Last night’s Super Bowl has apparently broken a record many thought would stand forever, ousting the last episode of M*A*S*H as the most-watched show in the history of American television.
The New Orleans Saints’ victory over Indianapolis in the Super Bowl was watched by more than 106 million people, surpassing the 1983 finale of “M-A-S-H” to become the most-watched program in U.S. television history, the Nielsen Co. said Monday.
Compelling story lines involving the city of New Orleans and its ongoing recovery from Hurricane Katrina and the attempt at a second Super Bowl ring for Indianapolis quarterback Peyton Manning propelled the viewership. Football ratings have been strong all season. “It was one of those magical moments that you don’t often see in sports,” said Sean McManus, president of CBS News and Sports.
Nielsen estimated Monday that 106.5 million people watched Sunday’s Super Bowl. The “M-A-S-H” record was 105.97 million. The viewership estimate obliterated the previous record viewership for a Super Bowl — last year’s game between Arizona and Pittsburgh. That game was seen by 98.7 million people, Nielsen said.
The “M-A-S-H” record has proven as durable and meaningful in television as Babe Ruth’s record of 714 home runs was in baseball until topped by Hank Aaron. Ultimately, it may be hard to tell which program was really watched by more people. There’s a margin for error in such numbers, and Nielsen’s Monday estimate was preliminary, and could change with a more thorough look at data due Tuesday.
“It’s significant for all of the members of the broadcasting community,” said Leslie Moonves, CBS Corp. CEO. “For anyone who wants to write that broadcasting is dead, 106 million people watched this program. You can’t find that anywhere else.”
Moonves predicted CBS will earn more in advertising revenue than in any other Super Bowl. The good ratings for the game and football in general also set CBS and other football broadcasters up well when selling advertising for next season, he said.
The Nielsen estimate also drew some congratulations from Alan Alda, the star of “M-A-S-H,” and the slugger whose record was beaten. “If the `M-A-S-H’ audience was eclipsed, it was probably due in large part to the fact that the whole country is rooting for New Orleans to triumph in every way possible,” Alda said. “I am, too, and I couldn’t be happier for them. I love that city.”
There are more American homes with television sets now (114.9 million) than there were in 1983 (83.3 million). An estimated 77 percent of homes with TVs on were watching “M-A-S-H” in 1983, compared with the audience share of 68 for the Super Bowl. Nielsen also measures only the United States, and it’s possible some World Cup soccer games were seen more worldwide. Accurate measurement of television audiences outside the United States is spotty at best.
Alda also wondered whether the numbers were too close to declare a new champion. He thinks Nielsen didn’t take into account large numbers of people watching “M-A-S-H” communally, which is often the case for football games, too. “Not to say I’m competitive, but in part we are talking about sports,” he said. “And I actually AM competitive.”
McManus didn’t want to jinx it, but the abnormally strong viewership for football this year left him hoping for a record. The NFC and AFC championship games both had their biggest audiences since the 1980s. The growth of high-definition television and its appeal to sports fans has also helped.
A competitive game until the final minutes sealed it. McManus acknowledged some nervousness when Indianapolis jumped out to a 10-0 lead — a Super Bowl rout often makes people turn away from the game — but New Orleans roared back.
The Mid-Atlantic blizzard also helped CBS. After New Orleans, the highest-rated market was snowbound Washington, Nielsen said. More people watched the game from their homes in that area instead of going to parties or bars, and Nielsen does a much better job counting viewers in homes than outside of them. “Bad weather in the Northeast and good weather in Florida was a good combination for us,” McManus said.
It was, quite literally, a perfect storm.
McManus hinted at the reason no one thought the M*A*S*H record would fall, despite a growing number of people available to watch television: Market segmentation. In 1983, most of us had just the three broadcast networks (CBS, NBC, and ABC — Fox didn’t yet exist) plus perhaps a local PBS station and a couple of crappy UHF stations showing “Leave it to Beaver” and “Ultra Man” reruns. Current cable stalwarts HBO and ESPN were fledgling and most people either couldn’t get cable or couldn’t figure out why anyone would pay for TV when all the shows you could possibly want were being shown free.
