Maryland Public Television is showing
Brewed on the Bay: Craft Beers of Maryland tonight at 8:30 pm.
The special 30-minute documentary, being broadcast as part of Chesapeake Bay Week on MPT, is co-sponsored by Baltimore Beer Week,
Baltimore Beer Week, the Brewers Association of Maryland, Heavy Seas Beer, Maryland Homebrew, Trigger Agency, and The Wine Source--a sponsor list that would make an anti-corporate activist blanch and protest accordingly if this were commercial television.
I watched a sneak preview during a Baltimore Beer Week meeting earlier this week, and I found it generally accurate (save for one howler of an interviewee-misidentification, corrected in time for broadcast) and as overwhelmingly sympathetic to the cause of craft beer as many other similar shows such as Beer Wars. In other words, positively a cheerleading rally for the cause of good beer in Maryland.
In some locations you can receive
MPT on more than one channel. For cable, check with your local company. Maryland's transmitters:
- Annapolis Channel 22
- Salisbury Channel 28
- Baltimore Channel 67
- Hagerstown Channel 31
- Oakland Channel 36
- Frederick Channel 62
After its 8:30 PM showing,
Brewed On the Bay airs again that night at 12:30 AM and. for videotapers, TiVo programming, or early risers, on Friday morning at 4 AM. The documentary is slated to be available on the
Maryland Public Television website as streaming video at a later date, and DVDs will be available for purchase.
6 comments:
The political views you ascribe to would-be people truly come from left field sometimes. Which "anti-corporate activist" do you suppose would protest over this sponsor list if this wasn't on public television? I've never heard of an actual activist that matches this hypothetical description.
I'm having a hard time making sense out of this one.
Let's just say you had a nice documentary on network or cable TV extolling the virtues of a commercial industry, maybe one with a possible downside to it. Say, the natural-gas "fracking" business, or the nuclear industry, or the pharmaceutical trade. And suppose it was a rosy and positive as this show was/is. AND it was sponsored by several pf the "major players" in the field, or their lobbyists.
Do you not seriously think that the folks who routinely condemn the likes of Wal-Mart, BP, Halliburton, the "military-industrial complex," etc. (and make no mistake about it--they're not only mostly politically left of center, but a core part of PBS's audience as well) wouldn't be in an uproar about the perceived biases presented in that piece? That they would say the industries in question were, in effect, "buying" airtime or the viewpoint of the documentary?
Are you really comparing Heavy Seas Brewing to Halliburton or BP?
The vast majority of America's microbreweries are small businesses--many/most of them privately owned. They're in business firstly to make a quality product and secondly to make a living. These breweries epitomize what business in America used to be about, before CFOs and stockbrokers turned almost every business's product in to stock splits and quarterly dividends. To compare say, Backfin or Flying Dog to Haliburton goes beyond the ludicrous. You really need to engage in a little critical thinking before you do so.
The point is still the same: A commercial enterprise sponsored (albeit partially) a program that spoke (somewhat) glowingly of it and the industry in which it's involved.
If a public TV station ran a documentary that was unapologetically uncritical of the gradual transition from downtown merchants to supermarkets to shopping malls to Wal-Mart, and it was sponsored in part by Wal-Mart, what would you say?
Now, do a show where local merchants put the squeeze on Wal-Mart and Target, and the show is sponsored by the Downtown Businesses Association. Now what would you say?
Ok, let me put it another way. Who else is likely to sponsor a show about local micro-brewing? Anhueser Busch or The WCTU perhaps?
Lets get real here. The show was made for micro-brew lovers and potential converts to microbrews. It highlighted local manufactories that provide jobs for local folks rather than shipping them overseas and is line with new Green marketing practices. To my knowledge no U.S. microbrewery has been accused of using underpaid illegals, gender discrimination or child-labor violations. Nor have there been any reports of microbreweries or their employees collecting graft from foreign governments, shooting unarmed civilians in the 3rd world, or buying and owning U.S. Congressmen.
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