8:14 a.m. -- Listening to The Hardline yesterday,
and how sad and defeated Mike sounded, I did wonder, along with a commentor from late yesterday, whether he might be thinking about hanging it up. He signed a new contract late last year, but of all the hosts, he is probably the most financially able to quit The Ticket. He lives pretty frugally, he probably banked a fairish amount from the original sale of The Ticket way back when, and he has probably cashed in pretty well on his last several contracts, if not the earlier ones.
In addition, the symbolic effect of his departure would be enormous
. It is the one act I can think of, other than a sponsor boycott (which ain't gonna happen as long as the ratings remain strong and no host slanders an influential special interest group), that might actually shake up Cumulus management. More on this at a later date.
8:35 a.m. -- What's the latest on the Dr. Sanjay Gupta infestation?
8:35 a.m. -- While we're ragging on behind-the-scenes stuff, what accounts for the continuing confusion on some of the live spots? (Actually, it's entertaining, I'm not sure I want the confusion to stop, but if I were a paying sponsor I might be concerned.) The latest victim was this morning's "Belle Vida" (sp?? I have no idea what George and Gordon were trying to say; on the Philco, I first heard it as "Velveeta") spot.
8:40 a.m. -- Are things as bad at The Ticket as we are making out? They are pretty bad, we know this from the high-risk on-air and Twitter stuff that has gone out lately, but let's be fair: The station is broadcasting. The shows are still better than the competition.
But here's a question I have been pondering: Is this site making it worse, providing, for better or worse, a place for the P1 to gather and gripe? I guess there's the Radio-Info board and grubesismyleader, so maybe not. And I guess there's a public-service aspect with information swapping on stream issues.
So I have decided not to be too hard on myself.
By the way -- what's the latest on the stream?
8:50 a.m. -- Had an awful thought. What if DP and AP and The UnTicket's vast staff can't solve the recording problem caused by IHeart?
Funny, at one point this morning (I think at the end of Scattershooting?), Jer played a "I'm Dr Sanjay Gupta" drop and sort of half under his breath, I think it was Craig who said something like "die" or something disparaging like that.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I'm not sure what Mike R's financial situation would look like post divorce. I'm sure it was not kind to his *bottom* (line).
ReplyDeleteThe stream has worked for me all morning on TuneIn. And yesterday there was a comment made about suspension in some sort of sports discussion and Danny said maybe he'll get a three day suspension, but then Mike said No, he didn't use social media. I took it as a reference to Jake being gone but who knows. If that's true then Jake should be back Monday.
ReplyDeleteJake is definitely suspended. He referenced it (VERY briefly) on the latest IJB.
ReplyDeleteThat just makes you hate Cat that much more.
ReplyDelete*Sigh* this just gives me diarrhea. How can these people not be ashamed of the product that they're putting out there? A very Tom Hicks-ish type of operation it seems like.
ReplyDeleteThe Cumulus player on the website has been saying The Ticket Service-Is temporarily Unavailable all day. That's something that's new today. Still not on iHeart yet. Plainsman YGM.
ReplyDeleteOdd Twitter conversation involving Mike McVay, Cumulus dude:
ReplyDelete@RealSportsRant
@MikeMcVay it's competition & is consistently in the running for a Marconi, it seems they fall victim to cost cutting measures quite often.
30 May Mike McVay @MikeMcVay
@RealSportsRant Thank you. Engineers are on the case. I appreciate your feedback.
30 May Hunter Webb @TheHunterWebb
@MikeMcVay Hope the measages were positive.The Ticket means a lot 2 many & we want 2 see it have the best opportunity 2 continue 2 succeed
23h Mike McVay @MikeMcVay
@TheHunterWebb Everyone's message was heard. My friend @brucegilbert heard it, too. :-)
11:58 AM - 31 May 12 via Twitter for iPad · Details
16h Dustin Bryant @Dustinwb
@MikeMcVay @thehunterwebb @brucegilbert why does it matter if he has heard it he is at the competitor?
