Without looking it up or asking your own yaks-milk-is-pink fountain of otherwise useless information:
1. Name the three astronauts on Apollo 12.
2. Name one of the astronauts on Apollo 14.
3. How about the three on Apollo 18?
4. Was there an Apollo 18?
Don't feel bad.
As amazing as it seems, few people know much about one of the most spectacular achievements of the human species: putting people on the moon even for brief stays.
Even at the time, public interest in space travel faded not long after Apollo 11 reached the moon and Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong bounced around on its surface in July 1969.
Now think about last spring's provincial budget. For all the magicality and splendiferousness of it, the whole thing garnered the government maybe 48 hours of half-decent media coverage. The punters didn't really talk it up much either, except maybe the bootie call of a thousand bucks for every new member of the race brought into the world.
Instead, the news and much public commentary these past eight or months have been filled with less than happy stuff for the provincial government.
Part of that is the natural shift in public expression that takes place with any government that's been in office more than a few months. By five years people will naturally change gears from cheering to either moaning or indifference. As Brian said to the ex-leper: "There's no pleasing some people." And more to the point, people just aren't wired to endlessly praise government or feel good about what's going on. They like to bitch.
Another part has been the series of events that would actually warrant some public unhappiness. Pick an issue. There isn't one of them - contrary to the view of at least one person on the cbc.ca/nl website comments - that isn't a legitimate news story.
Another part of the current media environment, at least when it comes to good news, is the simple fact that when you've already announced good news, the re-announcement of the announcement of the news just loses its grip.
People spent years getting ready for men to walk on the moon. They followed the development of the project. The vicariously shared the highs like all the successful Mercury and Gemini missions and they shared the sorrows, like the deaths of three astronauts aboard Apollo 1. But once Neil and Buzz put toe one on the moon, that was the climax of the whole thing.
After a climax of any kind, it's all down hill from there.
Last spring's budget was a big unsurprise. Good news budget after good news budget and astonishing surpluses (even if not quite surpluses after all) piled on surpluses just get a bit repetitive after a while. Imagine if Cleary and the Red Wings win the cup next year how much excitement there'll be.
Hebron may wind up being kinda the same thing. When it didn't happen, well that was news. It had all the elements, good and not so good: controversy, power, drama, money, conflict, disappointment.
When the Premier announced a memorandum of understanding on the project last August, in polling season and right in the middle of the longest undeclared election campaign in provincial history, there was excitement. People talked about it for weeks after.
So when the final Hebron deal is announced in the middle of a couple of by-elections and during polling season alter this month, don't be surprised if it is a media flurry lasting all of a couple of days. Odds are it will lead the news that night, but by the next day expect something else to hit. In short order, it will become the Apollo 12 of government announcements.
Now that's not to say the final deal won't be good news. It pretty much will be, unless something happened since last August to make - for instance - the local benefits potential is less than first appeared. We won't know the impact of the altered royalty structure until well after first oil, which is likely to take place sometime closer to 2020 than not.
But you see, Hebron's already been announced once last August. Then it was, in essence, re-announced in June. For all the hoopla that will accompany the media event, the people directly affected by Hebron are just waiting for the whistle to signal the start so they can get working.
And unless there's something else coming along behind it that hasn't been talked up and talked over for years, odds are the next big announcement will have the same news impact.
It's just what happens after every climax.
-srbp-