Southern Company movie Big Bets at the Fox in Atlanta this afternoon

If you happen to be in Atlanta, there's a movie premiere this afternoon! Southern Company has made a movie out of its corporate biography, Big Bets, and is showing it today.

1:30 PM 16 July 2012
The Fox Theatre Atlanta
660 Peachtree Street NE
Atlanta, Georgia 30308

Oh, sorry, SO didn't send you a ticket? Well, I hear there will be people standing outside with signs starting around 1:30 PM. Maybe you'd like to join them. And if you're not in Atlanta, maybe you'd like to do something where you are.

Here's a preview of the movie, starring FDR: as the villain!

This appears to be the entire book online as a PDF. It starts in on FDR on page 100:

FDR had become known in utility circles as a “dangerous man” for advocating state ownership of power projects and denouncing the “sins of wildcat public-utility operators” and the “Insull monstrosity” with insinuations that all utilities were guilty of betraying the public's trust. He also proclaimed the rights of any community unhappy with its service to take over private utility operations and develop their own power sites—a “birch rod in the cupboard” to be used when good service was not provided by private companies.

Imagine that, generating your own community power! Imagine it, but you can't do it. Southern Company and Georgia Power fixed that in the 1973 Georgia Territorial Electric Service Act.

What you won't see in the movie or read about in the book, Big Bets, is much about the bet-the-farm risk of nuclear power (bond-rater Moody's phrase), or how much water nuclear uses, or the profit opportunity of renewable energy such as solar and wind power. You can see some shareholders ask SO CEO Thomas A. Fanning about some of those things in these videos from the shareholder meeting back in May. If you run into him at the movie premiere, maybe you can check in with him on whether any of his answers have evolved, for example, does he still think SO won't get to solar or wind power this decade? Or maybe you’d like to ask Southern Company some questions online.

-jsq