Why did he evoke Bruce? He answer was dumb and I gladly told him that.
ReplyDeleteOut and out strangeness going on at The Little One and with the CTO. My hunch is that we're going to see at least one big host change pretty soon. I saw where Mike was mentioned on the previous thread. Prima facie he seems to be the most likely candidate. Miller Man comes to mind, as well. I worry that Danny might pull a light night buzz Tweet and find himself terminated. That would just be awful. The Hardline would be unbearable with no buffer between Corby and his ego propelled mouth.
ReplyDeleteIs it possible that since we all love listening to the station, and get wrapped up in it, that we have romanticized working there? Doesn't every job have good days and bad days, good stretches and bad stretches? And lets not forget, the hosts do a good job at pitting themselves, and therefore us, against "the man." Now, they are no longer the "little" Ticket as they are continuously win the big ratings battle, they need to find something else "bigger" to pit themselves against? That is not to lessen the issues, and streaming issues a big one for me as I listen in MI, but are they really that bad? Or do we need the drama to keep us fully engaged, and so they feed that need?
ReplyDeleteThis site has become a gathering of alarmists. You people are worse than church ladies going on and on about the rapture.
ReplyDeleteChill out a little.
Sure, Anon @ 3:52, we're just making it all up. No suspensions handed out here. No Twitter black out, deleted Tweets, and on-air apologies and jabs here either. Nope. Nothing to see but us Chicken Littles.
ReplyDeleteRight. Open up your eyes and unclog your ears, sir or madame.
Seriously, this blog has turned into a group of grassy knoll trolls. Get over yourselves. The hosts and board ops get paid well at the Little One and most have families to feed. Why the hell would they leave a ratings crusher like the Ticket for ANYTHING else? Do you ding dongs really envision them walking into Cat's office and saying, "Hey this TV stand isn't hooked up, and my mic doesn't have a spit guard, and this drop I really liked is gone, so F U BRODEO IM GOING TO THE FAN!" Bottom line, these guys make a good living in a tough entertainment medium, and they have done so for 18 years. Jumping ship to a spare station for equal or lesser pay seems highly unlikely.
ReplyDeletePlainsman, sensationalism is fun, and yes eventually you will be right if you predict daily that someone will leave the ticket, but get back to blogging about meaningful Ticket related things.
I'm pretty sure board ops are decidedly NOT well paid by any measure.
ReplyDeleteBoard ops are NOT paid well at all, why do you think Grubes left to pursue other avenues? The hosts of the major shows are the only guys pulling in the major money, everyone else would be lucky to hit 40k a year.
ReplyDeleteGrubes hself admitted he made 25k a year.
ReplyDeleteHey George'sDirty... If you're gonna come on here and keep posting the same comment over and over, at least pick one name, be it anonymous or other, and stick with it. Moreover, if you're gonna make the same point over and again, at least make it cogently. The overwhelming majority of the board ops do not have families to support, they're young-ish single or have a girlfriend males. They are not paid that well. And your scenario of going to Cat is not only ridiculous, it's never once been put forth on this site by either Plainsman or a commenter. Finally, if you don't think the quality of signal and stream and working environment and morale isn't an important topic to cover, then I'm going to say that YOU are the troll looking to cause trouble. Come to think of it, I'm starting to wonder if you're the infamous grumpy anon/Ticket Employee/etc., etc., named who shows his/her sorry butt for God only knows what reason from time to time around here. Yuck.
ReplyDeleteYou're entitled to your opinion, for sure. You might even be proved right (i.e., that all of this is a minor, passing thing), but for the love of all things Ticket, get your s together... in all three facets of the game (representation of yourself, coherent thought, and understanding the aim of this blog).
