Greetings CasteFootballers, I'm enjoying the thread about raunchy music and TV offerings at workout clubs in the United States. I offer my story from the People's Republic of Too-close-to-DC.
I just finished a 14-month struggle with my local "Club" trying to get them to remove the repulsive "ClubCom" [basically MTV videos, rap-intensive] from the TVs posted on the wall in the main workout room. After lots of cajoling, two personal interviews with the manager, and delivery of my "Rant Letter" they finally removed it. The last airing of ClubCom was on 10 December 07, just about 14 months after the Rant Letter.
My apologies for the length, but the Rant Letter is posted below. I go to the trouble because it illustrates: If you harass the Commie-libs enough, and stick to your guns, you can win.
If any good CasteFootballers wind up in a similar struggle, I authorize you to use any and all of the material in the Rant Letter!
So here it is:
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CLUBCOM Stinks!
This month (October 2006) marks approximately the second anniversary of the arrival of the giant, flat-screen televisions that grace the walls of the FitSports main fitness room. The installation of these top-of-the-line televisions was an excellent investment and a positive step for FitSports. This month also indicates approximately the eighteen-month mark for a much less favorable decision by club executives, that being the inauguration of CLUBCOM videos on the center screen.
I don't recall any survey flyer being circulated to the FitSports membership asking their input or approval of the airing of CLUBCOM on a permanent basis on the center TV. Nor do I remember any requests for input about ratcheting up the volume for CLUBCOM's audio track. Senior management seems to have decided that the club "needs" background music at all times in the primary workout room, and that that music MUST be of the MTV-VH1 style videos that CLUBCOM peddles.
I will tell you what I think of CLUBCOM: It stinks. It rots. It's vile. It's disgusting. CLUBCOM is hideous, gross, horrifying, and revolting. The CLUBCOM corporation has a slick website whose alluring advertisements mask the true nature of CLUBCOM programming. I will explain:
The four primary "genres" of CLUBCOM's wonderful programming breakdown as follows:
1) The Siren Song: This staple of CLUBCOM and MTV and VH1, The Siren Song delivers a three-to-six minute orgy of oversexed, slutty, vixenous females, in gyration and agitation, seductively dressed or partly naked, and crooning for unencumbered sex. The menu is all sex, all the time. Sex with strangers. Sex with criminals. Sex with men and women, or both at once. Sex with children, adolescents, moms and dads, senior citizens, or at last resort, one's boyfriend or his best friend. The message is unmistakable, and the accompanying cheap Pop-Krappe music of thump-thump-thump drones on 24-7 at CLUBCOM. Super Sluts on parade. Smut and softporn all day long. What a healthy addition to a health club!
2)Melted-brain Narcissism: MTV perfected this lovely "entertainment" media in the 1980s, borrowing from the flower-power cults of the 1960s. About every fourth CLUBCOM video is a five-minute diatribe of antisocial chatter by a bunch of lard-brained talentless punk rock Punks. The message is narcissism, lethargy, hatred of authority, scorn for parents and adults. Indulged are fantasies of existentialism, sadism, nihilism, pessimism, masochism, and other similar negatives of human emotion. Each "video" torments the viewer with a twisted message of simultaneous self-hatred and self-indulgence, with discordant arrhythmic non-music in the background. Truly uplifting "art" for dedicated fitness-minded customers! Please, more!
3)In Your Face: You can't miss the Rap-Krappe performance type that dominates video television these days. It's angry, cruel, mean, vicious, glorifying violence, degradation and debasement of women, with extreme social hatred, scorn for all authority, and self-hatred as well. Hollywood and Madison Avenue continue to push this nasty "artform" despite America's being completely sick of its twenty-year rampage. Watch enough of them and you can see young women slapped and beaten and cursed by large men to the chuckles of their entourage. Kicks, punches, jabs, stabs, spitting and screaming, obscenities and curses and epithets are gently on display, where the big dog dominates the little dog, and onlookers laugh with delight. It's anti-human, anti-family, anti-decency, full of venom and filth. How wholesome! Hooray for CLUBCOM and hooray for FitSports for treating us to a daily dose of this fabulous video vitamin
4)Totally Testosterone: You know this one well. A full one-fourth of CLUBCOM's spreadsheet features a crowd of heavy-metal or similar noisemakers with four or six pig-headed guitar twangers shrieking their phallic delirium. Often there's a live concert performance where these sex-crazed buffoons bleat for thousands of teenage groupies. Raw sex symbology is everywhere to drive home the message of "Give it to Me Now!" The fairer sex is a simple target and total degradation of women is the message. The modern, twenty-first century brand of free-love screamers has had decades of malevolent jerks to imitate, and CLUBCOM video stars manage even to surpass the depravity of 1960's Woodstock culture. I'm sure the young women in FitSports's workout room appreciate these overtures. What a great message to send young FitSports families who scrape together the monthly payment to send their kids to workout.
