Some things never cease to amaze me. Take, for example, the creators of reality television.
I’ve discovered they sank to a new low when I recently channel surfed my way to Celebrity Rehab.
Ugh. You watch celebrity drunks, drug addicts and sex addicts come to some guy named Dr. Drew for a very public cure.
In the very recent past, certain celebrities boosted their popularity by going into rehab. It got them headlines, and sometimes sympathy.
Now, celebs can get face time as they grapple with their addiction demons.
I lasted perhaps five minutes checking this stinker out. From the likes of Hollywood has-beens Bridgette Neilsen and Daniel Baldwin to porn actress Mary Carey (yes, I had to look up who she was) and a former professional wrestler named Chyna, this show has it all – or nothing, really.
How anyone can watch week after week as this troupe of sludge tried to get clean is beyond me.
It would be less tortuous to brush your teeth with steel wool.
If you like watching silicone and collagen stagger around, perhaps this show is for you.
Specialty channels are no longer so special.
Remember when MTV and Much Music played nothing but music videos? To cater to the 25-40 crowd, the CHUM group added Much More Music to the channel spectrum.
Tune one of these in sometime. Good luck finding music videos. Sure, they still play them here and there, but chances are you’ll see crappy television shows, not videos, if you bother to tune in.
Hogan Knows Best. Reruns of The OC. The Surreal Life. And now Celebrity Rehab. Yowsa, what bung.
Documentaries such as Behind the Music or Classic Albums were cool. Video spotlights on various artists were decent. What generally runs nowadays is pure crap.
But the stations with “music” in their name but not on the air aren’t the only places to stumble around after losing their identities. Look no further than Lonestar to see a station that convinced the government communication overlords it would pump out shows and flicks focused on the Old West, only to now run action flicks, regardless of genre, every night.
There’s nothing wrong with a good action movie. But this is a channel called “Lonestar.” It should be running old “Dusters” on a regular basis, not the Die Hard flicks.
Just because Bruce Willis says “Yippie ki-yay, (expletive deleted),” doesn’t make it a Western.
Speaking of movies, I must say HBO forgot its roots. Its initials are for “Home Box Office.” Box offices are usually in theatres. And in theatres, they show movies, not TV series.
As decent as shows such as The Sopranos, The Wire and all those other HBO hits may be, they aren’t movies.
I’m Canadian, so I shouldn’t care about HBO, but HBO programming starts cramming up TMN.
And TMN is short for “The Movie Network.” Like HBO, anytime TMN shows something other than a movie, they are doing their name an injustice.
Bruce Springsteen once sang, “57 channels and nothing on.” He was prophetic, but wrong. Two hundred channels and nothing on.

The North Bay Skyhawks’ three-year lease agreement with the City of North Bay, which is about to expire, is public information.
Here are some of the financial highlights:

— The team pays the city $372 per game at Memorial Gardens (2007-08 season).
— The team pays the city for up to 145 hours of practice time per season.
— The team pays the city 10 per cent of the total value of each season ticket package, less the Capital Reserve Fund charge.
— The team pays the city 10 per cent of all walk-up and promotional/discounted ticket sales, less the Capital Reserve Fund charge.
— The team pays a Capital Reserve Fund fee to the city of $5 per season ticket, and $0.35 for each single-game or promotional/discounted ticket.
— The team shall receive net revenue from the sale of alcohol. The city shall retain all revenue from other food/refreshment concessions.
— A maximum of 150 complimentary tickets can be provided for each game and will be excluded from the 10 per cent and capital reserve fund charges.

Do the math.
The Skyhawks pay the city around $29,000 for icetime ($11,160 for 30 games and $17,500 to $18,000 for 145 hours of practice).
The city collects an estimated $16,000 from the sale of season tickets (an estimated 800 at roughly $200 each) and anywhere from $13,000 to $18,000 from single-game ticket sales. (This figure can vary, because of different prices for adult/senior/student tickets, as well as unknown quantities of promotional/discount tickets and complimentary tickets which are included in each game’s attendance)

So a statement that the Skyhawks pay the city $65,000 a season is not inaccurate.

A statement from Coun. Dave Mendicino that the city “loses” $50,000 per year on the Skyhawks should be qualified.
Each year, the city loses more than $650,000 operating Memorial Gardens, which includes staff costs, utilities, maintenance etc.
So the city “losing” $50,000 on the Skyhawks is a function of operating Memorial Gardens for the 220 hours the Skyhawks are on the ice during a season.

The city is responsible for providing Zamboni and rink attendants, security staff, ticket-takers, parking attendants, timekeepers etc., as well as utility costs etc. associated with operating the arena during games.
If the city wants to “make” money on the Skyhawks or any other tenant, they would have to charge the Skyhawks $300 an hour for icetime.

But no, the Skyhawks pay the same for ice as anyone else. It’s the arenas that are money-losers, not the Skyhawks.
Without the Skyhawks, Memorial Gardens would be “losing” an additional $65,000.