EXCLUSIVE: What Does the Cat Say?

You're about to find out.

Jeff Catlin – aka "Cat," aka "Catman of the Americas" – is the Program Director of The Ticket and Operations Manager of Cumulus Media Dallas.   

Cat has reached out to My Ticket Confession and offered to participate in an exclusive session on this site on Tuesday, May 12 in which he will answer Confessors' questions about The Ticket.  I'll get to the details in a moment.

Let me start out with a little ass-kissing.  First, Cat contacted me to suggest this.  That was nice.  Second, he had in mind a kind of classic "ask me anything" (AMA) of the sort to which notable persons like T.C. Fleming subject themselves from time to time.  Unfortunately, this platform (Blogger) does not support any plug-in that I could find that would allow real-time Q&A.  When I advised him of this and suggested that, much as I would hate to lose the scoop, he might want to contact other web-savvy P1s to host a traditional AMA.  No, he said, I started down the road with you so let's figure out a way to do it on MTC.  That was really nice.

This should be interesting.  It's a fair bet Cat has a few things he wants to get off his mind.  In his initial communication to me, he wrote:  "Making a swim through there [MTC] this morning and GOOD GOOD are our sweet clean lovable P1s misguided! And the anonymous random predictions of an earth-shaking change coming…..including me leaving?  Well I think maybe it would be helpful to add something of real substance to the narrative on the record."

And earlier today, after we agreed on how we would receive questions and how he would respond, he wrote:  "I am looking forward to doing this so I hope they bring the heat."

Anyone may ask a question (using the procedure below).  Who knows, perhaps some curious Ticket employees will submit some interrogatories.  Maybe Barry Horn or Richie Whitt or Brett Blankenship or Latarian Milton will sneak one through.  But I'm hoping that the best questions will come from you, the faithful Confessor.

There will be no limitation on subject matter, except as qualified below (that is, I'm picking and editing the questions).  In fact, Cat specifically advised me that he was prepared to answer questions about T.C., among the hottest of hot-button topics, so you can bet that very little will be off limits.

OK, look:  I know this site is not exactly advanced.  It reflects exactly my capital investment in it, zero dollars.  So when you see how this is going to go – after Cat and I kicked around the pros and cons of a number of alternatives – don't gimme a bunch of crap.  It's going to be a little clumsy, with the possibility of error and screwups.  It won't be real-time.  But here's how it is going to – supposed to – work:

(1)  Sometime on Sunday afternoon, May 10, I will put up a post that will announce the start of the submission of questions.  Questions may be submitted as comments to that post or emails to theplainsman1310@gmail.com.   As are comments now, they will come to me for review.  

(2)  Questions will be accepted through 5 p.m. on Monday, May 11.

(3)  I will review all of the questions.  (We'll get to question format in a moment.)  I will select the questions, attempting to ensure coverage of all topics of interest, and I am quite likely to add some of my own.

(4)  Questions will be posted in a new post on Monday night – probably fairly late. 

(5)  On Tuesday morning – or, frankly, at any time Tuesday of his choosing – Cat will begin answering the questions in the comment section of that post.  He will have a lot of latitude on how to handle the questions.  He may write several long comments, or address specific questions in separate comments.  (The questions will be identified by number, and, I hope, the name of the Confessor asking the question.)  No other comments to the Tuesday post will be published at any time.  Only Cat and, as you will see below, maybe me.

(6)  Cat may choose which questions to answer.  He is not required to answer all of the questions.  I will see his answers before they are published to ensure that no imposters attempt to impersonate him.

(7)  If I feel that a particular answer could use some clarification or begs for a followup, I will toss that in as a comment and he can respond if he wishes.

(8) We do not wish to wear the poor man out.  I will be monitoring this on Tuesday and we'll go as long as Cat is comfortable doing so.  He and I will be in touch on that. 

There may be refinements or even material changes in this, but as of now, this is the  plan.

OK, how about your questions?

You all know me.  I want to make sure our guest is treated with respect.  On the other hand, he has asked you to "bring it," so a certain degree of Tickety passion will be tolerated.  It is my preference to publish questions without any changes, but if things get too angry or vulgar, the questions will either get bounced or edited.  There will be many duplicate questions, so I will pick and choose among them, and may combine some, so that we have room for coverage of all topics of interest to the Confessor.  And I'm certain I'll be tossing in a few of my own.

You may preface your question with context and commentary.  Please keep your entire submission as brief as possible.  

Confessors, this is the chance you've been asking for.  Cat has been brave (foolhardy?) enough to subject himself to what I expect will be some very pointed examination on this site and offer answers that the public -- including his colleagues and supervisors -- can see.    

Make it count, and keep it classy.

I promised I'd get this up by 9 PM.  I'll have more to say about this over the next few days before the question window opens sometime on Sunday.

Be thinking of good questions, and good ways to ask them.   You know I'm not going to post 20 T.C. questions, so don't neglect BaD, Norm, JV, Cumulus, Weekends, Tickermen, The Future, and all the rest.

Until we open the window for questions, let's get some good Campound comments, what say?