Of course, the Super Bowl is different. It’s the one show that virtually everyone still watches. It’s broadcast on Sundays, when most everyone is home, and nobody’s foolish enough to program expensive original content against it. ( I don’t recall what was against the final episode of M*A*S*H, but there were almost certainly two legitimate shows on the other networks.) As a result, the 44 Super Bowls completely dominate the lists of most-watched shows. If anything was going to topple “Goodbye, Farewell, and Amen” it was going to be a Super Bowl.
First: FormerHostage – Can you speed this up? We have an audience with the Pope in about an hour.
Second: Mr. Prosser – We are trying to cooperate, Congressman, but unfortunately, until the botox wears off my wife is unable to speak.
Third:charles austin – Ok, we’ve crashed the White House and now appeared in the Capitol Building before Congress. All that’s left is an appearance before the Supreme Court.
HONORABLE MENTION
D. Dean – They did it again. Yep… American Idol judges.
Wyatt Earp – In an impressive display of mental acuity, Michaele lifts up the cameraman with her mind!
Maggie Mama – Congress must think they are a little short-handed because they called in two more charlatans to join their ranks on Capitol Hill.
Michael Hamm – Mrs. Salahi. I ask you for the last time. Did you or did you not have sex with John Edwards.
lol – We was just looking for a good time….
ℛODNEY’S BOTTOM OF THE BARREL
“Help my Anti-grav device is getting away!”
The Camera of Damocles
“Yes, we were actually in the flying saucer balloon instead of the boy.”
Jack Murtha, the controversial Congressman and retired Marine colonel, has died.
Representative John P. Murtha, the longtime Democratic congressman from Pennsylvania, has died at age 77.His aides released a statement saying that he died shortly after 1 p.m. today at Virginia Hospital Center in Arlington, a suburb of Washington, D.C. Mr. Murtha had been placed in intensive care last week after complications from gallbladder surgery, his staff said then.
Mr. Murtha, who had an extremely close relationship with Speaker Nancy Pelosi, was chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on defense.
A former Marine, Mr. Murtha, his office noted, was the first Vietnam War combat Veteran elected to Congress. Throughout his years, Mr. Murtha paid particular attention to defense spending and to the Pentagon and the military.
When he called for bringing the troops home from Iraq in 2005, after having voted for the war, his proposal stunned many in Congress and added a powerful voice to the growing forces demanding immediate drawdowns and or deadlines.
Just this past Saturday, Mr. Murtha became Pennsylvania’s longest serving Member of Congress.
A sad loss.
While I didn’t always agree with Murtha’s tactics and frequently disagreed with his politics, he was a lifelong public servant and most of the vitriol directed at him from the Right was unjustified. His anti-Iraq War stance and his scathing criticism of the Haditha incident were borne out of concern for the troops and his beloved Marine Corps, not a lack of patriotism.
I’m a bit behind on my “Daily Show” viewing, so hadn’t yet seen this segment where Jon Stewart pokes fun at some blogs for the use of outlandish headlines:
Amusingly, Media Bistro’s Tina Dupuy does the very thing Stewart is lampooning, titling the post “Jon Stewart Takes on Blogs.” That’s not really what he’s doing. But it served the intended purpose: Getting me to click though in the link from an email.
Commenters occasionally chide me for hyperbolic headlines at OTB, noting that they often don’t match the overstated conclusion of the post. But I write post titles with search engines and RSS feed subscribers, rather than faithful readers, in mind. That leads to keyword-packed, pithy, and sometimes overstated titles. That, and the fact that my posts are often written to dispel a meme I’m seeing circulated elsewhere, so the post title often repeats the meme.
The practice of which Stewart makes sport, though, seems to be something different and mostly contained to blogs aimed at and written by people substantially younger than either himself or me. It’s a product of the video game and texting culture where everything is “pwned” this and “destroy” that. So the writers of the posts in question — and their intended audience — likely interpret the words in a much more benign way than readers outside that culture would.
CAP’s David Madland argues that the ongoing labor dispute between the National Football League and its player’s union demonstrates how much better off non-professional-athlete workers would be if they were unionized.
