Many bemoan the Dodgers unceremoniously departure from Brooklyn, New York back in 1957, but the New York Times tells us that due to an impending deal with Time Warner Cable the company's subscribers in Southern California are going to be paying “between $4 and $5 a month” more even if they don’t watch the Dodgers. And because Time Warner Cable won’t be able to charge enough to cover the entire cost of the Dodgers deal it is very possible non-sports watchers may see a degradation of the quality of the rest of their cable service as Time Warner figures out how to absorb the shortfall it will be swallowing.
The Times didn’t say that New Yorkers will themselves see a rise in cable prices due to the Dodgers deal, only that New Yorkers (along with Los Angeleans) are already in some cases paying a “$2 to $3 monthly surcharge” to pay for “regional sports networks.” Since I expect Dodgers games will sometimes be played on New York channels I bet the cost somehow factors in to what is paid although I couldn’t discern from the Times article for certain that either the existing arrangement or the impending deal means that New Yorkers pay much for Dodgers team games they don’t watch, only that they pay a lot, in general, for professional sports games even when they are not watching them.
One piece of good news reported in the article is that, “Verizon FiOS, perhaps testing the waters, announced a sports-free package of channels this week that is $15 cheaper than a similar package with sports.”
The New York Times has now caught up with and put on its front page something Noticing New York was writing about last July: how those of us who don’t watch and otherwise shun having anything to do with professional sports are paying a lot for them anyway in our cable TV subscription packages. The Times article is here: Rising TV Fees Mean All Viewers Pay to Keep Sports Fans Happy, by Brian Stelter, January 25, 2013.
Noticing New York’s article in July, which went into more detail about what options (or the lack thereof) New York City residents have to try to avoid the extra amounts they are having to pay for sports they don’t watch (and may actually consider not all that great to have around in other ways), is here: Monday, July 9, 2012, More Sports Glummery.
The topic of the Times article and my earlier Noticing New York article is variation on a theme that I made the subject of independent research I did with my professor (Charlotte Price) when I was studying economics at Sarah Lawrence: how and when it can become possible for people to wind up paying for and buying things they don’t want. It’s sort of a challenging set of propositions that run counter to the standard expectations and intuitions that generally ensue from and accompany normal economic theorems.
This is what the Times said in its article today sounding like the subject that drew me to research it back then:
For the most part, all of these networks are requirements, not options for cable customers. (Some distributors charge extra for packages of sports channels for die-hard fans, but the big networks remain in the packages that most customers get.) [Even though the Times says Dodgers games ] . . . were lucky to garner 100,000 viewers on any given day.
* * * *
“The cable industry has done everything it can to bundle programming and force consumers to buy things they don’t want,” said Gene Kimmelman, a former Justice Department antitrust lawyer.
When I was trying to figure out these paradoxes of people paying for what they did not want back at Sarah Lawrence I kept coming back to models that involved collective decision-making and found myself often getting into the realm of political decision-making. This was when my professor assisted me by introducing me to the work of Kenneth Arrow.
As for non-sports fans being forced to pay for that which they are not fans of, when politics and their manipulation come into play in decision-making, the examples of what results are probably all the more extreme. That’s when you get the example of the so-called “Barclays” arena where every non-sports loving New Yorker is being forced to pick up the costs of subsidizing tickets for every game to the tune of perhaps $20.00 a seat every game. A couple of games can easily come to $700,000.00 and there are many more games than that. And then we have the hoggish Yankee Stadium to pay for too. The list, of course, goes on.
Still the Times has been cheering the arrival of the “Barclays” arena without pointing out that many, many New Yorkers don't want to pay those extra taxes they are being forced to pay to heftily subsidize it.
Bloomberg at virtually secret Saturday evening press conference where a question about his bad judgement about prioritizing sports events over hurricane recovery inevitably came up
When you are mayor of New York bad news can make for a good personal news cycles, except when you blow it. Mayor Michael Bloomberg was getting a straight set of predictable kudos for his theoretically no-nonsense handling of the superstorm Sandy disaster. That was until the conversation started shifting to the fact that, despite the advice of all his top aides, Bloomberg was indulging himself in some nonsense: Bullheadedly deciding he would proceed with the city’s annual marathon despite the schizophrenic drain on city resources and commitments it would entail. Bowing to the weight of public opinion the marathon was eventually cancelled Friday evening, hours after the mayor had again staunchly supported proceeding with it.
Upon examination, it looks like that when the news turned bad for Bloomberg, Bloomberg decided that he would hide out, manipulating the news cycle by deep-sixing the very same regular set of hurricane aftermath update press conferences through which he had been garnering his kudos during the long week of disaster news.
