A home for those who love almost everything about The Ticket (1310 AM, 96.7 FM, Dallas-Fort Worth), and who would like to discuss -- respectfully and fondly -- their thoughts on how (and whether) to eliminate the "almost."
I've been maintaining this site since June 30, 2009.
Several other Ticket blogs – "blogs," sounds quaint, doesn't it, much like this scruddy Blogger platform – have come and gone in the meantime. A couple were promising, but they couldn't sustain. Many of you will recall a time when I wrote substantive pieces with some regularity.
I don't want to shut 'er down, but lately, I've been thinking my life would be net-net better without it.
Longtime confessors have seen it. Used to be a fairly friendly place, civil, not too profane. Stupidity usually got a pass. Believe it or not, I almost never, ever, deleted a post.
The joint got a reputation for fairness, to the point where we'd hear from insiders once in a while, and once in a while, I'd get a tidbit. Cat did an AMA some years ago.
Now – well, you can see what it's become. I don't know where all these angry, compositionally-challenged people came from. Maybe they think they get more eyeballs, and eyeballs that count, here than on Reddit or elsewhere.
So hear this:
I'm thisclose to monitoring comments – reading them before they're released to the site. I don't want to do it. But I need to make a last stab at cleaning up this particular stable.
Pro tips:
-- Keep your tone civil.
-- No name-calling.
-- No impugning intelligence, age, level of education, or other personal attributes.
-- The occasional vulgarity will pass, but best to avoid it lest I find its use angry or otherwise inappropriate.
-- Give some thought to addressing anothers' comment by that commenter's name, rather than "you."
-- No scurrilous accusations or gossip about the principal actors.
-- Accusing commenters of being someone is not favored, although will not be automatically kicked. If you have some compelling reason for believing it, let's have it.
-- Would you like your mother to know you wrote it?
-- As always, go/no-go decisions are very subjective, and you may come up with some feature of a comment not listed here that will spark my ire. I'm not required to be consistent.
The flames won't have to rise much higher before I pull the trigger. So Let's Make MTC Great Again.
And to continue the conversation at the tail end of the last thread: I’ve been at the last 2 Catlin AMAs. I don’t think he ever refused to answer a q. I think both years he started by talking about how successful the station is, and gave credit to the P1’s for listening. A “we wouldn’t be here if yall weren’t there listening. So I think that played a roll in some of the q’s and his a’s. For example, there was a q 2 years ago about TDZ and norm, lost talent, and subpar replacements from out of town ( a Mcclarin shot obviously). Catlin’s response from what I remember was “yeah TDZ was talented, they decided to leave, was out of our control, you play the game with players that want to be on your team. He then pivoted to ratings, and how the station is almost always first in their target demo, that while some may complain about the new shows, they still manage to win in the ratings, etc. c
I’ve harped on this before, I think there’s a major disconnect (hey guys!) between the prevelant Reddit opinion and objective reality. I feel like Reddit is almost completely negative now, yet the station still dominates in ratings. So many “I’ve stopped listening” or only listen to the Musers, HL, WTDS, etc that you’d think theyre shedding listeners by the thousands. Maybe they are, but they’re also gaining enough replacement listeners that the net is equilibrium. To return to the theme, that’s why I don’t think Catlin gets fastballs at the AMAs. The hardcore haters don’t go, and when someone does try to zing him he’s responding from a position as king of the hill. The station had a historic run, not just first in their demo, but they spent something like 6 straight months as the overall top station in the market. All with a crap AM signal and a rimshot FM you can not pick up anywhere south of I-20. For all the complaints on reddit, it’s not reflected in how they’re judged in the radio world, the ratings. C
Ticket Reddit has always had an inflated sense of self-importance. That comes from any fandom. They think Cat should answer to them. They're so fanatical that they feel they have a say in how their entertainment should be formatted or catered to them and what they want to hear. Almost as if they're shareholders and not people who just either absorb the free entertainment they are given or move on to something else. You can not enjoy the Ticket's current form but harping on it for 2 years now is so tiresome. You can listen to all the people who chose to leave. It's not like they were fired. They chose to move on. Yet the harping and anger continues. It's like the people who kept clamouring for Greggo after he was gone. They claim to move on and don't listen yet daily posts indicate otherwise. Meanwhile, Sweet Spot and Matt are still at the station.
