Farewell. The Flying Pig Has Left The Building.

Steve Hynd, August 16, 2012

After four years on the Typepad site, eight years total blogging, Newshoggers is closing it's doors today. We've been coasting the last year or so, with many of us moving on to bigger projects (Hey, Eric!) or simply running out of blogging enthusiasm, and it's time to give the old flying pig a rest.

We've done okay over those eight years, although never being quite PC enough to gain wider acceptance from the partisan "party right or wrong" crowds. We like to think we moved political conversations a little, on the ever-present wish to rush to war with Iran, on the need for a real Left that isn't licking corporatist Dem boots every cycle, on America's foreign misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. We like to think we made a small difference while writing under that flying pig banner. We did pretty good for a bunch with no ties to big-party apparatuses or think tanks.

Those eight years of blogging will still exist. Because we're ending this typepad account, we've been archiving the typepad blog here. And the original blogger archive is still here. There will still be new content from the old 'hoggers crew too. Ron writes for The Moderate Voice, I post at The Agonist and Eric Martin's lucid foreign policy thoughts can be read at Democracy Arsenal.

I'd like to thank all our regular commenters, readers and the other bloggers who regularly linked to our posts over the years to agree or disagree. You all made writing for 'hoggers an amazingly fun and stimulating experience.

Thank you very much.

Note: This is an archive copy of Newshoggers. Most of the pictures are gone but the words are all here. There may be some occasional new content, John may do some posts and Ron will cross post some of his contributions to The Moderate Voice so check back.


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Thursday, October 22, 2009

Treading Water at the Rivers

By Dave Anderson:

Chris Briem and I have been collaborating on tracking the revenue at the Pittsburgh Rivers Casino. This week saw a take of $173 per machine per day.


This is a slight improvement from last week, but it is further confirmation that there seems to be a firm floor in the region of $160 to $180 per machine per day. The Rivers Casino has indicated that they are giving out much larger promotional deals to attract buses and other large groups to the casino. I would expect that the customers that are being attracted by these higher deals are primarily cannibalized customers from the Washington Downs casino. That casino is about 20 miles from Pittsburgh and historically has been giving out fairly large promotions to bus trips. The two locations offer the same games and the same number of machines. They are very near substitutes for each other.


Even at these slight "improvements" the revenue flow from the Pittsburgh Rivers Casino is on pace to barely cover debt costs much less operational costs. Revenue would have to double for the next forty-two weeks to meet the state�s projections on the average take per machine per day. Revenue would have to increase by 250% over the next forty-two weeks to meet the owners� projected average take per machine per day for the first year of operations. I have severe doubts that this will happen.



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