PTAC Ambience: Cozy Hotel Room with Gushing Warm Air for Sleep, Relaxation, and Focus

Billerica, Massachusetts Hotel PTAC ambience. Enjoy hours of gushing hot air on a cold winter night in your Boston-area hotel room. The TV is off, so no local TV news to slog through.

I used to watch local news in this area. Mostly the NBC station, back in the aughts. Their promotions featured station characters referring to themselves as “the neeeews station.”

I also worked nearly two decades in local news. Take it from me: you could give up commercial local TV entirely and not miss a beat.

Aside from what you think of Ralph Nader from a political perspective, he had the commercial news industry dead to rights in the summer of 2000: “Look at your late-evening news… It's 30 minutes. Nine minutes of ads; three minutes of street crime right at the beginning, never corporate crime, very superficially covered; one minute of impromptu chit-chat between the anchors; four minutes of weather; four minutes of sports — and that's what happens in your town tonight.”

Nader didn’t mention that our weather studios were named after local florists, and sports were “powered” by local Toyota dealerships.

At one job, a befuddled new anchor approached me in the hall.

“Do you know where the ‘Terrorism Desk is?”

“Oh, for sure,” I said. “You want the lobby.”

The lobby had an open window to the station’s master control setup, flashing with over thirty monitors showing color bars, live cams, satellite feeds, and other inputs (looks impressive). And that camera station had other monikers: the “Breaking News Desk,” “Hurricane Whomever Desk,” and “We Have a New Baseball Team in Town Desk.”

Still just the lobby.

Nader also didn’t mention sweeps week, the designated ratings period when stations try to attract the largest possible audience. Viewership is collected from a small sample of homes with Nielsen boxes — sometimes just hundreds — that determine a region’s TV habits. Sweeps weeks set advertising rates, deciding how much a law firm or Buffalo Wild Wings has to pay to appear in a commercial break.

Sweeps week is also a time of intrigue, danger, and sensationalized threats — online predators, out-of-control crime, spikes of spammers. I’m not being facetious: in Albany, I saw a promo claiming drinking water could be dangerous (the water is piped in from the Helderbergs, some of the cleanest water a small city could hope to access — you could eat off the floor in the Helderbergs).

Sweeps week is also when favorite network TV characters die. J.R. was shot during sweeps. Brad Pitt showed up on Friends during sweeps.

At one station, a producer said, “If Oprah has a Dancing with the Palins…” we’d beat our rival in the 5pm slot. It was the last day of sweeps, Oprah had Bristol and Sarah Palin gab it up on her program. We did hit #1 for the 11 that sweeps period due to the Bristol Palin-led Dancing with the Stars.

Sweeps also judge station performance. If you watch local television and see a “We’re #1 in something” ad, that’s what that is all about. Those ads are specifically for station management, no one else gives a ****.

Speaking of — once, walking into a station bathroom, I heard a toilet flush, and a colleague walks out of the stall holding his bag of Chipotle.

These are folks you could stand to listen to less, is all I’m saying.

Postscript-ish story: when I worked for a station that shared a newsroom with Politico.

One morning, I’m walking into my department through the Politico sales area, gabbing with an awesome lady I worked with. Because I’m a stupid klutz, my hand bangs the side of a desk and dislodges my lunch. Which was soup in a Tupperware bowl. And it didn't just spill — it exploded.

Clam fragments and sad potatoes amongst a red ooze splashed and soaked into the carpet (which, I’m not embellishing here, was new and cream-colored).

I don’t know what smells pleasing to you at 8:57 AM — I’m positive it isn’t canned Manhattan Clam Chowder hit with 27 spluts of Tabasco.

Awesome lady grabs my elbow and is like, “Go, go, go, go.”