But the fact that the players are able to bargain on equal footing with the owners is directly relevant to our economic fate. One of the contributing factors to our current economic situation is that most workers—unlike the NFL players—are not able to negotiate on relatively equal footing with their employers as part of a union. That’s why workers’ wages have stayed flat for decades, instead of rising alongside their companies’ profits.
[...]
Since 1993, when the basic structure of the current agreement between players and owners was first hammered out—with free agency and a salary cap—league revenues have grown by 10 percent or more in most years, rising from $1.7 billion in 1993 to $7.6 billion in 2008. Before players secured the 1993 contract, they received a far smaller share of league revenues than they have in recent years, taking home 41 percent of revenues in 1991 and 47 percent in 1992.
While the exact division of revenues between players and owners in any new contract remains a point of contention, two points are clear: Players now receive a significant share of the revenues that they help create, and the owners accept that players should.
If only this were the case in the rest of the economy.
Most workers even before the current recession helped their companies by becoming ever more productive but did not share much in the gains. From 1980 to 2008, nationwide worker productivity grew by 75.0 percent while workers’ inflation-adjusted average wages increased by only 22.6 percent. This means workers were compensated for less than a third of their productivity gains.
The problem with this reasoning is that Madland elides a rather fundamental distinction: In professional sports, as in the rest of the entertainment industry, the workers are the primary product being sold. That’s simply not true in most industries.
Unionized workers are, with rare exception, interchangeable. Nobody knows who screwed the motor into their car, inspected the stitching on their blue jeans, or ensured there were precisely two scoops of raisins in their cereal. Those jobs are important and help their firms make a profit. But the individual workers who perform those tasks come and go without the ultimate consumer knowing or caring.
By contrast, most everyone knows who quarterbacks the New Orleans Saints and Indianapolis Colts. Sports leagues market their star players — who command the lion’s share of the player cut of league revenues — and sell themselves as featuring the best of the best. If the League locked out the current players and attempted to play games with replacement players — which happened in 1987 — people would notice the difference. (Interestingly, Saints head coach Sean Payton was a quarterback for the Chicago “Spare Bears” during the three-game stint before a deal was reached and regular players returned to action.)
An NFL franchise employs 53 players (45 of whom may be active on game days) plus up to 8 more on their practice squads. There are 32 franchises, so that’s 1440 regular players plus 256 practice squaders who make a relative pitance. That’s not a lot of labor for a multi-billion dollar a year industry.
Like actors and musicians (who are also represented by unions) the marquee talent get most of the money paid to workers because they’re the draw. While using a different welder on a car frame won’t impact Ford’s bottom line, substituting an attractive brunette from the local community theater for Sandra Bullock, the guy who sings on the street corner for Prince, or Joe from the docks for Peyton Manning would significantly impact ticket sales. Similarly, the bottom dozen players on the roster — who Bill Parcells referred to as JAGs for “Just A Guy” — get the NFL’s version of minimum wage, as do the bit players in films or the session players on music recordings.
In fairness, Madland’s analogy isn’t entirely wrong. Sports owners have been forced by labor laws and court decisions to bargain in good faith with their players. It wasn’t all that long ago that even superstar players had to accept whatever the boss deemed fair. And the various player’s unions have negotiated better working conditions, pension plans, injury settlement practices, and minimum scales for rookies and veterans. Further, the ability to negotiate these things collectively rather than on a player-by-player basis has doubtless made some things easier for owners, too.
But the United Auto Workers will never have the power of the NFL Players Association so long as it exists mostly as a way to negotiate for unskilled and semi-skilled workers.
(It’s worth noting that there are all manner of other differences between the sports business and, say, manufacturing — including the ability to control supply, having most of the revenue streams guaranteed years in advance, and probably all sorts of things I’m forgetting or simply don’t know. But that’s tangential to the point of this post.)
Given the fascination with Sarah Palin’s legs and Sarah Palin’s toenails, I suppose this was inevitable: The focus has now shifted to Sarah Palin’s hands. (We’re quickly running out of family-friendly parts of Sarah Palin’s body.)
