mississippi getting drenched with a mere fire hose, or of a volcano caldera getting heated with a lit book of matches.

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.

[peristaltor]

Bond is a commercial franchise. (Fun fact; the book Bond drank "shaken, not stirred" gin martinis. Stoly paid the producers to change that to vodka way back in Doctor No days.) Ball entertained on a commercial network. These should be expected.

Hopefully, though, a society is more than simply a reflection of the commercial enterprises trucking and bartering within it.

[peristaltor]

I'd agree with that. The problem comes when the brands object to the depiction the movie calls for.

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.

[peristaltor]

It's a great, low-to-no risk way to help fund projects.

Define "risk."