The Gulf Coast and good TV each get a shot in the arm

[thatcrazycajun]

Good news for the Hurricane Katrina-ravaged Gulf Coast: Toyota Motor Corp. of America plans to build a plant near the birthplace of Elvis Presley, Tupelo, MS, to provide a sorely needed economic boost to the area. More about this here.

And some good news for fans of British sci-fi TV: The first season of the revived Doctor Who, with Chris Eccleston as the Doctor (now on view Stateside in NBC's Heroes), is at last airing on BBC America, followed close on by a charming little half-hour show called Hyperdrive, Auntie Beeb's first foray into sci-fi sitcoms since the late, lamented Red Dwarf. More info on that here. We discovered these two new additions to BBCA's schedule quite by accident, our usual Tuesday night fare having been pre-empted by Fox and ABC (House, M.D. and Boston Legal lost out this week to American Idolatry and injured ABC correspondent Bob Woodruff's return to the airwaves in a 20/20 special, respectively).

Comments

[brithistorian.livejournal.com]

While the Toyota plant will be good for the Tupelo area (that part of the state needs all the help it can get), I really don't think it will do that much for the Gulf Coast, other than the peripheral benefit that they'd get based on enriching the state as a whole. The industrial workers on the coast, even though a lot of them have skills that Toyota could use, tend to move east-west in search of new/better work, moving from shipyard to shipyard following the navy contracts. For the most part, they'd be more likely to move to Norfolk, Virginia, or Bath, Maine, than to move to Tupelo, which is about as far north as you can get and still be in Mississippi. Still, I can't blame Toyota for not wanting to put their plant any further south, and, like I said, the Tupelo area can definitely use the new jobs.