You can own us, just don't expect to get a job with us!

Podunk Cable and Telephone has entered a brave new world, as they launch the merger of the phone and cable operations that used to operate under separate companies.

With new phone books at every door and a new paint job for every van, Podunk’s brand new company has been born. The cable portion is ready to tackle those many challenges, which have seen satellite dishes proliferate like summer dandelions around the city.

In order to show that they mean business now, the new company has gone so far as to hire a new marketing director from Alberta, to take up the charge of the wired brigade. Added as part of the celebration announcement in the Daily Podunk of Friday, the story heralded the start of a new era in communications for Podunk.

It’s an interesting hire of the marketing director, since the company which is owned by the citizens of Podunk (even if they never knew they were buying, almost until it was bought), never to our knowledge conducted a local search for a marketing person. Despite a rather high unemployment rate in the service area, it seems that there was no one locally capable of marketing the new Cable operation, nor were they given the opportunity to apply for the post. Considering the secretive nature of the company’s purchase, hiring new employees without at least considering the local yokels, could result in a bit of a civic blow back.

Now any company is welcome to hire the best possible candidate for any position it has, but surely they could at least give the folks shelling out the bucks for cable and telephone services, a shot at the jobs at the other end of those payment plans.

Regardless, one look around town shows a hard road ahead for any cablevision marketer, 60 channels on cable, against the hundreds offered by satellite providers at much the same, or even less cost. With an already impressive array of satellite dishes on Podunkian homes, it’s going to take a whole lot of marketing to bring down the existing dishes and stop the migration to new ones!