SectionC3

That is more than likely the case for just about every channel we get on TW. Some of the big boys get a couple of bucks a month or close to it - ESPN is in the $3/month range, CNN is probably up there too. Point is, Musial put the figure at less than a penny a day. $2.50 per year per subscriber is therefore a very, very reasonable estimate (approx. .7 cents a day per subscriber). Check my next post for the some of the downside for both of the big boys in this dispute.

I just hooked up the rabbit ears TW handed out yesterday. This is a memo to Chris Musial and the folks at Time Warner: 1. TW: if you're going to give away rabbit ears to help your customers receive today's game, try giving away a device that ACTUALLY WORKS. The picture with the piece of cr*p you gave me is awful. 2. Chris Musial: Bad news there, buddy. What stinks for you is that the picture of your station is HORRIBLE. Odds are pretty good that unless this mess gets resolved, I'll watch your station for a total of roughly six hours between now and November 23. Sure, I can go somewhere else and see the Bills/Dolphins and Bills/Pats games in HD - such as a sports bar, or the home of a friend with a dish. But, I'm not going to do that to watch Don Postles, CSI Miami, 60 Minutes, your wake-up program or any other show on your station. So, the gist of it is, when your ratings book starts (I believe it's soon, if you're not there already), you're out of luck, my friend. (You didn't even think about the issue of whether I might watch your soon to be formerly highly rated wake up show on my bedroom TV, for which I do not have rabbit ears, because I put that set on the living room TV!) Basically, then, as soon as I settle in a house in the Southtowns, I'm getting FIOS (TW, you lose). Between now and then, and probably for a good while after once my new viewing habits are hardened, I won't watch Channel 4 outside of 1p to 4p on Bills Sundays (Channel 4, you lose too). Big risk, no reward for either side. I know you're reading this, too.

That brings us to the crux of this dispute. We're talking major dollars here, as evinced by the willingness of TW to give away rabbit ears that retail in the $10-ish neighborhood. Assume for the sake of argument that Chris Musial is accurately stating that LIN wants about $.01 per day per subscriber for Channel 4. Call it $2.50 per year per subscriber. Now, assume that there are about 100,000 cable subscribers in this market. The figure might be a little low, but it makes it easier to run the numbers. We're talking about $250,000 per year for Channel 4. Again, probably a low figure, but it's round. Next, multiply that figure by 4 (Channel 4 plus Channels 2, 7 and 29 [sorry, UPN and other lesser networks]). All of a sudden, you're at $1,000,000 per year for Buffalo, which is probably not even a top-50 market anymore. (52 or 53, if memory serves). The additional local network signals are added to the analysis because those stations will more likely than not want treatment equal to that afforded Channel 4. Finally, multiply that $1,000,000 figure by, say, 100, for the top 100 markets in the country. Again, the numbers a probably low, but that local $250,000 dispute with Channel 4 easily morphs into a national $100,000,000 dispute with local over-the-air providers. This is about big dollars and might not get solved until external pressures (i.e., 4's ratings plummet b/c customers are too lazy or not loyal enough to use the ears, or LIN/CBS/other network parents get skittish about going into a ratings period off of a dominant cable provider). This analysis assumes that TW is in all of the top 100 markets. Even if TW is in only 50 of those markets, $50,000,000 is still a lot of jack and worth the giveaway of a few rabbit ears.

That's more in line with the story I heard. Something about wearing headphones at halftime, Meathead asked him to take them off and get his act together, Moulds called Meathead an MFer or some variation thereof, Meathead wanted to suspend Moulds for four games, Ralph said no, etc.

My understanding is that it's on for today.

Your post reminded me of 51-3. That must have been a long day. Seriously, far be it for any fan of the Oakland Raiders to taunt another city about possibly losing its team. Why wish the pain you went through on others?

He whacked Garrard today like Garrard was his girlfriend. The kid had a lot working against him in the offseason. It looks like he turned a lot of it around, and if he did, good for him and congratulations.

You're entitled to your opinion. There are people who go through a lot more than Tom Brady - believe me, I'm mindful of that. Still, though, to wish suffering upon another just isn't the right thing to do.

I hate to see someone, anyone get hurt. It's not that it's Tom Brady; it's that it's a human being who probably has several months of grueling physical therapy ahead of him that certainly cannot be fun. That said, football season just got a lot more interesting. Your remark about "HERO Pollard number 49" was really, really funny.

I agree - great post, great bet, great passion for the Bills, but take the guaranteed money and pay part of the mortgage -

FWIW, I suspect that one, if not both, of Catalana's sources are players.

I did a little digging. Peters appears to be in the area. No idea what the reporting/contract status may be.

I heard the call, as I had GR on for a few minutes while Shredd & Ragan were in a break. Rarely do I listen to PM drive on GR, and the treatment of your call (and the Bledsoe call that occurred right around the time you were on) is a big reason why. One of the hosts thinks he's smarter than he really is, the other is horribly miscast as a radio personality and utterly unlistenable.

Maybe somebody else, perhaps Bill in NYC, can back me up on this but . . . when Eric King was here, that guy was an automatic first down every time he stepped on the field. Sitting in the stands provides a little bit of a different perspective than what you see on TV, and I swear every time I saw King come off of the sideline (I think he wore #29), I'd joke with my dad that we knew where the ball was going and by and large, we were right.

