AP's Excellent Adventure with JJT

We are all indebted to The (Incomparable) UnTicket, and this site is particularly indebted to one of its mainstays, the no-less-incomparable-for-being-a-natural-person AP.  He is a Confessor of long standing and frequent commenter, providing great information and opinion with a nice light touch.

Best, he has given this site permission to pass along his informative and entertaining account of the conclusion of Jean-Jacques Taylor's affiliation with The Ticket, as well as his own interaction with the redoubtable JJT and some JJT fans.  He also offers some tasteful commentary on the whole megillah.

My gratutide to AP for this contribution to My Ticket Confession.  It follows:

=====

Here's my understanding of events.  Sometime a few months ago (Christmas?), as part of the DMN [Dallas Morning News] partnership with the ticket, JJT became an on-air presence.  I think it started as a fill-in gig with a regular ticket host (Donny? Rich? I can't remember) that only lasted a few shows.

That then turned into a regular weekend gig with one Scot Harrison, who seems to be an acquaintance of the morning Musers.  I caught the first few shows, but thought it was rather light on comedic content so I only tuned in for the CDS [Cirque du Sirois] mix.  I believe it was around this time that you wrote an article about not being able to hear his voice clearly, Plainsman.

Another drydock opportunity presented itself when Norm went fishing, and I recall that Cirque du Sirois was originally announced as the fill-in show.  Being a CDS footsoldier, I was looking forward to it...but at the last minute, the Soul Patch was inserted.  I remember being quite upset with the programming decision, and I also remember wondering if JJT had "pulled rank" and asked for his show to fill in over CDS.  I think my rationale was that (A) Norm had mentioned CDS was going to fill in before he’d left on vacation, and a few promos may have run indicating this and (B) I tweeted Cash & Mike asking what had happened and I think they suggested I ping Cat [Ticket Program Director Jeff Catlin], which I did.  Around this time, I started wondering if JJT may have been angling for a career in radio.  [NOTE TO AP:  DID YOU EVER HEAR FROM CAT?]

JJT and Scot’s show (which was eventually named The Soul Patch) became a fixture in Elf’s old slot, and I started following JJT on Twitter as he’d now become part of the Ticket family.   I also started listening to their show on a more regular basis.  I noticed that JJT seemed to be using his Twitter account to promote his show by re-tweeting positive comments (and the occasional negative one as well).  I also noticed that JJT was a bit touchy over Twitter as well, as he’d call out his critics by writing things like “If you have less than 20 followers and 100 tweets, I’m not trying to hear what you’re saying” and then following up with “If you think I’m talking about you, then I am, if you don’t, then I’m not” (heavily, heavily paraphrased).

Another drydock took place a month ago, giving the Soul Patch another chance to fill in for Norm’s show for a week.  JJT went into Twitter overdrive, retweeting what seemed to be every show-related comment he would receive.  This is when I became convinced that JJT was trying to prove to someone that he was capable of attracting and growing an audience.  Some of his tweets were sports-related, and a few offered the level of insight he’d provide in his columns or on Norm’s show, but overall, I found the signal-to-noise ratio to be very low.  It’s tough to deliver content, context and/or comedy in 140 characters, but a few sports reporters do tend to pull it off.

On July 4th, the Hardline was doing what had to be the drunkest show they’ve ever done.  Corby had been working on his Scot Harrison imitation over the last few days, and he was mimicking a Soul Patch promo.  After Corby was done, he said something to the effect of “By the way, has he left yet?  Has that been announced? Are we allowed to talk about that yet?  He’s not? Oh.”  Two weeks later, JJT moves over to Sports Walmart (thanks Mike Marshall).

For kicks, I tweeted aloud the following a week after JJT had left:

Now that @JacquesTaylor has left the KTCK family for the dark side, I'm not sure why I (as a P1) should continue following him. Comments?

One of the first few responses came from Jacques himself:
why don't do u do what u want to do instead of asking for advice#toughdecisions

A few P1’s took up the KTCK pitchfork and said they’d never listen to him because of his ESPN affiliations.  A few more seemed to take issue to my comment, notably:

TacoRobber  @ap_cdn @JacquesTaylor if a radio call sign is all it takes to stand between u and the best/rawest coverage in metroplex then I say unfollow
DocBrownsToilet:  @JacquesTaylor I enjoy the attitude you have toward those who would lob twitter grenades at ESPN. Such serious business.

(Note that I don’t have any issue with either of those people, and I tried my best to follow up with them, including JJT...I try not to be a standoffish tweeter!)

I still follow JJT (much like I follow Bryan Broaddus, Todd Archer, Mickey Spagnola and other non-ticket affiliates) for their Cowboy observations.  I still wish that JJT’s twitter signal-to-noise ratio would improve, though.

Norm eventually touched on the subject on air a week after JJT had left.  Apparently, Jacques had taken a month-long vacation from the DMN before he quit to go to ESPN.  His last drydock appearance on the Ticket took place during this time, well after drive-time hosts knew about his imminent departure.
This follows the trend of guys like Calvin Watkins, Tim McMahon and Todd Archer of veteran DFW sports reporters jumping off of sinking print-media ships to go to ESPN. 

The Soul Patch carries on with Scot Harrison and Byron Anderson, and a few loyal Soul Patch P1’s still listen as regularly as they did with JJT.  Goose Gosselin now takes JJT’s place as the opinion writer for the DMN.  I don’t know if Jacques will take an on-air role with ESPN; I haven’t seen anything to that effect yet.  He still seems to listen to the Soul Patch and from what I see on twitter, still maintains amicable relationships with Roy White (producer) and his former co-host Scot.

===================

Again, my thanks to AP.  

*     *     *

Follow Your Plainsman on Twitter:  @Plainsman1310