Now a Town from our Sponsor

It's like product placement on steroids. Just this month two of the tiniest hamlets in America traded in their names for cash and prizes. With populations smaller than your average off-peak subway car, both voted to surrender the hometown moniker for the name of a commercial enterprise. The signs of the times? Dish, Texas and SecretSanta.com, Idaho -- once Clark, Texas and Santa, Idaho.

The folks in Clark switched to Dish in exchange for 60 channels of glorious TV for ten years from the DISH satellite network. For a half-million dollars DISH's serving all 125 Dishians. Or is it Dishites or Dishies? It's a good thing that Dish is too small for a school otherwise we'd be cheering on the Wild Wedgewoods or the Mighty Mikasas or the Fighting Fiestawares.

Not everyone in Clark is happy. The biggest Dish panner is Landis Clark. He founded the town five years ago and in the grand tradition of yore named it for himself. Just like King George named Georgia, and the Hudson River was tagged for the guy who first polluted it and calling Avon, Connecticut, I guess, for whoever discovered the first long lasting lip gloss.

In last hotly contested election in Clark/Dish, then Mayor Clark lost by a single vote. Coincidently, he subscribed to DirectTV. The current Mayor Bill Merritt seems happy to pull the plug on both Clarks. He says it has nothing to do with political payback. I guess then it's all about uninterrupted reruns of Law and Order and the round the clock Entertainment channel which focuses on the most important of all dish... what's up with Angelina and Brad.

Days after the Dish exchange, the only elected officials in Santa, Idaho (Pop. 100) voted to sandwich in their name for one year to become SecretSanta.com, Idaho. The five water commissioners figured the $20,000 would come in handy for a bone dry budget. The company also promises a slice of the profits of a documentary being made about the new name. Let's hope it does a lot better than Waterworld.

The guy who persuaded Santa to become a dot-community did the same to the folks in Halfway, Oregon. For 20 computers and a small wad of cash it became Half.com, Oregon for a year. But when eBay ponied up $300 million for Half.com -- the website, not the town - the town didn't even get half of that half. Maybe because it's nowhere near an eBay, Halfway's land locked.

Before Halfway came Ismay, Montana. They changed to Joe, Montana in 1993 when a radio station offered to send the teeming town of 26 to see quarterback Joe Montana play. The Joe-ians sat in the bleachers, but scored about $75,000 in t-shirt sales before returning to the name made not so famous by sisters Isabel and May Earling. Daddy Earling owned a railroad and named the town the old fashioned way, he just ran a railroad through it.

No one railroaded the granddaddy of the "now a town from our sponsor" frenzy: Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. They happily vaporized 'Hot Springs' 50 years ago as a stunt for the game show produced by Ralph Edwards. Coincidently or not, Edwards died on the day Clark voted to switch to Dish. It's a good thing they didn't go for one of flops Edwards produced. They all could have lived somberly in Funny Boners, New Mexico.

Now it's time for my state, California to cash in on this latest marketing trend and eliminate the state's gargantuan deficit by selling off its name to... how about Microsoft.com? Bill Gates can spare a couple of billion. How about the guys from Google? Who wouldn't want to say they're a Googlilian? It could come with the inquisitive state motto: Google -- search us? How about turning to Apple's most successful product line? We could all be iPod people? Personally I vote for the folks at Banana Republic. Although being any kind of Republican in this state might make a lot of people blue-- but cheer up! It would be a Banana Republic. Considering the recent election debacle we really don't have far to go.