Free Satellite TV if Town Changes Name to DISH

The reach of the corporation continues to expand, and America seems glad to ignore the warnings of the late Abraham Lincoln about its undue power and influence. The latest from EchoStar, a provider of satellite TV programming, offers free satellite broadcasting to an entire town. The only requirement is that any municipality wanting such services must change its name to DISH – as in Dish TV, EchoStar’s consumer brand name.

As corporations go, EchoStar is pretty benign. It doesn’t make anything that destroys the environment, it doesn’t buy or distribute products made with slave or child labor, and it hasn’t moved it Colorado headquarters to some island so it is easier to fire workers. Indeed, EchoStar puts its Chairman and CEO Charlie Ergen on one of its channels to take calls from customers on a regular basis. EchoStar, as a corporation, is one of the good ones.

However, it is disturbing to think that the name of a place can be changed for marketing purposes. It is bad enough that stadiums no longer are known by names like “Three River Stadium” or “Candlestick Park” – names that resonate with the local teams, fan base and custom. Wrigley Field is a plug for a chewing gum, but the gum at least bore the name of the man behind it. New York’s Shea Stadium took its name from the man who got the Mets, and National League (that is, REAL) baseball, back to New York after the Giants and Dodgers left for sunnier climes.

Now, there is "3 Com Field." The LA Lakers play at the “Staples Center” after the office supply store. The college football bowl games are now all prefaced by some corporate name like the FedEx Orange Bowl or the Pacific Life Holiday Bowl. Mercifully, there are rules against putting logos on US sports teams uniforms, or uniforms would be as unrecognizable as NASCAR jumpsuits.

But EchoStar’s offer isn’t the first of its kind. Halfway, Oregon, population 345, got $60,000 in cash and 20 computers from Half.com for changing its name. There are now people whose mailing address is the house number and street followed by “Half.com, OR 97834.” Looking at the names of some corporations, one can tell that Washington and Lincoln were great men. Now, it looks as though the nation is creating great corporations rather than great men. Can the day be far off when the headline reads “President Viacom Wins in Landslide” or “Jack Cingular Traded to Detroit”?


© Copyright 2005 by The Kensington Review, J. Myhre, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent.
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