The “Hannah Montana Scandal” – sounds like something you might see in a supermarket tabloid, right? No, it’s just that CBS “Early Show” co-host Hannah Storm isn’t able to get cheap tickets for her daughters to a Hannah Montana concert.
Despite having a successful career spanning nearly 20 years as a TV journalist, Storm gave her best shot at making an emotional plea for Hannah Montana concert tickets because the $200 price tag the free market dictates for the tickets is just too high.
“They’re dying to go to the concert,” Storm said of her children (including one named Hannah) who appeared with her on the November 21 broadcast. “They’ve been asking since the summer. I’ve been trying for months on the Internet, pulling every string I know, making phone calls, all to no avail. I can not get Hannah Montana tickets and it is so frustrating. I logged onto online ticket reseller Stubhub.com. So, checking ticket prices, here’s the latest – for the show I want to go to, they start at $200 and go all the way up to $20,000 for one ticket. Can you believe that?”
Nothing tugs at holiday heartstrings like having to see a cheapskate mommy forced to deprive her daughters of Hannah Montana concert tickets because of the price.
“We can’t go,” Storm said to her daughters. “We can't – look at that - $20,000. That's crazy.” That’s also a wild exaggeration.
StubHub.com currently [1]lists tickets for Hannah Montana’s concert for as little as $204 for a Jan. 5, 2008
One solution Storm suggested: The passage of a bill proposed by
So much for objectivity in journalism.
“So, average consumers cannot get tickets at face value,” Storm said to Gelber, who appeared on “The Early Show” with his two daughters who are also being deprived from seeing a Hannah Montana concert. “They’re reselling them at huge prices. But we’re not talking about shady guys on street corners scalping tickets. How do you stop this from happening on the Internet? What is your bill proposing?”
According to Gelber, his bill would deem automated dialing as a deceptive and unfair trade practice and require the ticket brokers to file a bond and register with his state.
“This brings the Internet folks into the state physically and also requires some penalties if they do these kinds of I think pretty predatory practices,” Gelber said.
Storm also interviewed Gelber's two daughters -- again including one named Hannah. She and her sister complained about the high price. "Yeah, I'm really, really sad. I wish I could go except, I mean, the ticket brokers made it unbelievably expensive," said Hannah Gelber.
No one from a ticket broker appeared in the story. Maybe Storm couldn’t find one named Hannah.