And there is more that could have motivated Bloomberg to play with the news cycle: Despite the week’s challenging hurricane disaster and recovery events, Bloomberg was looking forward to the inaugural basketball game of the Nets at the “Barclays” Center. When the marathon was cancelled, the “Barclays” game was scheduled for Saturday night, just twelve hours before the morning of the marathon. Because of hurricane relief efforts and mass transit disruptions the previously scheduled Wednesday and Thursday night Nets games at the “Barclays” arena were cancelled, but before they were cancelled Bloomberg embarrassed himself by saying, in the thick of early hurricane recovery efforts on Tuesday, that he not only hoped the Wednesday Nets game would proceed but that he would take a personal break from hurricane recovery to attend it.
Given the equivalencies that were in play, any traction the marathon cancellation story got was likely to lead to questions about, and pressure on the administration to postpone or cancel, this third Saturday night basketball game as well. The mantra explaining cancellation of the marathon being repeated on all the networks was that at this juncture a sports event could not take precedence over the recovery efforts. The basketball game at the 18,000-seat “Barclays” arena, though a smaller event than the marathon, was, because of recovery challenges in the storm’s aftermath, going to require a specially superintended support effort by Bloomberg administration.
Because of Bloomberg’s commitment, the marathon was on all week until the sudden, about-face cancellation on Friday at about 5:30 PM. The Bloomberg administration was holding regular updating midday press conferences about hurricane recovery measures and the last mention of the plans to proceed with the marathon was when Bloomberg was questioned about it at the press conference on Friday afternoon at about 1:33 PM. The exchange went like this:
Female reporter:Surely you've heard and read some of the comments from people on Staten Island who feel that it's insensitive to hold the marathon and wonder how it can be said that no resources are being diverted it to it. How many city employees are working to support the marathon?
Bloomberg:Well, for example the police department right now has to be at most of the intersections where there is no lights. Lights are gonna be back on tonight. Mass transit solves a lot of other problems where the police provide those traffic control resources. It does use some resources, but it doesn't use resources that can really make a difference in recovery and that sort of thing. It's a different group of people. It's a relatively small amount of the sanitation department's resources. And we have to have a city going forward. I don't think there's any question but we have. . . There are New Yorkers who have lost loved ones and nothing's gonna ever replace that. People who have lost their homes: we have to make sure that we do everything we can to help them recover. We have to work around the clock for people to get through this thing and I assure you we' re doing that. And, if I thought it took any resources away from that, we would not do this. But we have plenty of police officers that work in areas that aren't affected. We don't take all of them and move them into areas that are affected. There will be no diversion of resources. There will be no redistribution of our efforts, no diminution of our efforts. We have a 24/7 operation going which I am confident we're going to do. We have to do everything we can to help people and when power returns over the next day and then, mass transit, more people are able to go to homes, that's going to make a big difference. But as Rudy Giuliani said to me this morning, he said,`You know right after 9/11 people said exactly the same thing: New York has to show that we are here and that we are going to recover and that we can,’ while we help people, still help companies that need the business, still generate a tax base so that we have the resources to help people and give people something to cheer about and what's been a very dismal week for a lot of people . . . And he reminded me also there was a demand from people that we close. . . Cancel the New Year's Eve celebration because of a snowstorm. Uhm, I think Rudy had it right: you have to keep going and doing things and you can grieve, you can cry and you can laugh all at the same time. That's what human beings are good at.
When news came at 5:30 PM that the marathon was being cancelled nonetheless, the news networks were saying to expect a press conference about it at City Hall shortly afterwards. Those led to believe that this meant that Bloomberg would shortly be appearing to address the cancellation were wrong: In lieu of a personal appearance to address the issue his office simply issued a short statement of the mayor (and the New York Road Runners) in the form of a press release (November 2, 2012- according to the Times it was released at 5:21 p.m. EST):
The Marathon has been an integral part of New York City's life for 40 years and is an event tens of thousands of New Yorkers participate in and millions more watch. While holding the race would not require diverting resources from the recovery effort, it is clear that it has become the source of controversy and division. The marathon has always brought our city together and inspired us with stories of courage and determination. We would not want a cloud to hang over the race or its participants, and so we have decided to cancel it. We cannot allow a controversy over an athletic event –– even one as meaningful as this –– to distract attention away from all the critically important work that is being done to recover from the storm and get our city back on track. The New York Road Runners will have additional information in the days ahead for participants.
