Bullets don’t take bribes they kill shit

So I rarely listen to talk radio in the morning on my commute to work. I’ll either listen to NPR or have something playing in the CD player. Somehow this morning I found myself listening to the KQRS morning show. I think I was scanning through the channels when I heard “Sister Golden Hair” by America. I suddenly fell into memories from High School and the next thing you know I’m listening to Yahoos talk about the OJ Simpson situation and the terrorism in the boundary waters. Neither of these stories however prompted this post. What did was one of the commercials I sat through. The commercial was for the Big Ten Television Network. I don’t really know much about the details of this channel, but from what I hear is that they (the Big Ten Network) charges some ridiculous fee per customer to the local carries, which then pass this cost on to the consumer. These prices may not be exact but I think it is like $1.10 per subscriber. To place this in context, ESPN, one of the networks charging the highest fees, comes in right around $0.32. The two channels are not even close to being in the same league in terms of quality. Pat Forde over on ESPN put up a commentary on what the programming on the Big Ten network might look like (scroll down to like (14) or (15) in the article). For those of you that don’t follow college football, the Big Ten is struggling, Big Time. Anyway, in the commercial for the Big Ten Network they were saying something along the lines of “Does your television carrier offer you like 50 channels, including a jewelry channel, a fashion channel, a DIY channel, etc.” This was all done in a sarcastic voice, but the most sarcasm came when he mentioned the Bicycle Racing Channel. I assume that they were referring to VS. I’m not sure if it was the sarcasm, or the ignorance in referring to it as the bike racing channel that set me off. He was like the Gophers are way more important to us (Minnesotans) than bike racing. Whatever Big Ten Network, get a grip.

First, I’m pretty sure that the people of MN LOVE hockey, and VS. carries WAY more NHL games than any non-premium networks (NHL Center Ice, or whatever its called).

Second, the gophers are effing terrible. Who in their right mind would choose to watch them lose to Bowling Green and FAU over having the ability to watch NHL in a few weeks?

Third, bike racing is way more entertaining than watching the Gophers.

So, please do what the commercial suggests. Call your local carrier and insist that they NEVER place the Big Ten Network in your cable package.