Closer inspection of a photo of Sarah Palin, during a speech in which she mocked President Obama for his use of a teleprompter, reveals several notes written on her left hand. The words “Energy”, “Tax” and “Lift American Spirits” are clearly visible. There’s also what appears to read as “Budget cuts” with the word Budget crossed out.
Just to be clear: The notes most likely weren’t for her speech, for which she used prepared remarks, but for the Q&A session that followed, during which she glanced at the hand in question.
But in my opinion that’s even worse.
There were no specifics on there, just general concepts and things she supports.
The takeaway is that this presidential contender apparently can’t remember her supposed core principles and needs a cheat-sheet when simply asked about her beliefs.
My favorite detail is “[Budget] Cuts”. Which just about sums up the real Tea Party agenda on spending. But it also suggests that she was told in advance of the questions she would be asked, one of which was what would be you priorities if you were elected president? Now think about this: she had to write on her hand her priorities as president.
I stand by my belief that none of this matters to the people who support her, and that she remains a very potent, content-free and destructive force in American politics.
But remember too that even before her Glenn Beck interview, she was furiously Googling the Empire State Building in case she was asked any obvious universally known facts about it, and before her debate with Biden, she was buried in little post-card notes on factual basics that most Americans know – but she, of course, didn’t.
But this seems much ado about nothing. If Sarah Palin likes to write buzz words on her hand, so what?
People — even smart people — have different ways of helping them remember things. Barack Obama famously relies on a teleprompter for even informal speeches, even though he’s generally quite thoughtful off-the-cuff. My guess is that it helps him relax and focus on his audience and delivery rather than stringing together words.
I continue to believe Palin was chosen too soon and too abruptly as the vice presidential nominee and that she was unprepared for the role. She famously bombed the Katie Couric interview and others. But she acquitted herself quite nicely in the “debate” with Biden and has demonstrated that, given preparation, she can do well in other fora. She’s not intellectually curious or a policy wonk, but she’s decidedly not stupid.
She’s unlikely to ever persuade me that she’s presidential timber. She closed that door when she resigned the Alaska governorship to go on a book tour. And, aside from all that, there are likely to be several candidates for the Republican nomination closer to me ideologically.
But, goodness, there are plenty of points of legitimate criticism of Palin the presidential aspirant without focusing on nonsense like this.
A British tabloid report of a soldier who waterboarded his 4-year-old daughter for failing to learn the alphabet is making the rounds.
Joshua Tabor admitted to police he had used the CIA torture technique because he was so angry. As his daughter ’squirmed’ to get away, Tabor said he submerged her face three or four times until the water was lapping around her forehead and jawline. Tabor, 27, who had won custody of his daughter only four weeks earlier, admitted choosing the punishment because the girl was terrified of water.
The practice of waterboarding was used by the CIA to break Al Qaeda suspects at Guantanamo Bay. Detainees had water poured over their face until they feared they would drown. President Barack Obama has since outlawed the practice.
Tabor, a soldier at the Lewis-McChord base in Tacoma, Washington, was arrested after being seen walking around his neighbourhood wearing a Kevlar military helmet and threatening to break windows.
Police discovered the alleged waterboarding when they went to his home in the Tacoma suburb of Yelm and spoke to his girlfriend. She told them about the alleged torture and the terrified girl was found hiding in a closet, with bruising on her back and scratch marks on her neck and throat. Asked how she got the bruises, the girl is said to have replied: ‘Daddy did it.’
During a police interview Tabor allegedly admitted grabbing his daughter, placing her on the kitchen counter and submerging her face into a bowl of water.
Doubtless, this will be spun as a natural consequence of legitimating torture. But it’s almost certainly just a sad case of mental illness. For that matter, as Don Surber points out, what Tabor did to his daughter isn’t actually waterboarding.
Shocking no one who lives in the area, OPM Director John Berry announced late yesterday afternoon that the Federal government would close its offices in the National Capitol Region today because the fallout from the weekend blizzard would make travel unsafe. Given that this is the area’s worst snowfall in recorded history and that a large portion of the workforce commutes from quite some distance — and that the Metro system is all but shut down, stranding even locals — it was a no brainer.
