Ugh…Some people’s daughters…

From today’s Denver Post:

(image of protestors, the most prominent of which holds a sign that reads: ‘Bring Back Our Golden Girls’)

Nearly 20 supporters of anti-violence and women’s advocacy groups held a brief rally today at Civic Center Park, to protest against EchoStar yanking the Lifetime channel off of its Dish Network.

“It’s about getting our message to (EchoStar founder and chairman) Charlie Ergen,” said Rita Smith, executive director of the Denver-based National Coalition Against Domestic Violence. “This isn’t about 15 seconds at 1 a.m. The information (Lifetime provides) is critically important to women’s lives and they need to get back on the air.”

On Wednesday, Lifetime ran a full-page ad in The Denver Post, Rocky Mountain News and New York Times blasting EchoStar with the support of 50 women’s advocacy and anti-violence groups, including NCADV.

Douglas County based EchoStar said it was contractually obligated to remove Lifetime and the Lifetime Movie Network when its contract with the networks expired on Dec. 31. The two sides are currently in negotiations this week, after talks stalled at the beginning of the year.

EchoStar officials said that Lifetime asked for a 76 percent rate increase over the course of a three-year contract. Lifetime officials said they only asked for a four-cent increase per month, per subscriber.
“They can try to Dish it out but we’re not going to take it. Get ready to lose our business,” said Denver councilwoman Elbra Wedgeworth . “We feel Dish is depriving women of shows they love.”

Smith urged supporters to voice their discontent by contacting Ergen.

Here’s my take…nothing torpedoes your message quite so thoroughly as the statement, “The information (Lifetime provides) is critically important to women’s lives and they need to get back on the air”, accompanied by a protestor’s sign that indicates that the critically important infomation that Lifetime provides is provided by Blanche, Dorothy, Rose and Sophia living in Late ’80’s Miami.

I demand the reinstatement of a network providing critically important information regarding the violently negative effects of the drug trade.

That’s right, you heard me…I demand that Echostar replace Lifetime with a Miami Vice channel!

(By the way, for the record: Civic Center Park is like…30 MILES away from Echostar’s Headquarters. It’s not even in the same county. It is, however, right across from the steps of both the Colorado State Capitol, the City and County of Denver Building, *and* it’s across the street from the formal boundary of “Downtown Denver”. And they only got a Shire’s worth of people to show up? Sad. Truly Sad. I can muster more than that from my Airsoft buddies alone, and we’re pretty much that extra dangly thread hanging off the very end of the fringe. You’d think that “Women’s Groups” could get at least a couple dozen people there…seeing how they have 50% of the population to draw from in the first place…)

And in my own advocacy, I sent an email to Echostar/Dish network supporting their actions. Yes, I believe that both sides are presenting the bare facts in the story – a 76% increase in fees may, indeed, only equate to 4 cents per customer…but multiply that by the number of customers that Echostar has, and that’s a HUGE increase. Sure, “4 cents per gallon of gasoline” doesn’t sound like much, until you figure the US burns 321 million gallons of gasoline per day, so that 4 cents is 12.84 MILLION dollars (per day) extra revenue difference.
To put that in perspective, Dish Network has somewhere between 11 and 12 million subscribers. 4 cents each is a half a million dollars.

Fuck “Lifetime”, Go join a support group…or better yet, watch “WE” (Women’s Entertainment) ya bunch ‘a snivelling whiner victim-wannabes. Lifetime has always struck me as being about the “victim mentality” attitude and this seems to be no exception.