I read today that Madison Square Garden is suing the MTA for agreeing to sell the railyards on the West Side to the Jets for a new stadium. You have to hand it to Cablevision, they’re stopping at nothing to try and keep their monopoly in the city…
To which, while I’m psyched to see an indoor football game in the city, I can understand why they’re suing. You have to imagine that if your bread and butter venue is the only place of this size in the city, then you’ll going to lose some serious business to the new stadium. Any rock concert would easily go for the bigger venue, because you know it’s all about ticket sales. Of course, seeing Radiohead there would be a total braingasm. Yes, I just made that word up.
But such is the way of life, Cablevision. It reminds me of these 60 year olds at my former job who used to be paste-up artists and were forced to learn how to learn Quark and PageMaker. It wasn’t that paste-up didn’t work anymore, it was just obsolete next to desktop publishing. And sadly, that will be what happens to MSG as well… it will be honored more for its history than its utilitarianism. But at least Cablevision sees that, and they’re fighting to keep that from happening. I doubt they’ll win, but the effort’s honorable.