Maybe they just messed up. Kind of like with Mike Williams. They did, however, get it right when they re-upped with Peters a few years ago.

If this is true, and it may well be, one of two things happened: (1) Parker dropped the ball on behalf of Peters and should be fired; or (2) Peters knowingly signed a contract that he knew any move to left tackle would render unfavorable. If Peters is unhappy with the escalator and either he or his agent "knew" Peters would be moved to left tackle during the life of that agreement, one of only Peters or Parker is to blame. The reality of the situation is that Peters traded additional years on a contract (this one) for a greater immediate payment than his prior agreement would have provided. Had he "played out" his original contract, he'd be much closer to earning the extraordinary contract he desires. This was part of the risk in taking the additional "up front" money in this contract, and now he has to take his medicine. Too bad.

I think I posted this somewhere on the board before, but . . . Back in the day (approx. 1990-ish), one of the local media outlets did a study that found that Buffalo/Niagara would be a top-10 market if the Golden Horseshoe was included in market population totals. Canadian audiences aren't "rated," so all of the folks in Fort Erie, Niagara Falls, St. Catharines, Hamilton, etc. aren't included in the measure of Buffalo's market size. Combine the 1 million or so people in Erie and Niagara Counties with the roughly 1 million or so people in Monroe and Ontario Counties and those in the Horseshoe on this side of Hamilton and you're approaching a fairly substantial population total. The folks on the Canadian side can probably tweak the numbers, but my understanding is that Hamilton has a population of 600,000+, Niagara Falls is around 100,000, and St. Catharines is in the neighborhood of 100,000. Once TO is added to the mix, the Buffalo/Niagara market becomes, even 15 years after the study I mentioned, huge - but not necessarily for American TV purposes.

Sort of. The guilty plea can and will be used against him in the civil case; here, he wants to avoid any admission as to intoxication so he doesn't imperil his insurance coverage. This isn't a huge case since the extent of P's injuries (at least at this juncture) appear to be limited to 7 stitches in her leg. So, she'll have a scar, meet threshold and after some posturing and bluster settle the case. I don't think this case is worth very much - beauty is in the eye of the beholder, though, and since many potential jurors post on the board, I'm interested to hear what a scar of at most five inches on a fat, single, 20-something female's leg is worth. (Before anyone jumps all over me for the fat comment, scars are worth more on attractive females - it's a fact of life).

the title says it all

What I think you're saying is that he has no obligation to speak and it's in his best interests to keep his yap shut.

Your little birdie has no idea what he's talking about. Don't get your hopes up. This isn't happening.

Absolutely. The same logic is somewhat relevant to any conversation involving a national sales tax. One of the Steve Forbes plans that was floated some years back was a flat tax with no deductions. Not a very good idea for, say, middle class homeowners, people with kids, those in their mid-20s with student loans (who make less than $62,000), etc. Even if certain deductions under a flat tax are available, the critical question is where the threshold lies. In other words, if the flat tax threshold is 20%, it's possible that the federal tax liability for some working class could actually increase. (I'll plead a little ignorance here - I don't know what the current low brackets are.) Truly problematic, though, is the reduction for those on the higher end of the scale. If your income is sufficient to allow you to reach one of the graduated steps where you're paying in the vicinity of 30%, you're getting a huge reduction and reaping a huge benefit if your liability for monies at what are now higher graduated steps is reduced to 20%. How is that lost tax revenue made up? Possibly through taxpayers in the lower to mid brackets who lose some deduction benefits. Or, if you're George W. Bush, you just borrow more money from China. In other words, typical of other Republican red herrings (let's talk about gay marriage instead of addressing important national security issues, like where is Osama bin Laden, or why did we start a war with a country that faked having chemical weapons to keep the real tyrant [iran] at bay and therefore allow that tyrant to bluster about nuclear weapons, send shivers through traders of a certain dinosaur-based speculative commodity and wreak havoc with our economy!!), the flat tax is, plain and simple, just another ill-conceived idea.

Because a flat tax benefits those like Ralph and screws what I suspect is the majority of the people who read this board. All of this moving talk is misguided. If the Bills are going anywhere, it's Toronto. It's a rich, rabid and virgin market. LA has had several teams (Rams, Chargers and Raiders) and lost them all. People in LA don't care about the NFL - there's too much else to do. The most likely team to move to LA is the Raiders. Toronto, by virtue of the "series" is Bills territory. No team is going there except the Bills, and if the Bills go anywhere it will be Toronto.

There have been more incidents that those referenced in the PFW article. In other totally unrelated news, we sure have a lot of cornerbacks on the roster now.

"Its" and "interpretation" are my words of the day. Not that anyone should be busting your *ss given that it IS exam time in law school. (Which begs the question: why are you fooling around on twobillsdrive? But, I digress . . . . ) From one young punk hustling a paycheck in the legal system to another hoping to do the same, my advice is to take it easy on dispensing the legal knowledge for a couple of years. The more you know, the more you realize you don't know. I did the law review, high honors, published, clerkship thing and and sometimes wonder how I faked my way through it (and continue to fake my way through it five years later). The lesson I learned (more often than not the hard way) was to keep my mouth shut unless absolutely necessary.