Almost immediately the Times was reporting the story as being about Bloomberg’s poor judgment and stubborn pigheadness:
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, facing criticism that he was favoring marathon runners arriving from around the world over people in devastated neighborhoods, reversed himself and canceled the New York City Marathon. * * * * For days, the mayor, who is often reluctant to abandon a position of his, insisted on going ahead with the race, saying it would signal that the city was back to normal. He changed his mind as opposition became nearly unanimous. * * * * Within the mayor’s inner circle, though, there were concerns. Some advisers worried that the criticism could steal the focus from Mr. Bloomberg’s well-received performance during and after the storm, and could damage his legacy in the way that the city’s botched response to a blizzard had done in 2010. Behind the scenes, there were also concerns about what the world would see: images of runners so close to neighborhoods that had been battered by the storm, at a time when gasoline remained in short supply and mass transit was still not fully functioning. Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly and Deputy Mayors Howard Wolfson and Patricia E. Harris all argued for calling off the event.
If this was the story that was going to get traction, wasn’t it inevitable that the press was going to ask about the special support the city was mustering for proceeding with that other highly-hyped sports event, the Nets “Barclays” basketball game? Especially, since Bloomberg has already laid the overly-enthusiastic bad-judgment connection by saying, the day after the hurricane, that he wanted the Wednesday basketball game to proceed and that he personally planned to attend it? And if the press has asked about still-pending Saturday basketball game there would have been pressure to also cancel it, together with the special support the city was mustering to make it happen.
By lying low and not allowing the marathon story to get attention and traction Bloomberg therefore also forestalled having to address controversy over the specially assisted Bruce Ratner/Mikhail Prokhorov “Barclay” arena sports event. But to do so Bloomberg’s strategy had to, at the same time, sacrifice the regular press conferences Bloomberg had been holding to keep New Yorkers up-to-date about the disaster recovery events.
As noted, Bloomberg did not come out on Friday evening to personally update the public when he cancelled the marathon.
Some might think, like I originally thought, that Bloomberg did not hold a press conference about hurricane recovery on Saturday. The expected press conference did seem to vanish from the news cycle but he actually did hold one. What assured that this press conference was not covered in the news cycle was that it wasn’t held in the morning or midday like others; he delayed holding it until late Saturday afternoon. Ironically, what then worked synergistically to assure that it would get no coverage is that he held it at a time when all of the local stations had cancelled their evening news for football events. (Was taking advantage of this conscious on Bloomberg's part?) Up until this preemption by the sport of football the networks had been obsessing about the hurricane’s aftermath with a lot of special coverage.
Do you wonder whether the cancellation of the marathon came up at this very next below-the-radar and under-reported press conference? You bet it did, but being held in the evening there would have been no time to discuss any cancellation of the “Barclays” Nets game and Bloomberg cleverly controlled the question and answers to dissuade and prevent any possible follow-up questions about that “Barclays” event. Here is the question and answer at that press conference with respect to the marathon:
Reporter:Can you just explain what happened between early Friday when the marathon was on, and later Friday when it was canceled. And what would you say to some of the runners saying they wish it was canceled earlier so they didn't have to come.
Bloomberg:Well I wish we didn't have a hurricane and that we could have had a great event. So, you know. . . could have, would have, and should have isn't something that I deal with. What simply happened was it became a source of dissension and we don't need that right now and hopefully next year we'll have a great event where people can come to the city and enjoy what the city has to offer and compete and participate and the spirit of the race is to bring people together. When that became a divisive issue I just made the decision that it should not go on. the good news is that the supplies for the marathon have been donated to communities that need them, something like 600 medical blankets delivered directly to residents of Midland Beach by volunteers who went door to door with them and some 10,000 cases of water were sent to a central distribution center in Floyd Bennett Field. Other supplies are being sent out now so you know the situation changes shame that it had to happen but we've got to do the right thing at each time and I am looking forward to I'm sure all about those runners too, to coming back next year.
How did Bloomberg assure that there were no follow-up questions about this or the “Barclays” event? When he first called on the reporter asking about the marathon he told the reporter that, because he was prioritizing hurricane recovery events over other matters (like sports), he would only take such a question at the end. It was clever: because he was prioritizing hurricane recovery efforts he would not take a question about his misplaced priorities relating to sports events. The exchange whereby Bloomberg deferred the marathon question went like this:
Reporter:On the marathon, can you explain…
Bloomberg:Let's just stick to this for the time being then we'll come back. I'll be happy to take a question. This is a little bit more important: We're trying to talk about people getting their lives together.
