It's Not Just Cops

Why do we place such reverence on cops when they are killed in the line of duty? Believe it or not, being a law enforcement officer isn't the most dangerous occupation in the US. In fact, it isn't even in the top 10. It's all the way down there at number 18 on the list of deaths per 100,000. Do you know who has the most dangerous job? Fishers. More fishers are killed annually on the job than any other occupation. Does the news media memorialize fishers who are killed on the job? Nope. Coming in at fifth place on the list are garbage and recyclables collectors. I know what you're saying, "Police officers put on the uniform every day and they don't know if they're coming home at the end of their shift. They take an oath to do what others won't." Guess what? Garbage collectors get dressed every day, do a job most of us wouldn't want to do, and far greater numbers of them don't come home than police officers. At tenth place on the list are electrical power line workers. These people work hard to make sure you have the electricity to do everything you need to do, and they are far more likely to be killed on the job than law enforcement officers. In 15th place on the list are appliance repair technicians. These folks fix your broken freezers, ovens, microwaves, and such, and they are more likely to be killed on the job than law enforcement officers. Finally, coming in below law enforcement officers in 21st place, we have taxi drivers, who seem to get a lot of attention when they get killed on the job too. So why do we memorialize some workers who are killed on the job but not others? Why do we say some workers deal with "acceptable risk" on the job while other deaths are "terrible tragedies"? Why don't we treat occupational deaths equally?

Invisible Black People

When I was a teenager, my mom told me on many occasions that my white friends would eventually pretend not to know me in public. She would often talk about how it would happen to her. For the longest time, the town I grew up in only had 2 grocery stores, so anybody in town who went grocery shopping had a 50/50 chance of going to the store you were shopping in. My mom would say her white coworkers who were so warm and friendly in the workplace would completely ignore her if they saw her at the grocery store or any other business around town. She was nonexistent as far as they were concerned. It also only happened with white coworkers. Her black coworkers would stop for a chat, or at least make eye contact and smile.

Flash forward a few decades and I can definitely confirm the wisdom imparted by my mother from my own observations. I'll be the first to admit that I'm terrible at remembering names, but I have a mind like a steel trap when it comes to remembering faces. If I've seen you before, I know I've seen you before. On many occasions, I have encountered white coworkers and former coworkers in public spaces and they have utterly ignored me. One incident I will always remember happened at the movie theater. For a little backstory, I had worked with one particular coworker on a special project for about 6 weeks. We worked together, in the same room, just a couple of feet from each other, every day for 8-10 hours for 6 weeks. We talked, as people who are in such close proximity will do. So, to make a long story short, she had no reason to not recognize me when she saw me in line at the movie theater about 18 months later. Yet, there we stood, mere feet from each other, and she pretended not to know me. I tried to make eye contact with her so I could at least offer a smile. Nope. I was the invisible black guy. Another instance happened with a high school classmate. I ran into her in the aisle at the grocery store in my hometown. Her mom was friends with my mom and her dad was friends with my dad. I recognized her immediately since we had just seen each other at our class reunion a year earlier. At the grocery store, however, I was just some black stranger to be ignored.

After seeing this situation play out in my life in many instances, it's my hypothesis that, at least in public, we become invisible black people. It's not that we're being consciously ignored, because that would require recognition that we are actually there. Instead, it's that we don't even register as being there. In being not white, we become a part of the background. I think part of the white person's brain says black people are an unknown, making eye contact might trigger them, acting friendly might trigger them, so the best thing is to not see them and certainly not interact with them. That same black person they see every day at work becomes background noise at the store.

I know some will say race has nothing to do with it. I might buy that, but I've seen white people recognize each other in public spaces all the time, even in cases where it's been decades since they've seen each other. One person might make eye contact with the other and then step over to say, "Hey, I don't mean to disturb you, but are you so-and-so from such-a-place?" I saw one recently where someone in her 20s recognized someone who used to babysit her. So you can't convince me these things don't happen.

Trust me, the black people who are being ignored know they're being ignored.

Ad-Free TV is a Pipe Dream in the US

Lately, I've been doing some thinking (and table-napkin math) regarding ad-free streaming TV programming. The average 1-hour TV show costs about $2 million per episode to produce. While there are some outliers, such as Game of Thrones that cost as much as $8 million per episode, we're going to start small. To pay for that average show's production costs alone with subscriber money, it would cost about 70¢ per subscriber, assuming we can get an average audience size of 2.8 million viewers per episode. For the sake of our thought experiment, we're going to assume a season of the show will consist of 13 episodes. In addition to the production costs of the show, we also need to fund distribution (servers and bandwidth) as well as advertising. We're not going to be able to get 2.8 million viewers per episode if we don't have an ad campaign, at least for the first season. Let's triple our per-episode estimate to $2.10 to cover production, distribution, and advertising. That leaves us with one season of one show at a subscription cost of $2.10 per episode, for a grand total of $27.30. How many new shows will you watch in a year? We'll assume 5 new shows. Assuming the same costs for production, distribution, and advertising, that means we'll have to be willing to pay $136.50 per year for 5 new shows.

What about older shows? The dirty little secret of TV production is that shows get more expensive to produce as time goes on because salaries increase. Actors demand more money when they sign new contracts. The show that costs $2 million for the first season might cost $3 million for the second season. Audiences tend to get smaller for subsequent seasons on most shows. The 2.8 million who watched each episode of the first season might fall to 2.5 million for the second season. For the older shows that are still in production, let's assume $2.60 per subscriber per episode to cover production, distribution, and advertising. How many older, in-production shows are you going to watch each year? If we assume 5 shows, that means we'd be paying $169 per year for those shows.

Now, let's toss in some older shows that are no longer in production. We can eliminate the production cost but we'd still have to pay for distribution and maybe a tiny bit for advertising. For the sake of argument, we'll say 25¢ per episode per subscriber. Assuming 5 older, out-of-production shows for the year, that's $16.25. All of this leaves us with an ad-free streaming entertainment package of $321.75 for a year, or $26.81 per month.

Most people watch far more TV than that.

For our fledgling ad-free streaming network we're also going to need development money. For every show that makes it into production, many more don't make it past the pilot stage. Fresh ideas cost money. That money is going to have to come from subscribers.

I'm not saying ad-free streaming TV isn't possible, I'm just saying there are financial considerations. If we want the same production values as we've gotten used to, we're going to have to pay. Visual effects cost money. Sets cost money. Location shooting costs money. Actors cost money. Servers and bandwidth cost money. Advertising costs money. Disney will be able to do it because they can merchandise the hell out of their franchises. Most others will struggle and fail.