Good refresh, Pman. No need to fret. The entire thing was ginned up. Notice how they sll STFU'd? Nothing but a nothing burger cooked up by a reddit mod who sold access to an individual that was neither an employee nor affiliated with The Ticket. Won't go further into details other than to say anything Cat or Peter Welpton related is one hundo invented. If you wonder why all parties suddenly shut up on a dime, there is a reason.
Personal thought. I think Jake, TC, Danny, and Sirois need therapy. Truthfully, I wonder what if anything Jake learned in rehab actually took...or if he, like so many others, including myself... merely danced the jig to get back to regular scheduled programming. I sure did. Took me 3 times to get serious and face myself in the mirror. Maybe I'm wrong. But I'm not seeing it in Jake. Quite the opposite.
There is a concerted effort against this blog. Certain folks are spending a lot of time trying to have you shut it down. To keep it alive is to defy them. To shut it down would be to let them win.
Yeah there is a small group or one person that gets their kicks on making the place a mess. I think many of the back and forths are the same person replying to themselves. Its a strange way to go through life but I guess some people are just gigantic aholes, know they are aholes and reveal in their aholeness.
Poor, I had the same thought. Which is why I decided not to shut it down but give monitoring a try if things didn't improve. (So far, so good; I thought I'd be flooded with crap, but only one so far -- accused me of fellating a certain Ticket executive.)
Odd, though -- I entertain all viewpoints, unless they're too angry or stupid. I think Confessors know that I like Jake, Mike S, Danny B, and yes, even Dan M as broadcasters and I'm sorry they're not associated with The Ticket any longer. Don't blame them for leaving. Don't blame them for competing. Their post-departure strategies were not entirely thought through, but none seem to be starving.
I'm not biased against them or, in fact, their tales of mistreatment. So why any partisan on either side would want this site to go away -- what's the point?
I think for some who are fans of Dan, Jake, Danny, and Sirois, anything that is not a glowing review of what they do or being 100% on their side on all things post-Ticket is not allowed. So they attack the people who they don't feel are on the side of the people who left or the people who are fine with how the Ticket is now. They don't like the Ticket now and they want you to also not like it so it's impossible for them to understand the alternative POV. It's a weird shared misery that they try to create. Like I said before, they now have more content of the people they want to listen to and that's weirdly not enough. They want to Cat fired, the Sweet Spot removed, Monty elevated (I actually agree with that), and McClarin back to Alabama. Then their boys can all return and things will be happy once again.
Someone once said "People don't want to hear you're opinion, they want to hear their opinion come out of your mouth." Though I think that goes with both sides of the Expat discussion. There are people on both sides that want this to be a us or them situation. I am sure should we ever learn the truth from people actually involved we will discover that its a lot more complex than people want to make it.
The comment section of this blog was founded on the notion of commenting about current Ticket and Ticket-adjacent goings-on. There has been a history of negative comments about Jake, TC, Corby, Norm, et al. For some reason these “any critical posts about current ticket hosts must mean they are deranged DZ fans” people can’t tolerate criticism of the current product. Mino and Sean are nowhere near the quality of host/show that previously occupied their time slot. McClearin was brought in because he was cheap and a known quantity. Very low risk. Doesn’t mean he isn’t a supremely weird dude. He was known as a weird dude since his initial tales of alien abduction, driving to Pittsburgh to fuck someone he met online, and his penchant for dating teenagers as a 30 and now 40 year old. Nothing new there.
As a very unwise man once said…I guess I just don’t get it.
Agreed. To me, shutting down the site is giving in to the trolls. They want this place shutdown. But I am not plainsman, so I get it if he is tired of running it.
I think it’s far weirder that anytime people post positive thoughts about The Dumb Zone they are met without fail by the “they won” “they don’t care about you” “the steel toed boot is about to fall” “wait until the actual story comes out” guy that for some reason feels compelled to try to stamp out anything but glowing Ticket/Cat/Peter talk. Just watch. They can’t let this post go without responding.
Heo, you're perpetuating the issue with comments like this. Your bias is obvious. Snd you're no different than those who can't abide anyone who enjoys TDZ or TF (when it existed). You see anyone whose opinion differs from yours to be a boot licker, corporate shill, Cat butt buddy, whatever.
"2) I did not, do not, and will not have any access or involvement as it relates to the moderation of this r/.
The best context I have to share is: I was contacted, back in May, by the previous lead mod (someone I don’t know and is an anonymous account) who explained they were giving up the role, was concerned over the fate of the r/, and asked if I was interested in replacing them.
I declined.
Anything that happened after that is 100% on them to share, explain, etc.
