Our Corporate Overlords Have Little Common Sense

White Out!

It looks as if the lovely velvet white snow, savagely morphing into killer mutant black ice, is going to stick around Hoots for a few days. I didn’t get out in it yesterday in my car, but we did wander around the yard like drunk hobos experiencing a white out.

I did look for penguins and polar bears, but they never showed up. Bummer.

As I have not been watching television, and due to the lovely economic situation in this country, one of our “we ain’t gotta have it”  mantras has been to return to basic satellite. This has probably been for the good, but it amazes me that we pay for QVC, ShamWow commercials and television local news that really isn’t local in the least.  The only truly local station we have is WLJT in Martin, but we don’t get that one although we are only three cornfields and a car dealership away from the actual station. We get the one from Kentucky. We also don’t get the news station in Jackson, but we do get the one from Paducah.

The common sense of our corporate overlords of satellite perpetually confuses me.

So, I watched weather news out of Cape Girardeau, Paducah, Illinois and Kentucky. I did this for about five minutes and then I took to Facebook because I have friends all over and I let them tell me word-of-mouth on what was going on during this snow storm from Hades.

I’ve thought about this a bit and how indicative of how rural America gets regional news that really has nothing to do with our community. Cape is over an hour and a half away and the last time I actually went there I was all of about 12-year-olds. There is no real easy way to get there from here. Paducah is a bit better and although it’s about the same distance as one would go south to Jackson, it seems to take a bit longer for some reason.  It’s also Kentuckycentric, as it should be because, oh, I don’t know, it’s in damned Kentucky.

But the satellite gods really screwed the pooch by not letting people in Weakley County even watch their own PBS station. It’s not the fault of the station in the least, it’s the rules, and the rules are rather preposterous.

I spend some time out of town. Recently on my trip to Memphis, I also didn’t have television which was fine. I watch what I want on the computer, but when I finally did get to a boobtube, I saw local sports. Which I liked. Once I trek up to Memphis, I have a feeling I’m going to be a rabid Grizzlys and Red Bird fan.

When I needed some localized information, I sent the bat signal out on Twitter (about where to go and grab a bite in Mid-Town) and the response was pretty amazing. Within 30 minutes, I had a plethora of information from kind and groovy Memphians of their favorite restaurants and what to do. I think I’m going to love that town. I dig communities that are interactive and welcoming.

And that, satellite overlords, is what’s going to ultimately kick your ass. We all know newspapers are in a bit of trouble just due to economics, but so is broadcast outlets that are being sent to areas that don’t care about news that isn’t local to your audience. Yeah, I’ll watch Lost next week out of Illinois but I’ll turn it when your anchors fire things up because it doesn’t even broach my quest for Tennessee state’s news. We are lucky to have a couple of radio stations that have live news as well. So thank the lucky stars for that one.

Let’s be clear though, folks like me will take to the social networks such as Twitter and Facebook to get our needs met. I’ a bit different than the average bear, but not by much, because I noticed other people on Facebook who aren’t as online obsessed as I am doing the same thing.

Just part of living in Hoots, I guess, but there are times that it is maddening. We do what works for us.