The consequences are, of course, significant and factored into the decision:
He convened a conference call with local and state government and transportation officials Sunday afternoon during which they determined a Monday morning commute would be too unsafe, officials said.
Despite Monday’s operating status, emergency personnel must still report as necessary.
The decision also means a day off for most of the region’s private sector, which uses the federal government’s operating status as a guide. Virtually all academic institutions in the region will also shutter on Monday.
Jokes about lazy civil servants aside, I’m always dubious about claims of “lost productivity” since, for most office workers, the job’s still got to get done. Projects due on March 15 will still get turned in March 15, which means people will have to pick up the slack somehow for the missed day(s).
And, yes, people in other parts of the country manage to drive in similar or worse conditions. But their local governments are prepared to plow and sand/salt the roads in a way that the DC region isn’t. And people tend to have snow tires or snow chains and know how to drive in severe conditions.
There have already been a ridiculous number of accidents over the weekend, as people who either had to get somewhere or were too stupid to stay home got out and wrecked their cars. It would be idiotic to order people in to work today under the circumstances.
But none of this is enough to sway the detractors, who’ll bitch about how this shows America is getting soft or federal employees aren’t willing to put in an honest day’s work.
This little tidbit in the Washington Post about Sarah Palin’s “Tea Party Convention” speech caught my eye.
She wore a fitted black suit, black hose and high black platform heels. She had on three opera-length strands of pearls, two white and one multi-colored. In her lapel, a small pin with two flags — for Israel and the United States.
Look, it’s a pretty open secret that Palin intends to run for President in 2012. That being the case, I’m surprised this hasn’t caught more attention. I can’t think of any major politician who openly wears the flag of foreign power–especially to a political event. A little digging indicates that in her brief term as Governor of Alaska, she also displayed an Israeli flag in her office.
Now, I personally don’t have any problem with showing support for Israel, which is, after all, one of our allies. But openly wearing a foreign flag at political events and displaying a foreign flag in the governor’s office does beg the question of whether Palin herself feels that she might feel like she owes loyalty to two different nations–or at the very least, to the alliance of the two countries above.
This is not a dig at Palin’s patriotism, which I have no doubt about, even though my own patriotism leans in the direction of keeping her as far from public office as possible in order to prevent damaging this country. What I do have a question about is that if Palin does achieve an office of public trust, such as the Presidency, how will her open support for Israel translate when making policy decisions where American and Israeli interests are at odds? I know that Israel looks out for itself–good lord, we know they spy on us (and hopefully we spy on them back, but given the general incompetence of the CIA, no guarantees there.)
I don’t know that this means anything about Palin’s decision-making. I just find it strange because I can’t think of any other politician who displays foreign flags so openly. If I’m wrong on this point, please correct me–if it’s more common, then it’s not that big a deal.
Former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin addresses attendees at the National Tea Party Convention in Nashville, Saturday, Feb. 6, 2010. (AP Photo)
After watching her speech at the Tea Party convention, Andrew Sullivan thinks those of us who think Sarah Palin is unelectable as president of the United States should “think again.”
The media, too scared be tarred as elitists, will never demand policy specifics from her; there is a huge constituency out there (rightly) outraged by Washington corruption and she now has the critical mantle of the rogue outsider; she can channel Christianism and fuse it with the slogans of phony “fiscal conservatism”; she will blame every lost job on Obama; and she will accuse him of betraying the troops and befriending America’s enemies. Behind her are the Cheneyites.
Above all, she is capable of generating a personality cult – much, much more so than Obama, because she can harness Christianism to her divine destiny. The power of this kind of appeal – of a charismatic, beautiful woman, an icon of the pro-life cause, persecuted by the evil elites, demonized by libruls, and commanding the biggest military on earth – should not in my view be under-estimated.
Given that I never thought Bill Clinton or Barack Obama could get elected — because of personal sleaze and lack of experience, respectively — I could be wrong. Strong orators with an ability to generate mass enthusiasm can go a long way. Then again, at least Clinton and Obama demonstrably had well-above-average IQs and a wonkish love of public policy.
