r
(continued from page 9)
Maybe the problem will resolve
itself. Maybe Lee Peppard will find all
the money and pay the players
tomorrow, and that will be that.
Tomorrow, yes, tomorrow.
Anyway, there are more pressing
matters to be considered at the
present time, like putting together
the numbers for the next board
meeting on how much it would cost
to hire a .. . public relations firm .
got burned " represent our cus-
tomers" to the public . It was
irrelevant that neither he nor most
people in the industry had any hand
whatsoever in the tournament , what
mattered was that it was reflecting
on the entire industry and something
had to be done about it. he said .
Tournam e nt fund
So Charlie Cobb contacted the
Chicago Sun· Times (!) himself, then
he contacted Play Meter(?) too, and
he suggested an industrywide tour-
nament relief fund to pay off the
players who received bad checks .
No one else had come forward . No
one else had an idea . No one else was
saying anything- except the irate
players , Lee Peppard. the U.S .
Postal Service ... and the Press (!).
But a tournament fund?
Why , Charlie?
"T his is a black eye for the entire
industry," he said. "And its making
all of us look bad. He said that he,
like everyone else in the business ,
has too much at stake to let some -
thing like this reflect on his business.
He pointed out that the players who
Shouldn't industry leaders
haue been so bold as to
contact the press themselves
when the bad news broke?
He also said it was a great opportu -
nity for the industry to show the
public "exactly what we're always
talking about, that we are a responsi -
ble industry .''
But how, Charlie?
" Play Met r can collect the man~
and distribute it to the players .
Okay? I'm a small guy and really
can' t afford it, but I'll kick in $500 to
get this thing started off."
But , Charli , what about At ari?
Shouldn't Atari just write a c heck for
the entire amount?
He said Atari is doing mar than its
share already . When they agreed to
pay $50,000 to pay off the Atari tour-
nament winners, they demonstrated
that they were willing to go beyond
their legal responsibility on the
matter . Then he pointed out that
Atari has a lot of money invested in
the coin -op amusement industry and
said, " Do you think for a minute, if
this thing were their fault, they'd try
to renege on their legal responsi-
bility?"
(It sounded unlikely . But that was
an assumption that I, as a reporter,
could not concede at the time . I had
to work with the facts . But , after all
th investigating , I think I found
Charlie was right. Atari had
apparently been dealing in good faith
all along .)
But then what about Lee Peppard
and TGI? If the industry raises the
money , won 't this let him and his
company off the hook?
To which Charlie replied , "I'm
more interested in what's good for
this industry and what's good for the
players than I am in what's good o r
bad for Lee Peppard and TG I.
Personally, I think Lee Peppard and
TGI should be banned from partici-
pating in any of this stuff in the
future . I think they shouldn 't have
advertised something they didn 't
(Continued on page 17)
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The operator · distributor si nce 191 7
Philadelphia
Ba ltimore
Pill burgh
(215) 236-5000 (30 1) 944-5060 (412) 782-0800
PLAY METER, February 1, 1982
toll free . PA
800-822-3788
15