I can't figure why you wish to torture me with CLUBCOM. I've paid my club dues on time. I behave myself in the club. I have few complaints about club facilities and personnel, and I've been a dedicated member for over ten years. Many of your dues-paying members don't like CLUBCOM either but are afraid to express their opinion about it. For that matter, I'm afraid too, but I can't stand being silent about it anymore. American businesses truly do not want to hear criticism, especially criticism of decisions that were likely handed down from big-money central corporate offices. I don't know too much about corporate FitSports, but I bet my bottom sweatband that Corporate directed you to put CLUBCOM on the TV and didn't leave you with other options. They would not want a survey of club patrons because a large percentage would reject putting MTV-style garbage on the tube at high volume while they try to workout.
Here is a statement from CLUBCOM's own webpage: "ClubCom is a pioneer and leader in the field of constructing and operating private television networks for targeted communal audiences. Imagine what you could do with your own television network... ENTERTAIN, with one of the world's largest music video libraries, customized specifically for your audience. COMMUNICATE with your audience instantly through on-screen video test messaging, internal promotions, and brand message reinforcement. PARTICIPATE in local, regional, and national advertising revenue opportunities."
Well, baloney, CLUBCOM! What a bunch of hooey. A pile of lies! Your drivel to me is neither entertainment nor communication nor participatory. It's just a bunch of counter-culture TRASH designed for shock value and revulsion. CLUBCOM ruins my workouts. I wear industrial-strength hearing-arrestors to -60dB to try to block out the offensive noise. I wear a blindfold when I workout on the stationary bikes and treadmills. And I still can't tune out the trash because you have it turned up so loud! And background music? I for one would MUCH rather have none. I would prefer the chatter and banter of exercise machines and my fellow Weaselvillians working out.
Folks, I work hard. 50- and 55-hour weeks, with a brutal commute. And so do lots of others who workout in your club. When I get to the treadmill and the bike at the FitSports club, the last thing I wish for is to be assaulted and insulted by MTV-style trash video and audio. I passionately hate the stuff. It's a personal insult to me every time I workout at FitSports. Workplaces are often loud and difficult environments. The sanctuary of FitSports before 2005 was a most welcome relief from the hostility and loudness of the workplace. You ruin that sanctuary be beating me over the eardrums with CLUBCOM.
Here is CLUBCOM'S "Nielsen survey" that purports to represent me and the rest of your "clientele" that workout at your facility:
Attitudinals? Bull-oney! My foot! Nobody asked me. Plus CLUBCOM gives no breakdown of the geographic area of its survey. Well sure, if you polled hundreds of people who work in Manhattan in the finance business, you will get this type of survey result. Besides that, who said anything about Nielsen deciding what form a local Weaselville-suburb health club should take? I'm not a New York ad exec and neither are the rest of your customers. Furthermore, here's the home address of CLUBCOM's "parent company" called, misleadingly, "Amer Sports Corporation":
What the heck is FitSports doing taking orders from a company based in Finland? What the bleep do Finnish Musak peddlers know about suburban Levitt-house dwellers in Weaselville? The answer is nothing nothing nothing!
There are all SORTS of excellent alternatives to CLUBCOM that would be non-offensive to your subscriber base. Why wouldn't you put together a FitSports channel with a continuous feed of FitSports activities, calendars, events, and photographs? You can erect one easily with ordinary PowerPoint software that any of your staff could manipulate. You could advertise your swim lessons, tennis leagues, racquetball, yoga, studio biking (where loud music is appropriate), day-care, basketball, in short, everything that FitSports offers. A cheap digital camera, a laptop, one junior technician and away you go! Maybe some easy-listening music with nature videos in the background would find favor with FitSports management. American Airlines provides such media to its passengers on long flights. Imagine that - a company that actually respects and honors its customers and treats them like human beings!
