Sephy’s Platzish

I know the chances of Brett Favre reading this site are slim to none, and I think slim left a long time ago, but I am really sick of his attitude of thinking he has some kind of God-given right to be brought back into the Packers.

He said in March that he was retiring, but I guess he thinks he has the right to change his mind whenever he feels fit. Granted, he’s not the first person to recant his retirement–Reggie White also came out of retirement to play a couple of more years, but his return to football wasn’t anywhere near as controversial as Brett’s is, or isn’t, depending on if he bothers to try to get reinstated.

What’s more frustrating about this is that he’s basically accusing the Packers, Ted Thompson and Mike McCarthy of being completely against him. I guess he forgot how they came to him in the early part of the year, said that they wanted him back and that they’d like a decision before the draft so that they could know where they were heading for the 2008 season.

So, we get to the emotional scene where Brett sits at the podium, sheds a few tears and says that he doesn’t have the heart to be in football anymore. We think that this is the end of Brett, but that didn’t last too long, now, did it?

If you ask me, I think that if Brett is serious about getting back into football, then he ought to come to training camp, try out for the team, and if he’s good enough (not like that’s not going to happen), sign up for this year. However, he seems to think that he’s earnt the right to act like some kind of spoilt brat–or celebrity–and be a complete jerk when it comes to returning.

I wonder what he thinks about the situation since, out of all the people who have commented on it, he’s the only one that hasn’t. You’ve heard from his brother (a media favourite in Milwaukee), his agent, his mother, I think his wife got in on it, and of course you’ve heard from Brett’s longtime friend from the Biloxi newspaper. Now, we have heard from Brett on Fox News (which is kind of like Ben Bernanke going on ESPN to be interviewed by Chris Berman about fiscal policy), but did that reveal anything? No, because it was a friendly reporter, and not someone who would ask him hard questions.

Heck, it’s nearly 3 weeks after I started this post, and the situation is still not resolved. Now, there’s talk of a buyout option going to him ($20 million spread out over 20 years or something like that, and staying in the "extended marketing plan" of the team), but ESPN reports that he’s not interested and wants to play football. Another thing that happened is that after weeks of faffing on his part, he finally filed his reinstatement papers…only to have the commissioner (wisely if you ask me) wait to see if something can be done before approving the request.

Whose side am I on?

To be honest, I’m on the side of the team here - they approached Favre about coming back this year, they wanted him, but in March, he didn’t want to. Now, two weeks before training camp started, he wants back in and suddenly he thinks we should fawn over him because he’s the prodigal son. To paraphrase a version of this story that was put out as a hypothetical - say that a supplier of a product, chicken, say, wanted to stop working, so you tell them fine, but then two weeks before your biggest event starts, and you’ve set up contracts for beef and/or pork, your chicken man comes back and says he wants to supply again. What do you do? Break your contracts for the current year and go back to your old guy.

So, now, it’s Sunday, and yet another day has passed and the news is that he’s going to be reinstated (tomorrow since NFL offices are closed on Sunday–you’d think that a sport whose livelihood depends on Sunday action would have someone there on Sunday) and will show up at Training camp, landing with the family in tow in just over an hour at 5.30PM, two hours before a public scrimmage starts at Lambeau Field. Initial reports were that he was going to just show up there and go to the scrimmage and stand on the sidelines.

You know what, at this point the story is that he’s going to compete for the starting job - if he decides that he still wants to play and gets the job, you know what, fair enough, we’ll still back him, but to be honest, he’s been a complete prick throughout this whole situation - a result of (as someone said on 540 ESPN today) all the people that take money from him influencing him. Oh well, let’s see how he does, hey?

One of the things I’ve been grumpy about a lot is the way that severe weather warnings are presented on local TV. Do they need to be presented? Yes, because it is a public service to inform the viewing audience of where storms are and if you need to take cover from said storms. That’s something we all can agree on. However, there are good ways and there are bad ways to handle informing the public of severe weather.

Let’s look at a bad way first, shall we?

This picture comes from just a couple of weeks ago, on the Sunday before Memorial Day, when we had some (as you can see on the radar picture) storms in the area. They weren’t severe (at the time), and there was just a watch issued for the area.

However, the fine folks at channel 12 decided to do what they do every time there’s a watch issued for the area - squeeze the picture so that it’s completely unwatchable and essentially waste about 1/8th of the screen with their graphic telling you that you’re watching channel 12’s weather bar. Of course, not to be outdone by the weather department, you also have the convenient reminder that you’re WATCHING CHANNEL 12 in the lower right hand corner. By the way, the reason for the black bars is that this was taken from their digital feed, and if it were not for the watch bar, the show would have been in HD, and the 12 logo would have been about 1/4 the size.

By the way if you think that channel 12 are the only ones who do this kind of thing, here’s what channel 58’s bar looks like (note that this is from September 2006, during which time they were running a promotion and squeezing the picture even further than they had already with their weather bar!)