Bloomberg next deferred as being similarly off-topic a question about preparedness of the Board of Elections for the Tuesday presidential election. When in short order there were no more questions about anything else, Bloomberg took the Board of Elections question saving the marathon question for the very last. Then, upon providing his answer to marathon question, Bloomberg quickly segued to end the press conference with a reminder about how important it was for the stricken population in the city to take appropriate measure to shelter from the cold.
I still don’t know whether Bloomberg went to the Nets game that night where the Nets introduced their new mascot, BrooklynKnight (BrooklynKnight is a Brooklynite- get it?) being promoted as a mythical defender of Brooklyn. As late as the Saturday evening press conference was there would have been just enough time for the mayor to get to “Barclays” arena before the game started.
Do I really think that Bloomberg manipulated this news cycle?
Normally, the mayor’s press office puts up video of the mayor’s press conferences on its web page. One indication that Saturday’s press was intended to be low profile is that no video of it was posted. Instead, there was only a press release transcription of the mayor’s prepared remarks (Mayor Bloomberg Updates New Yorkers on City Response to Hurricane Sandy). The transcription was minus the question and answer exchange with the press. As you might infer from this Noticing New York article that the question and answer period of any mayoral press conference is often the most important part of any such event, zeroing in on issues of controversy rather than the official story packaged for distribution. Video of the next mayor’s next press conference updating New Yorkers on Sunday went up without Saturday’s ever being put up.
Another way that helped ensure that Bloomberg’s Saturday press conference was as safe and friendly as it could be was to include Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Shaun Donovan who came out of the Bloomberg administration and who gets favorable press. (The city is estimating that it is going to have to find housing for 30,000 to 40,000 families dispossessed by the storm.) Secretary for Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius and Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney were also at this little-reported press event.
The way I was able to find video of the event (embedded below) and verify that it had actually occurred was by going to the New York Times hurricane update blog and scrolling backward to 5:07 PM Saturday.
Yes, it is to be expected that a mayor will try to control the news messages out there about him. Here is something scary to think about: In the course of researching Bloomberg’s storm-related press conferences one of the top hits I got in a Google search was video of his November 2, 2012 press conference on his private self-promoting MikeBlooberg.com site. This site acts in 1984 style as a faux news press release site to promote the news about himself that Bloomberg likes. That day there was a transcription of the Friday, November 2, 2012 press conference. Since it didn’t include the questions and answers that followed, it had nothing about the marathon or Bloomberg saying then that it should not be cancelled. In any event it is all gone now, replaced by the favorable news that Bloomberg’s site administrators are choosing to feature on that site now.
Is there a more innocent explanation for why Bloomberg personally absented himself from the news cycle from midday Friday until Saturday evening? Did he zip off to Bermuda in that space of time for a shorter version of his regular weekend trip? There would have been enough time for him to do so. Maybe he did, but I suspect that bottom line is he simply didn’t want stories about his bad judgment with respect to sporting events getting traction.
(Above, Today's New York Times front page devotes two-thirds of its above the fold space with yellow highlighting to emphasize how many potential whistleblowers at Penn State DIDN'T come forward to report the football program's child abuse scandal.)
The Penn State Scandal As a Fable About Whistleblowing
I’ve written about the subject of the Penn State College Football sexual abuse of children scandal before. When I did it was on the subject of the public damnation directed at the potential Penn State whistleblowers who didn’t blow the whistle versus the damnation awaiting whistleblowers who do blow the whistle against the powers-that-be, very noticeably, and especially for those who blow the whistle against government malfeasance. As a close-to-home, dear-to-Noticing New York’s-heart example of government's antagonism toward whistleblowing I cited the abysmal designed-to-fail whistleblowing policies and practices of the State’s “Empire State Development” agency ("ESD," formerly the Empire State Development Corporation- its name keeps changing to protect the. . .? ). (See: Wednesday, November 16, 2011, Whistleblowing and ESD: Culture and the Questionable Spirit In Which the State Agency Most Responsible For Atlantic Yards Wields Omnipotent Powers.)
No Whistleblowing At ESD: An Arena Arrives Courtesy of Fantasy Facts
With no state employee coming forward to reveal the state’s misrepresentations, those misrepresentations were temporarily accepted by Justice Friedman as veracious. Had that not been the case it would have been incumbent upon Justice Friedman to rule, as she eventually did, based on the actual facts, that the mega-project had never been the subject of a proper environmental review. Had she made such a timely ruling the issuance of ESD bonds for the Ratner/Prokhorov (“Barclays”) sports arena oughtn’t to have proceeded. Since the issuance of those bonds were subject to an IRS deadline (the ending of a special exemption from the law against tax-exempt financing of private arenas and stadia) the developer’s private arena would never have been built and the entire megadevelopment would have fallen apart, probably being taken away from Ratner and distributed amongst multiple developers in the process.
