You know, I don’t take Transit TV lightly. If you don’t use MARTA then you have no idea how irritating it is to see the same ads for 20ColegioEnPJs.com and a pyramid scheme run by the sheriff from Murder, She Wrote that involves selling $60 novelty sail boat lamps, over and over in a screen right in front of your face when all you want to do is just get to work without eye contact from the Jesus Greaser.
But I endure Transit TV because I understand MARTA’s got to pay the bills and no one in our sleazy state legislature is going to do that for them, and I also understand that those temper tantrums I was throwing in my car by the time I got to mile two of my three mile commute every morning was no way to live my life. And if the All-American Rejects’ record company is going to keep my trains running every ten minutes by playing the video for their new single on an endless loop with the sound off for a week straight, then whatever.
Then I saw a bit in a NY Times article about rising public transit ridership and declining state and local budgets to meet this need. Emphasis mine:
Beverly A. Scott, general manger of Marta, the Atlanta system, said as the sales tax revenue continued to drop, she was weighing everything from fare increases to service cuts to even selling the naming rights to stations — but she still hopes for more state support.
I hadn’t heard of this possible move yet in any of the other coverage of MARTA’s financial desperation. I had heard that MARTA might totally cut my bus route sometime this summer though, the thought of which immediately fills me with all the anxiety of three months’ worth of sweaty road rage. You know what, I will be happy to take a bus with a wraparound ad for Attorney Ken “One Call, That’s All” Nugent on the “DeVry University at Cobb Galleria” bus route pumping Snuggies commericals in Spanish on Transit TV, and get off at the “Fruitopia Strawberry Passion Awareness Station” every day to not have to rake my car over Midtown’s perpetually corrugated roads. I am not going to be like some outraged 30 Rock fan crying about McFlurry product placement when MARTA totally sells out. 
Actually, I hope this naming rights scheme does happen, and I hope Tyler Perry, in a fit of the grandest egomania yet, buys the rights to all the stations so he can be honored at 37 Tyler Perry’s MARTA Stations by Tyler Perry. Each one could be named after a movie he made in 2008.
Previously: I demand MARTA fashion
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