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On the first day of 2010, Cablevision television subscribers in the NY area might have been surprised to see that they no longer had HGTV and Food Network as part of their available cable lineups, something they might have missed, given the coverage that the News Corporation / Time Warner contract negotiations had been getting. Those organizations managed to work things out, keeping the News Corporation networks on the air for Time Warner subscribers.

The same can’t be said for those other two networks, however. On Monday afternoon, I caught this tweet by marketing consultant / blogger Katja Presnal, who had just found out about the channels going “missing” from her lineup, and saw her subsequent posts on the subject, which pointed to the I Love HGTV and I Love Food Network microsites that Scripps Networks, owners of those networks, had created to distribute information and activate affected customers. Scripps has also continued its media campaign on the issue, with Food Network President Brooke Johnson going on CNBC’s Power Lunch on Monday to discuss its position.

Both of those sites are smartly built, offering easy ways to get involved on Facebook, post directly to Twitter, watch videos, and get Scripps’ POV on the situation. For me, the first thing that jumped out was how fans of shows have made a splash before and whether or not these – again, smart and solid – tools would be enough to further this particular hard-line negotiation. What came to mind was the peanuts protest that fans of CBS’ “Jericho” enacted on the network after the show was cancelled after its first season. That particular protest worked, with some 20 tons of peanuts being sent to the network at a cost of more than $50,000, and the show returning for a second season, before ultimately being cancelled a second time.

You know what, though, people? Let’s take this whole thing to the next level. Vote with your wallets.

Now I’m not going to go down the road of a la carte television subscriptions – there are people far smarter than me that can handle that discussion. Check out what people like Tim Karr or Jeff Jarvis if you’re interested in more on that subject. I don’t want to say anything about who’s right or wrong here as I don’t know the financials involved, and have worked too closely on the network side of this type of standoff, but I’m more than happy to make a suggestion to move the needle.

Where I am going to go is that if you want to move that needle in 2010, you’ve gotta vote with your wallets, purses, PayPal accounts, and so on. Want to tell Cablevision (or Scripps Networks) how you feel about this particular situation? You’ve got a few options – you can cancel or change your service, or find another provider.

Or, you can take my suggestion, and send them a buck. Before people all start sending paint rollers or frying pans to corporate offices or whatever, take that money and make your opinion known to the powers that be, whether they be at Cablevision or Scripps Networks. In fact, I’ll put up $20 of my own singles to the first 20 Cablevision subscribers who email me (tom (at) tombiro (dot) com), and I’ll send a note on their behalf along with the dollar bill to Cablevision HQ.

No, seriously.

Listen – social media tools and campaigns like what Scripps is promoting definitely have a place, but this is going to continue to be a dollars and cents issue, especially as we start loading up on Hulu streams, Netflix instant viewing, and TV-friendly packages like Boxee become more mainstream.

So that’s my challenge – I’ll pony up twenty single dollar bills, plus postage, and the rest of you Cablevision subscribers need to do the rest.

On Thursday, Jason Kottke posted an excellent item about drinking in the office like we were all on AMC’s “Mad Men,” which is an especially funny thought, even if you’ve never watched the show. For me, this is even more funny given a conversation I was in on Wednesday night and tweeted about while walking to the Union Square subway station, that I’m including here for your reading amusement.

Check out what happened when the fine folks at Double X got their drink on, below…

Yesterday, I’d mentioned having seen the Silversun Pickups perform in the afternoon in the office, but I’d actually seen them just a few hours earlier as well – when they performed on “It’s On with Alexa Chung.” Pretty cool to have seen it from the control room, but this is what aired on television as they performed “Panic Switch.”

Okay, so last night, Carly Smithson was voted off American Idol in a “shocker,” a word that I think only begins to sum it up. I don’t see exactly how she missed the mark in her “Jesus Christ Superstar” performance, especially when you compare it up to the disastrous performance that Jason Castro threw down with “Memory.”

This brings to light – again – the fact that voting on this show definitely throws people for a loop. People seem to vote HARD for people they LOVE and those that they LOVE TO KEEP ON THE SHOW, not the ones that actually do the best job, consistently. I wouldn’t even know where to start in saying who’s to “blame” for something like this, but I’ll say that unless it’s David Cook that ultimately wins this show, it wouldn’t surprise me if any album that Carly Smithson got to do after being thrown off the show outsold anything that the eventual winner did over the haul. Of course, this is my opinion, but if you listen to a lot of music (I do), I just don’t see how she was the weakest performer – at all – especially when she was put in a bottom two with Syesha Mercado, whom I am not the hugest fan of as an “Idol” in the long term, but who did a killer job on Tuesday night.

The voting is just so seemingly random. One week you seem to be based on the work you did that week, even if you were perfect eight weeks in a row prior. The next week you’re voted on how you might actually rank in the overall grand scheme (and Syesha in the bottom rung isn’t too off-base when you look at it that way). But seriously, folks, how could Carly Smithson be a lesser performer than ANYONE except maybe David Cook in the long haul? And what, Brooke White gets the sympathy vote because people like her in general and she had a disastrous performance? I just don’t get it.

/stupid rant

So it appears that high definition programming has a side effect that I really hadn’t expect, the one of making my cat decide that all moving objects should be swatted at. I had thought he’d be out of control once the television was put up on the wall and there was a way for him to reach it, but nothing really happened for awhile. All of a sudden in the last two weeks or so, he’s decided that sitting on top of the electronics in front of the television and waiting for moving objects that he’d like to slay. Regular television doesn’t cause much of this behavior, but things like NASCAR, where he can sit there and swipe at cars as they go around the bend, and hockey, where there are contrasting colors that make for easy prey, seem to be his favorites. So, after almost a year of having no issues with the television being accessible, there’s now more than a fair share of cat paw prints all over my television. Oh well. Such is life, I suppose.

Well, Jimmy Kimmel apparently had had enough of the fun that girlfriend Sarah Silverman had pulled on him a short while ago when she announced that she was … ahem … knowing Matt Damon, so Jimmy responded in the only way he knows how – to get with Ben Affleck, of course.

Probably NSFW for most of you, but everyone’s going to be talking about it, so you should make a point to check it out later.