Channels 4 and 6 at least use a bit of sense (though how much sense is questionable because it just happens that they wind up wasting more space by doing this) and just shrink the picture so that the aspect ratio isn’t messed up; only the picture is smaller.

Now, let’s take a look at how this kind of thing should be pursued (or, at least how it was pursued by the local stations in the past). First off, I should commend channel 12 on their old way of doing this - they would just put up text at the bottom of the screen that read, for example, "T-STORM WARNING ___ COUNTY". It was simple, didn’t interfere too much with the picture, and was a perfect solution to a complex problem.

However, what really got me going on this was the fact that I was able to pick up stations from out of the area yesterday (ahh, the old days of TVDX, you might say, and that’s true, and this was my first time doing some digital DXing, which made it that much cooler ). Thanks to the weather, a lot of the stations had their warnings up and showing for you to see.

On every single occasion, no station had squeezed, squished, crunched, or even re-sized a picture to accommodate the warning information. All they did was put a simple overlay of the affected counties, and text telling you what warnings were out (along with the counties affected). In another instance, an ABC affiliate broke into their programming (game 2 of the NBA finals), but did something that I think would give Milwaukee TV bosses heart attacks (well, except for channel 6 back in 2007) - they kept the game on in the bottom left and had the meteorologist in the upper right!

So, you may ask, what did warnings look like in the "olden days" of TV (i.e. anywhere but Milwaukee yesterday). Well, I could show you a picture I took of one station that is literally stuck in the early 90s with just showing a storm cloud in the lower left — which is what they used to do on local TV; sometimes with an S or a T to tell you what kind of warning it was. However, as it so happens, I have an old picture from channel 4, from a taped airing of "Days of Our Lives" circa I have no idea - maybe late 90s or early 2000s.

Look! A full-screen picture (though it wouldn’t be in HD because none of the major stations have the technology yet, but you’ve got the feeling it’s coming) with a simple overlay. Can anyone tell me why the TV stations can’t make such a simple step backward that would, in the end, be a huge step forward?

Oh, and by the way, I must also give kudos to the PBS broadcaster in the area - channels 10 & 36 - because they can do an HD overlay, and the size of it is very comfortable - it looks like a postage stamp on an envelope. When viewed on a 42-inch screen, I bet it’s the perfect size.

What I’m curious about is if Milwaukee is the only TV market that does this stupidity. I have this inkling that we are. That should be a lesson to them, but I don’t think they care to listen…

I was listening to the radio yesterday and I heard a name that I hadn’t heard before on the radio advertising one of the radio station’s features (their toll-free number that you can call from anywhere around the nation, world, or really anywhere). It was a company called Waterstone Bank. For a few seconds, I was confused about the name and had headed for the search box in Firefox before it hit me. This wasn’t a new bank, it was just another business which had changed its name to something that says almost nothing about what they are or where they do business. Somewhat (very tangentially) like when Phillip Morris changed its name to Altria. Uh, ok…

However, it isn’t the name that they chose to change to that gives me the shits, it’s the fact that they decided to change their name in the first place. Apparently, it isn’t good enough for a company to have the name of a particular city in their corporate image. Well, not any city (where would we be without New York Life or The Hartford or Atlanta Bread Company?) but apparently this one is taboo. What’s the name of this supposedly problematic name?

Wauwatosa.

Admittedly, it’s not the "sexiest" city name out there like Chicago, Atlanta, or anything foreign-sounding. However, some bright spark in a conference or board room, probably wearing the title of "image consultant" or something equally ridiculous, said that the word "Wauwatosa" was inappropriate for branding outside of that city itself. At least that’s the reason they used when announcing this change - it was a supposedly useful change because they’d built branches which are not within the city limits of Wauwatosa, thus they’ve outgrown the city and need a new name. Thus, it was done.

Now, if you think that this is the first business to do something similar, you’d be mistaken. 11 years ago or so, there used to be a realty company known as Wauwatosa Realty. They were a successful company on their own right (even if they were based in Brookfield, which is on the other side of the county line), but they decided that they needed to have some impetus to grow even further, so they decided to change their name as well. They went with the name Shorewest - at first it seemed to be ridiculous, but if you think about it, the name fits what they serve - the shore (of Lake Michigan) and out to the west.

On a somewhat unrelated note, there used to be a bank in this area that was quite successful while maintaining their city-based name - St. Francis Bank. They only changed their name when they got gobbled up by larger banks and had name changes put on them. Now, of course, they’re a part of a much larger chain that extends out to the nation, and now have a name of National City Bank.

Why St. Francis is a more acceptable name for a business than Wauwatosa is something that is beyond me. Could it be that Wauwatosa is hard to say for an "outsider", or that it has 4 syllables?

Come to think of it, the longer the name, the less likely it is that you’ll see a national company using it. Have you heard of anything with Oconomowoc in the name? Heck, can you say Oconomowoc?

I also haven’t seen any businesses using the name Wooloomooloo either…