Still, I’m dubious of the idea that the media “will never demand policy specifics from her.” Thus far, at least, they’ve shown no such reluctance. Indeed, they’ve shown open disdain for Palin in a way they haven’t done for someone of her stature since Dan Quayle’s heyday.
Further, while Palin’s charismatic and attractive, her appeal seems to be quite limited. Last week’s CNN poll showed “43 percent of American have a favorable view of Palin, while 46 percent have an unfavorable view.” Such high negatives would seem to make a presidential bid difficult. Then again, “That’s up slightly from a 39-48 margin in early August.”
It’s worth noting, too, that Palin’s Tea Party pals, Tom Tancredo and Duncan Hunter, had dismal showings in the Republican primaries two years ago, earning roughly the same number of delegates as my dog, Molly.
Still, I’m surprised at the amount of steam that the Tea Party movement has maintained — even after some of its original instigators, such as the Red State gang — have jumped off the bandwagon. So maybe I’m underestimating the appeal of a genuine populist with Palin’s skills.
At 44, I’m under no illusions that I’m still a young man. Still, I forget how young I used to be until I see old pictures like these.
This is me in my Army Dress Blues, either late 1988 or early 1989, taken while I was attending the Field Artillery Officers Basic Course in Fort Sill, Oklahoma.
This is me as a 1st Lieutenant, taken well after our return to Babenhausen, Germany from Operation Desert Storm in April 1991. It was several months before the ceremony awarding our Bronze Stars, even though they were dated April 29.
While we were down visiting my mom last week after my dad’s death, my wife spent some time going through some boxes of family photos and scanning them so that we’d have digital copies. I thought I’d share some of Dad from his younger days. Indeed, in all these pics, he’s substantially younger than I am now.
As you can readily see from the imperfections, none of these photos have been retouched, with the exception of cropping in some cases (many of the images were either Polaroid type or had insanely large white borders).
Dad in uniform with his service cap cocked rakishly. I presume from the age and lack of insignia that this is shortly after Basic Training in 1962.
This is Dad in what, judging from the slant pockets, appear to be jungle fatigues. I'd therefore say this was taken in Vietnam circa 1967 but he's not wearing the USARV patch that he later wore on his right shoulder signifying former wartime service. (I don't recognize the one he's wearing, which looks similar to the US Army Pacific patch but, so far as I'm aware, his only OCONUS duty was in Germany, France, and Vietnam.) His rolled sleeve is obscuring his rank insignia, so I can't garner any clues from that.
Another rare photo in which he's smiling. Judging from the uniform and tent, I'd guess Vietnam.
Dad in a high-and-tight haircut but wearing Mufti for some reason. Again, I'd guess Vietnam from the age and surroundings.
Here's Dad in his Army khakis. He's a staff sergeant here on recruting duty in Houston, Texas. We moved there in 1968 and I think he made SFC in 1971, so this is in between those dates.
Here's Dad in his Army Dress Blues, in what otherwise looks like an official promotion photo. Adding to that impression is that he's sans mustache, which was extremely rare for him in those days. Interestingly, he's wearing SFC stripes but sporting only two service stripes on his lower sleeve, meaning he had not yet reached his 9th year of service -- which he'd have done by July 1971. He must just have been promoted.
Here's an official photo of Dad circa 1976-77. It was either taken in Fort McClellan, Alabama just after his CID training or after reporting for duty in Kaiserslautern, Germany. It was rare to see him in uniform then, as he usually wore civvies to work as a CID special agent. In fact, he was on narcotics duty circa 1978-79 and grew a beard and let his hair get longer. Also, he's wearing Sergeant First Class insignia and he was promoted in 1979.
Here's almost the exact photo taken in civvies. It looks familiar and may well have been the pic inside his badge portfolio.
I’ve got more recent photos, of course, going up to our last visit before he was admitted to the hospital, just before Thanksgiving. But they’re less interesting to me and, almost certainly, to you.
WSJ’s Scott McCartney explains “Why a Six-Hour Flight Now Takes Seven.”
