Gerrymandering Isn’t Just a Political Problem, It’s Messed with Our TV for Years!
I was on Twitter this afternoon when Meteorologist James Spann replied to someone curious about where he could watch Mr. Spann’s weather bulletins when severe weather starts to happen.
This map got me thinking about how TV markets are set up.
I’ve lived in St. Louis all my life, so to me, my thinking about how TV markets were set up seem to be that TV works in like a radius of a given area where the broadcast towers are. Since most of those towers are in South St. Louis, the market reaches out about 150 miles in any direction, giving us this.
But the map that Spann shared looks like it was drawn by a shady group of Congressmen trying to rig an election. Take for instance this crazy drawing on the other side of the state.
Though things get pretty rural outside of St. Louis and Kansas City, this strange set up puts St. Joseph in its own little enclave with four counties while the rest of the Platte Purchase (that’s actually the name of the “wing” part of Northwest Missouri) north of Platte County is somehow part of the Kansas City Nielsen Set Meter DMA (Domestic Marketing Area). How Atchison County is the only Missouri County part of the Omaha area is ponderous. The same could be said for the neighboring Ottomwa-Kirksville map considering how the Des Moines-Ames area is set up.
I get that the area get’s quite rural in these areas, but isn’t it just wierd how o the other side of the Des Moines area, Kossuth County isn’t in an area like Mankato? Or how some parts of the Minneapolis-St. Paul market surround the Mankato area? Why’s there a handful of counties also in that small enclave that are part of the Sioux Falls DMA?
I want to get back to that part where Mr. Spann showed the South in a bit, but I want to quickly turn attention to the map for Southern California. where I’m pretty sure whoever decided how the map should be drawn in this area did it so that someone would make ableists statements like “Who drew this map? [Insert famous blind person here]?!” and then use it as an excuse not to hire people with visual imparements.
Here we have San Diego County, contained in its own market. (I’m pretty sure if the FCC’s regulations against border blasters weren’t so nationalistic, there’d be a nice “Tijuana-Tecate” on this map. And yeah, California is a pretty big state, with Los Angeles County being one of the most populous counties in the country. But is it so populous that it’s DMA need to include Inyo County, California or Esmeralda County, Nevada? Why aren’t those counties part of Fresno or Las Vegas, respectively? For some reason, Palm Springs is it’s own DMA splitting Riverside County in twain, but its surrounded by the LA DMA.
Kern County is a large county, but the entire county isn’t even in the Bakersfield DMA. How Santa Barbara is separate from LA defies logic. This map doesn’t even show what market the islands off the coast of California are part of. It’s all so ponderous!
Scrolling on the way back to the other side of this map, I noticed Denver is made up of THREE separate non-adjacent zones. Rapid Coity also made of two separate areas.
Places like Victoria County Texas in it’s own DMA. ONE COUNTY, that someone couldn’t decide if it could be part of Houston, Corpus Christi, or San Antonio. I certainly hope when I look at a map regarding the US Census, it doesn’t look like this.
There’s like a billion things wrong with this map. None more screwed up than these little bits of other parts of state that are included or excluded than this area right here.
What makes this area from Terra Haute, Indiana to Mobile, Alabama particularly bad is that red dashed line separating the Central and Eastern time zones. The red line bisects the DMAs in Terra Haute, Evansville, Knoxville, Chattanooga, Columbus (Georgia), even Panama City.
The most of the Dothan, Alabama, DMA is in Central Time Zone while Early County, Georgia is in eastern. It oculd be part of the Tallahassee DMA. Panama City and Dothan could be in the same DMA.
I was watching TV in Atlanta recently and there’s a weather map that doesn’t just include the ATL Market but the one in Macon, Georgia too? As if the Atlanta market wasn’t screwy enough with two counties in Alabama (in the Central Time Zone) and Clay County in North Carolina. Understandably, many of the counties in the Atlanta area are about half the size of the ones we have here in the St. Louis Area in many places, but come on!
Lamar County Alabama is part of the Tupelo DMA instead of Birmingham. (Which Cleberne and Randolph are also not in the same DMA as Birmingham.) Lincoln County, Tennessee is in the Huntsville DMA instead of Nashville. Hardin County, Tennessee in the Jackson DMA separating Memphis from Nashville. Up North, Lenawee County, Michigan is part of the Toledo (Ohio) DMA while Hillsdale to the west is part of Lansing and Monroe part of Detroit. Muskingum County, Ohio is in it’s on DMA because of Zanesville while almost all the bordering counties are part of the Columbus (Ohio) DMA.
Single counties. Small enclaves made of two to five counties. Even places like Biloxi-Gulfport (an area made of three counties) aren’t in the same DMA as Mobile and Pensacola, which share the Ft. Walton Beach area.
This map is so broken…and it is broken intentionally.
While many of us focus on the maps that define our congressional districts in this country, the Nieson Map is not defined by state bountaries like Zip Codes, Area Codes, or even census tracts.
I mean, who comes up with a name like “Witchita-Hutchinson Plus”? That sounds like it should be bundled with Disney+.
The point is the markets are not evenly distributed. Even a place like Lima Ohio is a group of three counties. Imagine if St. Louis City, St. Louis County, and St. Charles County bundled ourselves together and put all the surrounding counties in their own own marketing area? There’d be some folks out in Madison and St. Clair County, Illinois who wouldn’t be too happy with that.
These divisions are not geographically or populously apportionate in many areas. Which is a problem especially since this marketing data can determine who the supply chain is distributed. And as we’ve see so far during this time of quarantine, there are many places that are wondering what they can to with the too much they have while some areas are struggling with too little.
These divisions may look good if you are selling the latest soft drink, but they are terrible at getting product to market in times of crisis, like we are now.
In the case of knowing where to get information, this can also be a problem as it can exclude a lot of places where that information is needed.
It’s time we reorganized this map, because if this map is a complete mess, imagine what other important maps are a logistical nightmare.