P2 in MI: Interesting thoughts. I'm not sure if I agree. They've been the top ratings dog for many years now. This situation is pretty unique: it's gone on a long time now without any resolution in sight; it's clearly affected the hosts' and underlings' attitude both on and off air; there have been punitive measures handed out; upper management, if not owner, mandated cease and desists regarding Twitter and direct on air shots; and this isn't the whole of it. So I'd say that we're seeing something pretty significant going on. Now who knows, if these issues are fixed and everything is patched up between employer and employee, we might see the station stronger than ever. I think we've all been a part of work places where such things have happened. Then again we might be seeing the dismantling of a ground breaking radio station. Make no mistake about it, The Ticket is ground breaking; it is the paradigm and the standard setter of what "Guy Talk" is, and how successful it can be. No one else has even come close to duplicating it; hence "We can do what they can do but they can't do what we can." Truer words have never been spoken.
ReplyDeleteTo George's dirty underpants... agreed, besides the board-op thing. But you can't say that dooms-day craziness aint fun.
ReplyDeleteLets cool down a little boys.... the shows are still on the air and the ratings are still 2x (3x?) any other station out there. Lets just sit back and see what happens. Till then, anyone heard of a Grubes cameo in the cup-cake eating contest at Summa Bash?
ReplyDeleteI'd like to respectfully echo comments from others, Plainsman. This blog and the comments sections for each post have become Doomsday Central, full of nothing but "the end is near" predictions that haven't come true. It's really taking away a lot of the joy of reading/posting here and interacting with other P1s. I know it's likely doing wonders for your traffic, but not for the enjoyment of the site IMHO.
ReplyDelete"I know it's likely doing wonders for your traffic, but not for the enjoyment of the site IMHO."
ReplyDeleteIt's all about you, Normal, isn't it. Kidding. I see you what you're saying to an extent. Though I don't understand why guys like you can't see how nasty things have gotten at the station? They have. We hear about it on-air and read about it (well, we did on Twitter until the CTO kybosh) daily. It's not imagined or being blown out of proportioned. I agree with you about the comments like the one that speculates Rhyner might step away come Monday. Ditto with Plainsman's echoing of the comment. But overall it does seem like what's going down at The Little One is serious and could get more serious.
Grubes is no longer at the station. I thought he moved on to do other things with his life. At what point is the move completed? At what point do we stop with the Grubes Report? At what point does he let go of The Ticket and vice-versa? He was greatness. But he's gone. I for one no longer care about his every Tweet and Knoxie appearance, or if he's going to show up at Summer Bash. Let's give Jake (if he ever returns) our full attention.
EVERY TIME A P1 PREDICTS MIKES DEPARTURE A DONKEY IN COLLEGE STATION IS SODOMIZED STOP
ReplyDelete@5:35p Anon: Haha, I didn't mean to sound like this blog has to cater to my personal whims. Just sharing my opinion :)
ReplyDeleteOf course it's very easy to see that not everything is hunky-dory at The Ticket. As I've said a couple of times before, I worked for ten years at a TV station that constantly (i.e. every day) had major, major technical problems that affected our on-air product. It sucks. It wears on you. You hate your job for a while. You hate engineers and spend chunks of your day complaining about them. But eventually the problems get worked out (in some fashion) and life moves on. It's the nature of the broadcasting beast.
Is it possible someone ends up leaving over these issues? I would assume anything is possible. But obsessing over those doomsday scenarios and pretending like we're all behind-the-scenes experts of what's going on there seems like a bit of a waste of time, IMHO. That may just be me though, since others have already mentioned what a kick they get out of predicting the end of The Ticket as we know it.
Ausgang makes the point I was going to make. For a site dedicated to all things Ticket, the events of the last few months, weeks, and days have been pretty extraordianry. We're going to talk about them.
ReplyDeleteAnd for what it's worth, I haven't come close to predicting the end of The Ticket. If you go back and read the beginning of "Apocalypse Sometime," the article that got this string started, I said that by "end" I meant The Ticket as we have known it. Not the departure of any particular host, and certainly not the wholesale defection or poaching of any batch of hosts. But a definite shift in the ethos, a denaturing of the product, and, to be perfectly honest with you (as Corby would say), we're hearing it a lot sooner than I expected.