Jets taxi at Los Angeles International Airport after an East Coast snowstorm caused the cancellation of many flights. Airlines are increasingly padding their schedules, in part, to deal with such events. (Getty Images)
our airline seat may not have much padding, but the airline’s schedule sure does.
Delta Air Lines Flight 715 from New York to Los Angeles now takes more than seven hours to fly across the country, according to the airline’s March schedule. That’s an hour longer than the same flight in the same type of aircraft took in 1996. A Phoenix-Las Vegas flight at Southwest Airlines that used to be scheduled at 60 minutes now gets 80 minutes. What was once a two-hour American Airlines trip from Chicago to Newark, N.J., now is two-and-a-half hours, according to the airline’s schedule.
Across the airline industry, carriers have been adding minutes to “block times”—the scheduled durations—baking delays into trips so that late flights officially arrive “on-time” and operations run better because flights pull into gates more often on schedule. Even though the recession has led airlines to cut flights and reduce congestion at many airports and in the skies, the move to pump up schedules has continued: Last year, most airlines added padding to scores of flights.
For some airlines, longer scheduled times for flights reflects the reality of inefficiency in the nation’s air travel system, which often can’t handle the volume of planes without delay, especially when bad weather hits. For others, lengthening scheduled arrival times boosts on-time rankings charted by the Department of Transportation: Those numbers can have a real effect on public perception. And in some cases, block times have grown simply because airlines have been making so many schedule changes as they have reduced capacity over the past two years. Flights that took off without a wait can now end up stuck waiting behind a line of jets because departure times have been changed.
I’ve flown enough over the years that I sensed this intuitively — I can’t count the number of times that we’ve been delayed on the ground but the pilot manages to “make up the time” — but the systemic nature of the practice is interesting. I’ve flown from DC to Atlanta twice in recent weeks and the scheduled flight time was two hours, despite the flight itself taking only 1 hour, 25 minutes.
For travelers, it can seem like airlines are cheating. “If you leave late, you know you will arrive late. But now you leave late and arrive early,” said frequent traveler Steve Edmonds, who works for the city of Austin, Texas.
Mr. Edmonds was shocked when he recently flew from New York’s LaGuardia Airport to Dallas and arrived 55 minutes early. “My first thought was they are padding to make their on-time ratings better,” he said. His shock turned to excitement when he realized he could catch an earlier connection to Austin. Then excitement boiled into frustration when the plane sat waiting for an empty gate. “From a customer standpoint, the most realistic schedule would make the most sense,” he said.
Apparently, this naive sap thinks the airlines operate a customer service business. And he calls himself a “frequent traveler.”
What’s particularly infuriating of late is that the combination of idiotic measures added to the security theater performance in recent years, fuller flights, smaller overhead bins, and the airlines’ increasing tendency to charge fees for things that used to be considered part of the service* has radically increased the time for boarding and disembarking. On shortish flights such as the DC-Atlanta route, it’s not uncommon to literally spend more time on the tarmac than in the air.
______
*The other day, I heard one of the waitresses (I refuse to call them “flight attendants”) tell a passenger that he couldn’t have a pillow because “pillows are for first class;” next thing you know, they’ll be telling us that “coffee is for closers.”
In addition to uncertain healthcare services, economic disadvantages, and finding a place to call home, veterans certainly do not need any more challenges. Unfortunately, the wounds of war can be less obvious than those that we can see. Psychological disorders and sicknesses caused by toxic exposure can be the most damaging aspects of war that veterans bring home. Toxin exposure in particular is of particular concern as previous exposure to asbestos among veterans is causing incidence of the aggressive cancer mesothelioma to rise among former members of the armed services. We must not leave those who risked their lives for our nation in the cold. Our veterans have never questioned the right or wrong of war when it mattered most. They simply did as they were trained. We must now show the same unwavering determination, in all ways we are able, by affording those opportunities to which they are entitled, including financial, medical and emotional support to all veterans.
Last night’s Super Bowl has apparently broken a record many thought would stand forever, ousting the last episode of M*A*S*H as the most-watched show in the history of American television.
