White Elephant Memory

This one is a little late.  I actually had started it right after White Elephant Day (WED), but got sidetracked with a suggestion from AP, my rant on "Thicket on the Ticket," and the STDs from numerous Confessors.  Thanks again, can't tell you how much I appreciate it when people comment.  (It also steers me toward topics of interest to The Confessor Nation.)  The different impressions people have of the different hosts is fascinating -- and explains why Cumulus/Ticket management doesn't tinker with host lineups.  Every host has his big fans, as well as detractors.  Dan, Junior, Corby, and Gordon are the main lightning rods, and I find  it particularly fascinating that Craig is in that group.  I'll have more to say on that in future blasts.

And another thanks again to all Confessors who reported on their impressions of WED.  Very entertaining.   In reading these comments, I had a thought that morphed into another thought that resonated with something that Mike R said on Thursday's showgram.

Which means that I'm about to get to the point. 

First, let me say that I'm a big WED fan and supporter.  I am certain that The Ticket does it because of its inherent popularity and the unpredictable fun and disaster that it promises.   So please accept my representation that this thought applies to, oh, somewhere on the order of five to eight percent of overall WED theory.

As I say, I got this theory in reading Confessor accounts of WED.   The thought that perhaps some of the guys we don't hear that often might not quite be ready for prime time.

And I thought -- you know, Ticket management knows this, too.

And then I thought -- maybe, just maybe, there is a tiny segment of the collective intelligence of Ticket management that says to itself:  We get a lot of static from the P1 about this host and that host and this program or that program.  Well, let's see how they like it when we turn the whole day into amateur night.

Just the slightest flash of the old middle finger to the P1.

I thought, nah.

Then, as I was driving back from DFW on Thursday, the day after WED, I was listening to The Hardline.
 
Mike R was talking about the Cliff Lee derby.  He was talking about the Yankees and their ever-escalating offers to the guy.

Mike was very exercised on this topic.  He might have even used the "middle finger" image.  The Yankees do this all the time, he said, because they can.

Then he said -- I swear, you can look it up -- It's just like what we did yesterday.  We did it because we can.

Which I took to mean -- we can throw out pretty much anything, and get away with it.  Because we're The Ticket.  We're the Yankees of Dallas radio. 

That is not untrue.  I'm not saying that what Mike said was wrong, or disrespectful to the P1.  That was certainly not his intention.  I'm saying that there is a part of The Ticket that knows that WED represents, at its heart, sub-par broadcasting if it were offered every day.  By associating these two things, I think his thought was something like -- Just like the Yankees' overbidding on OK baseball talent isn't good for baseball, our throwing out utterly random showgram lineups results in something you don't want to hear everyday.

Yeah yeah yeah, I'm overanalyzing a few Mike R syllables.  But I thought it was a telling moment.

But only about 5-8% telling.  Maybe not the middle finger, maybe just the pinkie.  And just for a moment.