FitSports management and the staff of the main workout room seem quite comfortable with CLUBCOM. Maybe some of your customers are similarly comfortable. Since most Americans "Go along to get along" and are usually tired from work and family obligations, they capitulate willingly to their employers, governments, and institutions. Well - I AM NOT comfortable with CLUBCOM. I detest CLUBCOM and I bet you would find others in your ranks and among the membership who feel the same way.
Do you watch CLUBCOM at home? How about MTV? Do you allow your own children to watch MTV-style videos? Tell the Truth! Do you endorse and condone the "message" that the average CLUBCOM video transmits? Do you really want your children or spouse to embrace the "values" of CLUBCOM's MTV-style videos? If you answered "No," then why do you wish to force the stuff on me? Or on the rest of your customers? If you answered "Yes" ... gosh, I wouldn't know what to think.
Suppose your youngest FitSports members took to heart the CLUBCOM message. What sort of FitSports member would they become? If all the eighteen-year-old FitSports members decided to truly take the CLUBCOM message to heart you would have a result that would augur POORLY for FitSports's bottom line. A dedicated CLUBCOM junkie would become an antisocial, hateful pervert. He/she would forsake his/her family in favor of a life of debauchery with any and all available low-life people. Your CLUBCOM-influenced young person would eschew discipline and embrace avarice, narcissism, violence and debauchery. This miserable person would invite disease and despair into his/her body. Life would crumble for this person. And THEN - FitSports would lose this person as a potential customer. The victim would be condemned to poor or marginal employment and not be able to AFFORD a FitSports membership. There would be no chance for a marriage with children, or future FitSports members for decades in the future. You destroy your own customer base by defiling them with CLUBCOM! A poor business model indeed! Did you think of this when you put CLUBCOM on your main workout room TV?
I'm truly embarrassed and humiliated when I'm working out and CLUBCOM is on the air. CLUBCOM stands for everything my parents and I abhor. And I am NOT a Fundamentalist Christian moralist. Far from it! FitSports flaunts CLUBCOM in front of my eyes and those of my peers and there's little I can do about it. Except tell you! CLUBCOM reduces the FitSports main workout room to a cheap Third-world Disco, a raunchy pick-up joint. It's insane.
Each bike and treadmill in the main workout room is equipped with a headset jack assembly (blue) that could provide a private headphone set to each exerciser. If headphones were provided then ubiquitous background music could be eliminated while preserving the option for workouters to listen. Instead we have blasting "music" from CLUBCOM whether we want it or not.
The sick and diseased minds of the MTV-video industry have NO BUSINESS polluting a wonderful family exercise club like FitSports. You do your customer base a huge disservice by assaulting them with CLUBCOM. Do the right thing. Get rid of CLUBCOM. Do it now!
In fact, I offer a SPORTING CHALLENGE to you. I will pay double-dues to FitSports for a whole year if you allow a questionnaire to be circulated to FitSports members. Since I'm paying for it, I get to set the agenda and provide the questions. I will gladly pay for the paper for the survey. Here's the survey:
Dear FitSports Member:
In February 2005 FitSports began airing MTV-style videos on the central television in the main workout room. These videos are produced and delivered to the club by CLUBCOM, inc. Do you approve of these videos? Would you be interested in an alternative, either different music or a different media?
Do you require "background" music in order to work out? If so, would you like some say in what sort of music is provided?
Should background music be played through wall-mounted stereo speakers in the Club? If some members object to background music, should they have an option not to have any?
Would you listen to background music with earphones if provided?
Would you be interested in a variety of background music instead of a steady diet of MTV-style music videos?
Background music in the main workout room is played at a loud volume. Do you like this?
Tell us what you think of the media offered in the FitSports main workout room
This survey would be administered to FitSports members only. If the response were largely negative toward CLUBCOM (say over 60% against), then CLUBCOM media would be permanently removed from the main workout room. It would be replaced with a more appropriate media form that is inoffensive to all customers. If the response goes the other way, I will cease and desist my opposition to CLUBCOM, and will pay double dues for a year. If you had any decent competition, I might look elsewhere for a workout club. But you have a monopoly on the best plot in town, the prime spot of convenience for all of Weaselville. I'm just a shrill voice among the thousands of cattle who use the facility.
Thank you for your kind attention.
Respectfully yours,
Max Cunningham
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Edited by: Realgeorge 
I take a CD player/headphones in occasionally, but they're a tad bothersome (slightly cumbersome). Do ya'll come across this at your gyms? 
