The Economy

Their service is so good it borders on creepy. The woman beat me to my seat with the sandwich. I felt like I was being stalked.

I much prefer the passive-aggressive hatred of Popeye’s employees.

 

This year at the Masters, I stayed in a hotel across the street from a CFA. One morning I left for the course before 7 and there was a double row of cars in a line that went through the parking lot and onto the street — at six-forty-freakin'-five!! I guess I need to get there and see for myself what the attraction is.

 

Tried CFA, it's perfectly fine. I prefer Popeye's though. TBH, fried chicken of any kind, even homemade, is like a once or twice a year treat for me. My tastebuds are still 17, but the rest of me isn't, so I'm hardly a connaisseur.

 

I seriously doubt there is a CFA along I-40 between Nashville and Wilmington that I haven't visited. For more than 20 years, our radio crew plans our Saturday travel to away games around CFA stops, and we know what press boxes have it and which ones don't. A good Christmas is measured in CFA gift cards.
To be honest, that CFA in Hendersonville is a pain, so you are better off hitting Asheville or Spartanburg.

 

The City of Santa Barbara is threatening to shut down the CFA there because traffic routinely backs out onto the town’s main road, State Street, blocking traffic. It’s quite the kerfuffle.

 

My view of the economy is on a very micro level — how is my TV station doing? We have hardly any ad revenue. Ratings are up but businesses aren’t buying. Political money is 10% so far what was estimated.

A cold winter is coming. Quietly adding and updating my skill set to try and be spared during the inevitable cuts that will be mandated.

 

Are businesses so busy that they don’t need to advertise?

 

Hey, inflation!

Norfolk Southern trumpets quarterly "record" revenue, but a closer look shows carload freight down but large increase in revenue on 20% higher rates, smaller increase in income.

Wall Street sucks.

 

Exactly.
When a company has, say, $3.5 billion in profits in a quarter but claims to have "lost" money because it wanted to make more, there is a problem with the system.

 

I saw your thread on the future of local television stations but was road tripping and did not participate.

My first thought was something AOC said after the 2020 congressional elections. She was being criticized as causing the Democrats to lose congressional seats because she was too liberal. AOC responded that mot of those losing campaigns focused their money on local television and not on social media.

I do not work in the industry but my memory is 40 years ago in my hometown of Denver television stations did combined shares of 50+ in local news at 10. I am not sure but now aren't the combined shares of the 10:00 P.M. news today something like a five? So all this political money is being poured into a product that is being seen by only a fraction of the electorate.

The second problem with local television is that a candidate does not want about half the viewers to see many of his advertisements. Republicans need to strongly pro Second Amendment to win the primary. If they advertise on local television news advocating their support of AR-15's in every home in the general election about half the voters will be incentivized to vote against said candidate. But in social media the campaigns can send the pro-gun message to members of the NRA and send messages about inflation to users who are identified as favoring more restrictive gun laws.

So I think AOC is correct and the political money is going to move to targeted media. Combined with declining revenues from the cable companies because of declining subscriptions I think you are correct in your pessimistic assessment.