Battery Park City on Ice

An ice rink has been opened on the ball fields north of the Goldman Sachs building. It will be open until February. Rental skates and lessons are available.

For more information, call

1-888-PARK ICE     (1-888-727-5423)

http://www.batteryparkcityice.com/

The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon?

January 16, 2010

Jimmy Fallon may be the big winner of the late night talk show in-fighting. With Conan O’Brien out of the picture, and Jay Leno likely to retire within a few years, Jimmy may be the heir apparent to the coveted Tonight Show. At the very least, the viewership of NBC late night will be less diluted.

Conan O’Brien may be a net winner as well, if he can land at Fox or another network. Conan was set up to fail at NBC and should do well in a better situation.

Jeff Zucker of NBC should have foreseen how his big experiment of moving Leno to 10:00 PM would have failed. Conan’s ratings took a 68% dive (6.5 Million viewers to 2.1 Million) not because the Tonight Show was so bad and Conan suddenly became a lemon, but rather because his viewership was cannibalized by the 10:00 PM Leno show. In addition, viewers are loyal and many migrated to Leno without being willing to adopt a new guy. Conan did not have a fighting chance. These are basics of “old media” broadcast TV that Zucker and crew should have known.

Could it be that Zucker is not the brightest person in the world and just weaseled his way up the ladder riding on the success of Seinfeld and Friends shows of the 90’s? No. Impossible.

Conan’s lawyer shares some blame as well. Given that his move to 11:30 was all about the “time slot”, as was the interrelated Jay Leno time slot, how is it conceivable that Conan’s contract did not address the possibility of fickle TV executives changing things around? Perhaps Conan simply did not have much leverage years ago when the deals were made.

The lesson being taught on a nightly basis now, as the talk show hosts display the dysfunction common within TV-land, is that broadcast TV is a terminal patient with “6-months to live”. Most executives from the “old media” world are inbred cronies with no hope of radically changing practice to take advantage of the “new media” Internet programming coming to your living room soon.

BPC Meeting to discuss Tire Swing Park

9/11 memorial lights

The office of the Manhattan Borough President

The office of the Manhattan Borough President link to our story on “Kill the Drill”

http://mbpo.org/blog_details.asp?id=322&page=1

Why is the city shutting down at 2:00 AM?

October 18^th, 2009

This weekend, on a survey of more than five hotel bars, regular bars, and restaurant bars in Bowery, SOHO and Tribeca, all of the establishments shut down no later than 2:00 AM despite having plenty of customers. What is the explanation for this seemingly voluntary forfeiting of lucrative revenue?

The answer lies in a citywide effort to limit hours of operation of liquor-licensed establishments using Community Boards as the tool. This article written in 2008 explains it well.

2 a.m. Closing Time Becoming Norm for Manhattan Bars

http://gothamist.com/2008/04/17/2_am_closing_ti.php

When Hog Pit co-owner Felisa Dell sent an email to Eater on April 7th confirming the closure of her Meatpacking District BBQ joint, she insinuated that “the mayor and the State Liquor Authority are now only issuing Liquor Licenses until 2 a.m. It’s very sneaky, but in 5 years the 4 a.m. liquor license will be a thing of the past, without any community input.” Today the NY Sun backs Dell up, reporting that many Manhattan bar owners are finding it “nearly impossible to open new nightlife establishments that are permitted to serve alcohol until 4 a.m.”

While the New York State Liquor Authority can’t arbitrarily impose a specific closing time before 4 a.m., Community Boards have been demanding bar owners agree to curfews before they recommend approval to the SLA. The Sun looked at the most recent records available from Community Board 3, which covers the East Village and the Lower East Side, and found that not a single liquor license recommendation was granted to a bar that would close after 3 a.m. on weekends and 2 a.m. on weekdays.

And in Tribeca, Community Board 1 killed Matthew Piacentini’s plans to open a lounge in a commercial building on Hudson Street by telling him he’d have to close at midnight on weekdays and 1 a.m. on weekends. The early closing times are a big problem for bar owners; a recent survey found that 58% of their revenues are earned between those magical hours of 1 a.m. and 4 a.m. These are also the hours when some of us lose 58% of our dignity, so maybe it’s all for the best?