I don’t have anything else to provide, except that I’m only including this here because I told the current mod (another person I do not know and who is anonymous), at their suggestion, that I would.
Otherwise, a new Premier League season is here, and I’m distracted by the idea of United money-whipping Brighton into selling Baleba. "
*End Statement*
If I'm Jake and Danny, I'm hanging my head in shame, reaching out to Peter, and apologizing to my audience. The venom, the sheer hatred they fomented against a part time employee is absolutely shameful.
The comments on are Reddit are unreal. It’s disturbing. I seriously don’t get it. The steel toe about to drop, the boys are killing in with the DZ stuff can be funny sometimes or mainly harmless, what’s going on with that Reddit post is disturbing. People seriously attacking Peter.
I got the same vibe. Annoyed but what might have come down on Reddit by Cat but the hate is awful. Like that Black Mirror Bee epsiode. Who can we hate today.
And that's the rub, Buddy. "Might." Except we will soon be 2 weeks into it and not a single shred, not even a whiff of evidence. Yet the hate is real. The whole thing frightens me in that it is grounded in a deep seated, seething anger.....coalesced around a group of minor local celebrities coupled with a refusal or inability to tolerate any deviating opinion. Jacobinism to a T. Except at least the Jacobins believed in the tangible, clearly defined ideas they fought and killed for. There's a puritanic aspect to all this that is blinkered, unsettling, and sadly, reflective of our society.
I’m convinced half the hatred toward Catlin is because he got rid of/didn’t retain talent that some people like. I could have seen Bewm in the house w Donovan and Sirois taking Norms place. Jake with a long run in middays before moving to mornings, etc.
I’ve been told by someone in a position to know that bennet and Catlin were surprised by Norms retirement. (Hint- afterwards they had to mollify upset norm endorsement clients-“I signed a year long contract to use Norm as an endorser, what do you mean he’s leaving?”.) I think if Catlin was Dr Strange and could have used the time stone to look into the future, maybe they retain Sirois. But Norm went out on top. Old but still getting great ratings. With Bennets history with norm do you think Catlin could have sold “I want to open you up to an age discrimination lawsuit and fire the 40 year veteran for the producer who’s never hosted a show by himself and has zero ratings history”.
I think you plan for the future- you give airtime to shows like Work in Progress to build your bench. But every current show has ratings success. Is anybody really suggesting replacing a successful show with an untried, unproven show? It’s like going into Bobs Steak house and getting rid of steaks and making it a seafood place. You’re successful with steaks, why change?
DON'T MAKE ME DO THIS
ReplyDeleteI've been maintaining this site since June 30, 2009.
Several other Ticket blogs – "blogs," sounds quaint, doesn't it, much like this scruddy Blogger platform – have come and gone in the meantime. A couple were promising, but they couldn't sustain. Many of you will recall a time when I wrote substantive pieces with some regularity.
I don't want to shut 'er down, but lately, I've been thinking my life would be net-net better without it.
Longtime confessors have seen it. Used to be a fairly friendly place, civil, not too profane. Stupidity usually got a pass. Believe it or not, I almost never, ever, deleted a post.
The joint got a reputation for fairness, to the point where we'd hear from insiders once in a while, and once in a while, I'd get a tidbit. Cat did an AMA some years ago.
Now – well, you can see what it's become. I don't know where all these angry, compositionally-challenged people came from. Maybe they think they get more eyeballs, and eyeballs that count, here than on Reddit or elsewhere.
So hear this:
I'm thisclose to monitoring comments – reading them before they're released to the site. I don't want to do it. But I need to make a last stab at cleaning up this particular stable.
Pro tips:
-- Keep your tone civil.
-- No name-calling.
-- No impugning intelligence, age, level of education, or other personal attributes.
-- The occasional vulgarity will pass, but best to avoid it lest I find its use angry or otherwise inappropriate.
-- Give some thought to addressing anothers' comment by that commenter's name, rather than "you."
-- No scurrilous accusations or gossip about the principal actors.
-- Accusing commenters of being someone is not favored, although will not be automatically kicked. If you have some compelling reason for believing it, let's have it.
-- Would you like your mother to know you wrote it?
-- As always, go/no-go decisions are very subjective, and you may come up with some feature of a comment not listed here that will spark my ire. I'm not required to be consistent.
The flames won't have to rise much higher before I pull the trigger. So Let's Make MTC Great Again.
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteLet's do it bigly and beautiful like you wouldn't believe.
DeleteFair enough Plainsman, your site, your rules.
