IT MIGHT PAY TO BE A MICROSOFTY OR GOOGLILIAN.

Byline: Stephanie Becker Local View

IT'S like product placement on steroids.

Last month two of the tiniest hamlets in America traded in their names for cash and prizes. With populations smaller than your average off-peak subway car, both voted to surrender the hometown moniker for the name of a commercial enterprise. The signs of the times: Dish, Texas, and SecretSanta.com, Idaho, which used to be Clark, Texas, and Santa, Idaho.

The folks in Clark switched to Dish in exchange for 60 channels of glorious TV for 10 years from the DISH satellite network. For $500,000, DISH is giving a decade of service to all 125 Dishians. Or are they Dishites? Or Dishies? It's a good thing that Dish is too small for a school. Otherwise, we'd be cheering on the Wild Wedgewoods or the Mighty Mikasas or the Fighting Fiestawares.

Not everyone in Dish is happy. The biggest Dish panner is Landis Clark. He founded the town five years ago, and in the grand tradition of yore named it for himself. Just as King George named Georgia, and the Hudson River was tagged for the guy who first polluted it. And maybe Avon, Conn., was named for whoever discovered the first long-lasting lip gloss.

In the last hotly contested election in Clark/Dish, then-Mayor Clark lost by a single vote. Coincidently, he subscribed to DirecTV.

The current mayor, Bill Merritt, seems happy to pull the plug on both Clarks. He says it has nothing to do with political payback. I guess then it's all about uninterrupted reruns of ``Law and Order'' and the round-the- clock Entertainment channel, which focuses on the most important of all dish - what's up with Angelina and Brad.

Days after the Dish exchange, the only elected officials in Santa, Idaho - population 100 - voted to sandwich in their name for one year to become SecretSanta.com, Idaho. The five water commissioners figured the $20,000 would come in handy for a bone-dry budget. The company also promises a slice of the profits of a documentary being made about the new name. Let's hope the film does a lot better than ``Waterworld.''

The guy who persuaded Santa to become a dot-community did the same to the folks in Halfway, Ore. For 20 computers and a small wad of cash, their town became Half.com, Ore., for a year. But when eBay ponied up $300 million for Half.com - the Web site, not the town - the town didn't even get half of that half. Maybe because it's nowhere near an eBay. Halfway's landlocked.

Before Halfway came Ismay, Montana. It became Joe, Montana, in 1993 when a radio station offered to send the teeming town of 26 to see quarterback Joe Montana play. The Joeians sat in the bleachers, but scored about $75,000 in T-shirt sales before returning to the name made not so famous by the Earling sisters, Isabel and May.

Daddy Earling owned a railroad and named the town the old-fashioned way: He just ran a railroad through it.

No one railroaded the granddaddy of the ``now a town from our sponsor'' frenzy: Truth or Consequences, N.M. Its residents happily vaporized ``Hot Springs'' 50 years ago as a stunt for the game show produced by Ralph Edwards. Coincidently or not, Edwards died on the day Clark voted to switch to Dish. It's a good thing the residents didn't go for one of the flops Edwards produced, or they'd be living somberly in Funny Boners, N.M.

Now it's time for California to cash in on this latest marketing trend and eliminate the state's gargantuan deficit by selling off its name. How about calling the state Microsoft.com? Bill Gates can spare a couple of billion. Or how about Google? Who wouldn't want to say they're a Googlilian? It could come with the inquisitive state motto: ``Google - search us.'' How about turning to Apple's most successful product line? We could all be iPod people.

Personally I vote for the folks at Banana Republic. Although being any kind of Republican in this state might make a lot of people blue, cheer up! It would be a Banana Republic. Considering the current state of California politics, we really don't have far to go.