The beginning of the end of ZBM TV?

Looks like Cablevision Bermuda will be allowed to not carry local stations, after all.

What happens now? There are a whole lot of Cablevision subscribers, however many of them still watch the local stations particularly during the Bermuda prime-time block, i.e. Y&R-local news-Oprah 6-9pm slots.

Bermuda Broadcasting is still going to retain exclusive rights locally to events like the Superbowl, Olympics, Wimbledon finals, and likely hold their licences for all CBS and ABC programming as well.

Does Cablevision, for its part, have in the wings those networks in HDTV and want to leverage those advantages to their subscribers?

No idea how this will turn out, except that the public's likely to get shortchanged, at least in the short term. And that World On Wireless should be feeling a bit upbeat about getting new business.

Finding a restaurant that everyone likes

It's not that we don't have a variety of restaurants to choose from in town, although once you eliminate certain venues from the equation (KFC, Spot, Cafe Continental) for various reasons, in this case, somewhere that we can have decent food and lively conversation without feeling cramped or like you have to always be shouting, it gets tricky because for some reason, most of my friends totally despise one or two of the options.

Coconut Rock? One person despises it.
Pickled Onion? Different person despises it.
L'Oriental? Guess what.

I mean, if everybody didn't like the food or service at a particular spot that's one thing, but for some reason we end up with one person who just doesn't like anything that the restaurant's serving.

On the other hand, maybe it's simply that the pool of restaurants I'm considering is too shallow and I need to bring into play the restaurants I wouldn't ordinarily go to because of prices. I just realized that most of my friends like Greg's Steakhouse. Time to switch tacks, perhaps.

Don't put your dog in a dress

I don't often listen to the radio but tonight by chance I got home and hott fm was on the air. The host had apparently picked up a loose chihuahua on the street and was trying to locate the owner. After some dialogue between the host and co-host, it turns out that the poor dog's wearing some kind of dress.

Oh hell no. Don't people know that dogs secretly hate owners who dress them up?

Eventually after some people called in to identify the dog ("wearing a pink dress" - oh dear Lord), the host got a call in from the owner, who had apparently been running around town looking for the missing pup.

Then the really hilarious part of it. The woman was all relieved that the dog was found, then launched into a speech saying how frantically she was searching about, and that she didn't even have her bra on...

This is how crazy people who dress their pets are. They will put a freaking dress on their pet and not think about fully dressing themselves. But it made for some good early evening entertainment, for me at least.

(Side note: I read that for dogs like chihuahuas that are small and don't have much fur that wearing some kind of covering, particularly in colder climates/months, is a good thing, however that's like for a shirt or sweater. Dresses and little boots, um no)

Pepsi on the bandwagon

I thought of Obama as soon as I saw the new Pepsi logo in their commercials, too.

They say that the logo's really just a 'smile', but I didn't see it until looking more closely at it, so I still think the not-so-subtle Obama logo similarity weighed greatly in their choice of the new logo.

My opinion? Pepsi's marketing to the world, not just the U.S., and Obama is popular world-wide. If they can show a correlation between Pepsi and Obama and an eager public is drawn to it, they win big. Doesn't matter if there's some backlash among those who either think that Obama is Satan or don't like the idea of companies piggybacking off a celebrity's star status.

That said, the design probably doesn't have the staying power to last more than a year or two. Better keep their classic logo ready to relaunch.

Club versus country? The fans have spoken

Not literally, of course, but after seeing how many spectators were at Somerset Cricket Club to watch the Dudley Eve finals, it shoult be obvious that the passion for local footy far outweighs that of seeing Bermuda play.

The effect is even greater in cricket. Bermuda played against Scotland and later Namibia in four-day matches last year, however there weren't more than 50 people in attendance on the Saturday that I watched the Scotland match. Many more were at the Western Counties game, I'm sure.

While it's one thing to discuss what players choose to do when faced with the choice of representing Bermuda or not, it's another thing to discuss the sports fan's choice of what to support. And right now, and partly also because of the lack of recent success of Bermuda in cricket or football (we'll include the Bermuda Hogges in this as well), it would appear that club support and pride far outweighs national support and pride.

Kill off ZBM (aka I changed my mind)

This has become a yearly thing. Gearing up to watch an NFL playoff game on ZBM, and for some reason ZBM's still showing BBC World. The whole CBS pregame wasn't broadcast nor were the opening several minutes of the Ravens-Dolphins game. Whoever's supposed to be at the studio pulling whatever figurative switch that swaps to the CBS coverage wasn't around or something until well after 2pm.

I take back what I said about free TV. Along with an absence of moving to digital, doing something besides relying on 'file photos' in their TV news reporting, having the worst station watermarks ever on its provided shows, lack of online presence in any shape or form, crazy audio issues, they continue to stumble. I think they have a legit argument in their beef with Cablevision, but Limey's right. Apologies to the 10% or so of households that don't have subscription television, but the local guys suck.

Maybe if they fold (they can keep their radio services), government will provide all residents with digital boxes so they can receive Gov.TV and the like. Don't know what will happen when the uproar over the absence of the 6pm-9pm Y&R-local news-Oprah viewing block emerges, though.

Buying furniture in Bermuda

Big difference in how they operate here as opposed to the U.S. (Despite the prices of course, heh):

While in the U.S., companies try to offer better deals on things like delivery charges, here the companies try their utmost to match the highest delivery charges. Not beat them. Match them. Keep them 'in line' with everybody else.
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device available from M3 Wireless