Thu
May 23 2013
08:33 am
Hey, did you hear about the Titanic fiddle?
By: R. Neal

The people who run the Titanic attraction in Pigeon Forge are certainly getting a lot of mileage out of their PR dollars:

Best I can tell, the connection between the Titanic and the Great Smoky Mountains National Park is that rain that fell on Little River a million years ago made its way to the Gulf of Mexico, into the Gulf Stream, up into the North Atlantic, and got frozen in that iceberg. Or something.

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Factchecker's picture

2 KNS "articles" within 2-3 days

Submitted by Factchecker on Thu, 2013/05/23 - 7:06pm.

I think the connection is just that they've found another way to rake in more money through more exploitation, and Tennessee is good for that.

Mike Cohen's picture

Titanic

Submitted by Mike Cohen on Thu, 2013/05/23 - 8:16pm.

It's a tourist attraction, plain and simple. They built it where there are lots of people, which is smart.

The people who run it are good folks. There is nothing in the museum taken from the wreckage. The story, when you visit, is well told. John Joslyn, half of the couple that owns it, is a former TV Producer who was one of the first to go down in a small sub and view the wreckage, then produce a TV show about it. His wife, Mary, worked for many years at Disney, a direct report to Eisner.

They are obviously not a client, since they are represented by Ackermann. But the museum is probably better done that you expect and totally worth a visit.

As for all the coverage...the fascination people have with the Titanic is remarkable. The movie built it further. And so the media likes it. And who has heard of the Titanic and not heard about the musicians playing even as it went down?

R. Neal's picture

There is nothing in the

Submitted by R. Neal on Fri, 2013/05/24 - 6:18am.
(in reply to Mike Cohen)

There is nothing in the museum taken from the wreckage.

So it's even more fake than I thought. What it is is an incongruous eyesore, like most of Pigeon Forge. Like that stupid Wilderness in the Smokies, which offers a fake indoor "wilderness experience" just a few miles away from a world class national park with, you know, actual wilderness. (Guess I need to update this.)

Anyway, that was sort of the point, and also how much money is to be made spoon feeding lazy media with advertising disguised as free "story" content.

Mike Cohen's picture

Titanic

Submitted by Mike Cohen on Fri, 2013/05/24 - 7:17am.
(in reply to R. Neal)

Actually it is not fake at all. There are plenty of items that were involved, just nothing taken from the actual wreckage. There is even a life vest from a woman who's husband put it on her, told her not to remove it until she was on land, put her on a boat and told her goodbye. She didn't take it off until she was in a doctors office. On the bridge you put your hand in water the same temp as the water was that night.

Honestly, Randy, I went not expecting that much and was incredibly impressed.

And the media aren't lazy...although generally speaking they have a lot more space to fill with a lot fewer resources. And in this case, people really respond to Titanic stories.

Factchecker's picture

Fair enough, but featuring

Submitted by Factchecker on Thu, 2013/05/23 - 11:05pm.

Fair enough, but featuring such ad fluff (redundantly, in the case of KNS), especially in the news section, is shoddy and further erodes real news cred, IMO. It could have been in the Life/Style/Entertainment section. Did the paper pursue it or was it hyped to them by Ackermann?

Factchecker's picture

Because people love that crap

Submitted by Factchecker on Fri, 2013/05/24 - 8:40am.

So that's why I subscribe to the Knoxville News Sentinel. Maybe I should just save my money and watch "reality" TV.

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