Artvoice: Buffalo's #1 Newsweekly
Home Blogs Web Features Calendar Listings Artvoice TV Real Estate Classifieds Contact
Previous story: Odds & Ends
Next story: Minimalists at the Castellani Art Museum

Scorecard: The Week's Winners & Losers



The Week's Winners & Losers

Tax and Spend

The NFTA Board of Commissioners dropped the hammer on Feb. 16, voting for a 25-cent fare increase. The most interesting nugget in the new plan of action: The NFTA will hire a lobbyist to grease…er, compete for funding in Albany. Our democracy in action, people.

Aaaaand We're Back

Thanks to pressure from Jeremy “Lin-sane” New York Knicks fans, a deal was struck on Feb. 17 between Time Warner Cable and MSG Network, putting an end to the 47-day blackout that deprived Buffalo Sabres fans of their last place hockey team. Their reward: 4-3 shootout loss to Montreal. Ugh.

Civil Liberties

The UB Muslim Student Association criticized an extensive and invasive monitoring program by New York City Police of Muslim college students across the Northeast, including UB, exposed in a Feb. 18 AP report. Unfortunately, I’ve run out of space for the pertinent George Orwell quote here.

The Opposite of "Tacky"

The manager of a Chip Strip nightclub defended a “Boobs for Beads” Mardi Gras promotion (which offered a free breast augmentation or other cosmetic surgery to the customer who collected the most beads) against critics, claiming it was not in fact “tacky.” Not at all, nope, nothing of the sort.

Clean Energy

Officials held a ceremonial ribbon cutting on Feb. 21 at the Steel Winds II project in Lackawanna, a six turbine addition to the existing wind power site that will generate an additional 15 megawatts of power. Forget the immediate benefits, this is the future people, we’d be smart to jump on board.





By the numbers...

$24 million

The amount of money spent up to this point on television ads in the 2012 presidential campaign by nonprofit groups that will never be compelled to reveal their contributors, according to a Washington Post report. That amounts to about 40 percent of the total televison spending so far.

43%

Decline in operating profit at the Buffalo News from 2010 ($16.2 million) to 2011 ($9.3 million), according to News publisher Stan Lipsey. As reported in Business First, it is the first time in 25 years that the papers profits have fallen below $10 million. Revenues fell five percent, from $108.3 million in 2010 to $102.4 million in 2011.


blog comments powered by Disqus