And while I can't say I am not enjoying any show as much as I always have, there's something missing (other than Michael G). I don't know what it is -- maybe the sense that at any given time a show can explode into amazing mischief. And if it's missing for a normal jamoke who listens to the station, I'm guessing it's missing for the hosts as well. It can't be fun to be broadcasting scared, and to be told that your former relationship of candor with the P1 has come to an end. Not saying Cumulus doesn't have the right to enforce confidentiality and nondisparagement -- just saying it's a change, and it's a change we can hear.
So those who accuse this site and certain Confessors of doomsaying -- in the words of the immortal Craig Rosengarden, I think you're wrong.
One thing I have noticed about the stream today is that, other than it has not stuttered ONCE all day, is this: I keep a bandwidth graph type monitor running all the time because my internet service sucks. On this graph I see the activity on the connection and until yesterday instead of the stream coming in "chunks" it's a steady clean and constant 16k. Never seen that before on the ticket stream.
ReplyDeleteIt is noticeably better. Still not live on Iheart as of this post.
Lovin' the exchanges today. Intriguing
Cheers
@Plainsman: Repeatedly predicting hosts are going to quit, even predicting down to the day that's supposedly going to happen, isn't doomsaying? I guess we'll have to agree to disagree, because that's the definition of doomsaying in my book.
ReplyDeleteIt's your blog, I'm merely a guest. But you raised the topic yourself. Don't jump on people who happen to agree with it.
Hey Cap'n, your stop the presses wire/telegraph schtick during last Friday's meltdown was truly funny. Now, not so much. It's time, buddy. It's time.
ReplyDeleteAusgang - understood, my only thought was if we make a bigger deal about it all than it deserves. There are always growing pains in transition, though I readily admit these have been of the catastrophic nature.
ReplyDeleteOn a side note, I was listening online in my office and could have sworn Mike and Corby talking how great it will be to get new owners. What was that about? I wasn't listen too intently.
ROGER THAT WILL RETURN UPON TICKET EMERGENCY STOP
ReplyDeleteP2 in MI. I heard Mike today say to the effect that he was thinking about buying a new radio station. I didn't make much of it...until your post. Was I the only one that caught that?
ReplyDeleteBrig - I didn't hear that part, but I was not by the channel for much of the Hardline since I have not figured our a good app to listen on 3g. Only can get the mobile app to work on wi-fi.
ReplyDeleteEchoing P1bdogETX's observation - June 1st's ticket stream appears to be delivered fine. I wonder if the encoding stutter still happens during the Hardline Pool Party though.
ReplyDeleteAt thought for you 3G'ers - have you tried pointing your "weather machines" (as Norm calls them) directly to the following link?
mms://live.cumulusstreaming.com/KTCK-AM
Mi: it was during the 1st 2 minutes of WTDS. Working my way through the HL. Missed the pool party today.
ReplyDeleteDon't know about the iPhone but Androids won't do Silverlight.
Just for S's & Giggles been for the last 10 minutes i've been trying to point my EVO to that URL and it just kicks it back to the site you were on.
ReplyDeleteNo pool party today. It was taken up by DJ Afrojack pranks.
I didn't know Paris Hilton broke up with Fat joe:)
While their is another listener/poster in MetroDetroit, I have lived there too. Now I live in the Bay Area and I am a listener when I can in SF (before Jake was visiting).
ReplyDeleteDFW/Ticket Guys, Cumulus has tried to cut salaries within every city, regardless of size and ad sales. Sports station case in point is KNBR, which has more revenue via teams (Giants and 49ers on the main AM and FM channels and Warriors/Stanford on the lesser channels), but they still told fired the afternoon drive host after 24 years when he apparently took a 25% pay cut last year.
http://staatalent.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=4416
What happened to Ralph could occur to Norm and the ad sales from Bob's will go away as the ads from Amici's Pizza went away from KNBR in the last two months.
Jake and TC acknowledge that their current positions and more than what they would earn in any other market (it could be more if they were union). Do not mess your employer at this stage.
Damien: You've backed up what I've been saying for the last few days. A line has been drawn: you're either a Cumulus yes man or you are not. Make your choice. I have a feeling some or at least one or two of the hosts will take the latter path.
