"EARLY TV MEMORIES"is the new collection of commemorative stamps issued this week by the U.S. Postal Service, featuring 20 stamps of classic television shows, popular 50 years ago during television's Golden Age. "It's Howdy Doody Time!" once again.
The 44-cent retro-style stamps tug at the nostalgic heart strings of Baby Boomers with photos of "The Lone Ranger," "Howdy Doody," and "Kukla, Fran and Ollie." The first-class stamps include images of "The Twilight Zone," "Dragnet," "The Honeymooners," "I Love Lucy," "Lassie," and "Perry Mason."
Nostalgia rules -- particularly when you are losing a lot of money and need to get revenues up. And, the U.S. Postal Service is losing billions of dollars.
At The Washington Post's Federal Eye blog, Ed O'Keefe asks if the postal service should devote so much time and money to postage stamps, particularly ones that commemorate 50-year-old TV shows, and at a time when it's losing so much money.
It costs around $40,000 to develop and produce a commemorative stamp, according to David Failor, the Postal Service's executive director of stamp services. Commemorative stamps generate somewhere between $250 million and $300 million for the Postal Service, said Failor. "...not nearly enough to make up for the billions of dollars in lost revenue," reports O'Keefe. The Postal Service's Failor added that the stamp program generates a priceless amount of free press and fuels the interests of several million "hardcore" stamp collectors, plus another 10 million to 20 million stamp "accumulators."
All of this got me to thinking about casino slot machines. The first connection I made was how a number of the 20 TV shows featured in the "Early TV Memories" stamps are also themes of the new slot machines found in casinos.
There are slot machines that target the demographic group of Baby Boomers, using TV show themes including: "Twilight Zone," "I Love Lucy," "The Honeymooners," "Alfred Hitchcock," and "The Lone Ranger." I've given several of them a nickel or two myself. The slot machines are enhanced with video clips and theme songs. The longer a gambler plays, the longer the video and audio tracks run.
As casinos struggle to maintain their high cash flow in a strapped economy, they are "rolling out more and more slot machines designed for a better house advantage as declining foot traffic threatens profits," reports Joseph Ryan, a reporter for the suburban Chicago Daily Herald.
In an excellent 3-part series, "House Advantage" shows how Illinois casinos beat the odds with tighter slot machines. That means that despite a decline in their customer base, casino's revenues are actually increasing. Even though the number of gamblers at Illinois casinos has declined by 13 percent since 2000 and total bets have increased only 1 percent, revenues have actually increased by 20 percent, according to the Daily Herald.
How do they do that? They fix the slot machines so they will keep a larger percentage of the customer's dollar. Often that means the penny slots. The casino industry reps, however, claim that customers find these slots more exciting and entertaining and they are willing to pay more for the opportunity to play them.
Isn't that nice? Are the moral issues of gambling-supported state revenues still getting debated? Not much, if you ask me. The states want the money! And not many of our newspapers are willing to rock the boat with real investigative reporting on the gambling industry and state regulators. The suburban Daily Herald seems to be the exception. Hip, hip!
by Sharon McEachern
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