The Penn State Scandal As a Fable About Outsized College Football Programs
The new news that’s out with respect to the Penn State Scandal is that, according to a just issued report by former FBI director Louis Freeh, (267 pages including appendices) is that there were not just a few potential whistleblowers that did not come forward to report the ongoing abuse of children but a whole panoply of potential whistleblowers that failed to. That’s basically the point of the New York Time’s from page today where the Penn State scandal takes up two-thirds of the above-the-fold space (with the yellow highlighting emphasizing which of a list of prominent individuals knew and didn’t report what when). (See: Abuse Scandal Inquiry Damns Paterno and Penn State, By Ken Belson, July 12, 2012.)
The Brian Lehrer show today did a better job than the Times of zeroing in on what is the crux of this story, the reason that so many potential whistleblowers did not come forward: The Penn State football program had grown so powerful and unaccountable that no one dared report abuse. There is an accompanying loss of perspective such that, in the words of the Freeh report, the “most senior leaders at Penn State” had a “total and consistent disregard . . . for the safety and welfare of Sandusky’s child victims.” (The Brian Lehrer Show: Lessons from Penn State, Friday, July 13, 2012- click below to listen.)
In other words, at Penn State, the college’s football program has essentially become the unchecked “powers-that-be” at the university, calling all the shots, making the football program that much more analogous to the government entities I discussed that find whistleblowers anathema and choose to stymie them. Everyone from janitors up to people in the highest positions of authority were afraid to hold the program accountable. In the Brian Lehrer discussion, Jonathan Mahler, a contributing writer at The New York Times Magazine and author of the Kindle Single "Death Comes to Happy Valley," describes how in early 2000 a new dean tried to take on Coach Paterno and was thwarted when Paterno threatened to stop fund raising.
Mahler speaks about how the football programs of all the big Division One schools, including Penn State’s, have become independent entities standing apart from the academic side of the universities, even undermining their mission and culture, with huge stadia and special buildings and complexes that can dwarf a university or small town in which it resides. (The Penn State stadium seats over 100,000 which, Brian Lehrer points out, makes it more than twice the size of Yankee Stadium.) Then there are disciplinary problems with players, some of them with criminal records, upon whom have been bestowed a special impunity respecting bad behavior. All of this unfolds in the context of, and is driven by, an uncritical fandom.
A Moral About The Sport of Child Abuse
When I wrote about the Penn State scandal before I didn’t write about the outsized, unchecked power of the football program as part of the problem, but I have been writing some other articles, let’s call it a series, about the many features of commercialized sports that are dismaying. In that regard I have given a fair amount of focus to the infusion of money into the nominally amateur sports played in college, high school and now even down to middle school level. The commercializing pressures from those vast infusions corrupt the standards according to which we treat our youth.
In his Brian Lehrer appearance Jonathan Mahler briefly mentioned the problem of the exploitation of student athletes and its pervasiveness. Yes, we are not treating our children well. From top to bottom at Penn State, from university president down to janitor, no one could see the priority of preventing the abuse of children? In fact, the Freeh report’s headline-grabbing finding that all this lack of perspective and accountability, resulting from putting commercialization and uncritical fandom first, has resulted in a “total and consistent disregard . . . for the safety and welfare of” children, could also serve as a thumbnail description for the last Noticing New York `sports glummery’ article in which I suggested that the way we now readily exploit and sacrifice children for sport makes our current reality rather like the dystopia envisioned in “The Hunger Games.” (See: Monday, July 9, 2012, More Sports Glummery.) (Above, included in that earlier 'sports glummery' article, Katniss Everdeen from the "The Hunger Games" outfitted with a promotional Brooklyn Nets Basketball jersey and Adidas sneakers pressed upon her by corporate sponsors. Read about the subject of corporate branding of GOVERNMENT here.)
Earlier Noticing New York articles in this ‘sports glummery’ series are:
And by the way, it probably shouldn't escape notice that this same dystopic sports world is what helped to bring us the previously mentioned eminent domain-abusing Ratner/Prokhorov (“Barclays”) arena arriving on our doorstep when the potential ESD whistleblowers sat idly by.
NOTICING NEW YORK & NATIONAL NOTICE are both independent entities managed by Michael D. D. White of Hop-Skip Enterprises. Michael D. D. White is an attorney, urban planner and former government public finance and development official. *** Noticing New York covers New York development and associated politics. National Notice covers national policy and economic issues *** Contact: MichaelDDWhite(at)gmail.com