ReplyDeleteI heard Mike's comment about buying a new station but I took that to be just a little Old Grey Wolf sarcasm.
ReplyDeleteHaving said that, I have wondered if Mike had the energy or desire to start all over again - if it came to that.
Anon 5:35...I certainly think Jake deserves every bit of attention I got because he's greatness AND my friend, but I don't see why I can't still have fun, too. I'm still "only" 26. If people still enjoy my silly Rangers tweets or if I'm at a Rangers game and Knoxie asks me to go on with him, why should I stop? Am I really out there that much? You don't have to read my tweets, and the only other times I've been in the public eye is the one time I was on with Knoxie and posting on this blog.
ReplyDeleteSo...I guess if you were looking to draw me offsides, you did a great job. :)
Grubes: I was neither trying to draw you offsides nor put you down for having fun. I was replying to a comment that basically crapped on this blog and its commenters and then added that you were making a guest appearance at Summer Bash. The point of my comment, again, was not to inflict a wound, but rather to state, well, sort of the obvious: you're no longer at the station; you left on your own accord to do other things; yet the station talks about you as if you were still there (a la Greggo, though with you it's a tribute not a trashing), and likewise, you seem to have been non stop Ticket this and that via Twitter, this site, and I guess even making a station appearance. The point about Knoxie stuff wasn't aimed at you, it was at those who seem to think that your still with the station. In other words: "Grubes has his life to live, let him live it. I doubt he wants everything he does discussed or reported on." And conversely, I do wonder if it's been harder for you to let go of everything than you thought. From afar it seems so. But that's your business, and I give you my word that I won't be speculating about such things on this or any forum again.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I wasn't trying to ferret you out, and I apologize if what I wrote came off as an attack of sorts. It wasn't. Stay Hard.
No worries! It's definitely been hard to "let go"...but I knew it would be. Tomorrow would have been my tenth anniversary at the station, and I wish I was still there, but I had to get my degree if I wanted any chance to advance, whether at the Ticket or elsewhere. It was the best job ever, but there was nothing else for me to do up there as a college dropout. I don't know if I'll come back to the station or not, but I certainly hope that door is still open when I graduate.
ReplyDeleteAnd that's why I've decided to stop bagging on Cumulus. It does me no good to fight that fight. I'm gone, and while I hate what the guys are going through, it's not my battle anymore...but then again, it was never my battle in the first place. There were definitely some frustrations that I felt like I needed to vent, but looking back on it, all it did was make me look bitter. And being bitter is definitely not something I want.
So it's been a weird time...every single day, I miss the station. I don't know if I'll ever stop missing it. It truly was my dream job. And it's cool that the guys still mention me in a positive light. I had no idea how my departure would be handled once I actually left. Thankfully I'm still friends with everyone and they give me "a little kiss" from time to time, as Shoopy would say. The Ticket was my life for the last decade, and it is so ingrained in me that I don't think I'll ever stop "speaking the lingo" or just thinking in terms of drops.
So, thanks for being civil, and thanks for letting me say my piece. Stay hard!
TeeBox had three remote hiccups today where they broadcast a CD-skipping stutter and cut out.
ReplyDeleteWhy do the Sirois brothers, who are in their, I believe, mid 30s, speak like and talk about things as if they were 16? It's awkward to listen to. They don't always do this. I've heard some really good interviews they've done. Solid stuff. But it seems like if there's not a serious sports or life topic at hand for them to sink their teeth into, they resort to my first point. Frankly, that's when the ADD Circus (or Cirque) kicks in. The end of today's show (3 stars of the show award or whatever they call it) was so pinball-ish that I had
ReplyDeleteto turn it off before it ended. I know it's difficult for them to differentiate their voices as they are brothers, but when they start talking over each other and finishing each others thoughts, it really becomes bad (not BaD) radio.
CDS is one good producer away from being great. But they need someone less worried about being their best friend and more worried about keeping the show moving forward.
ReplyDelete