ReplyDeleteAnd to continue the conversation at the tail end of the last thread: I’ve been at the last 2 Catlin AMAs. I don’t think he ever refused to answer a q. I think both years he started by talking about how successful the station is, and gave credit to the P1’s for listening. A “we wouldn’t be here if yall weren’t there listening.
So I think that played a roll in some of the q’s and his a’s. For example, there was a q 2 years ago about TDZ and norm, lost talent, and subpar replacements from out of town ( a Mcclarin shot obviously). Catlin’s response from what I remember was “yeah TDZ was talented, they decided to leave, was out of our control, you play the game with players that want to be on your team. He then pivoted to ratings, and how the station is almost always first in their target demo, that while some may complain about the new shows, they still manage to win in the ratings, etc.
c
Thanks!
DeleteI’ve harped on this before, I think there’s a major disconnect (hey guys!) between the prevelant Reddit opinion and objective reality. I feel like Reddit is almost completely negative now, yet the station still dominates in ratings. So many “I’ve stopped listening” or only listen to the Musers, HL, WTDS, etc that you’d think theyre shedding listeners by the thousands.
ReplyDeleteMaybe they are, but they’re also gaining enough replacement listeners that the net is equilibrium.
To return to the theme, that’s why I don’t think Catlin gets fastballs at the AMAs. The hardcore haters don’t go, and when someone does try to zing him he’s responding from a position as king of the hill. The station had a historic run, not just first in their demo, but they spent something like 6 straight months as the overall top station in the market. All with a crap AM signal and a rimshot FM you can not pick up anywhere south of I-20. For all the complaints on reddit, it’s not reflected in how they’re judged in the radio world, the ratings.
C
Ticket Reddit has always had an inflated sense of self-importance. That comes from any fandom. They think Cat should answer to them. They're so fanatical that they feel they have a say in how their entertainment should be formatted or catered to them and what they want to hear. Almost as if they're shareholders and not people who just either absorb the free entertainment they are given or move on to something else. You can not enjoy the Ticket's current form but harping on it for 2 years now is so tiresome. You can listen to all the people who chose to leave. It's not like they were fired. They chose to move on. Yet the harping and anger continues. It's like the people who kept clamouring for Greggo after he was gone. They claim to move on and don't listen yet daily posts indicate otherwise. Meanwhile, Sweet Spot and Matt are still at the station.
DeleteGood refresh, Pman. No need to fret. The entire thing was ginned up. Notice how they sll STFU'd? Nothing but a nothing burger cooked up by a reddit mod who sold access to an individual that was neither an employee nor affiliated with The Ticket. Won't go further into details other than to say anything Cat or Peter Welpton related is one hundo invented. If you wonder why all parties suddenly shut up on a dime, there is a reason.
ReplyDeletePersonal thought. I think Jake, TC, Danny, and Sirois need therapy. Truthfully, I wonder what if anything Jake learned in rehab actually took...or if he, like so many others, including myself... merely danced the jig to get back to regular scheduled programming. I sure did. Took me 3 times to get serious and face myself in the mirror. Maybe I'm wrong. But I'm not seeing it in Jake. Quite the opposite.
Honestly, man, if it were me, I’d shut the site down before I started monitoring comments. Who needs the aggravation?
ReplyDeleteBeen visiting since the infamous summer bash where BAD was leaving. I’d miss the site, but it isn’t worth it.
It’s not worth it to have to deal with the people that come on here just to bash everything & constantly accuse people of having hidden agendas.
I guess you cold go He Who Too on this but that's probably more trouble than it's worth.
ReplyDeleteThere is a concerted effort against this blog. Certain folks are spending a lot of time trying to have you shut it down. To keep it alive is to defy them. To shut it down would be to let them win.
ReplyDeleteNailed it.
DeleteYeah there is a small group or one person that gets their kicks on making the place a mess. I think many of the back and forths are the same person replying to themselves. Its a strange way to go through life but I guess some people are just gigantic aholes, know they are aholes and reveal in their aholeness.
DeletePoor, I had the same thought. Which is why I decided not to shut it down but give monitoring a try if things didn't improve. (So far, so good; I thought I'd be flooded with crap, but only one so far -- accused me of fellating a certain Ticket executive.)
DeleteOdd, though -- I entertain all viewpoints, unless they're too angry or stupid. I think Confessors know that I like Jake, Mike S, Danny B, and yes, even Dan M as broadcasters and I'm sorry they're not associated with The Ticket any longer. Don't blame them for leaving. Don't blame them for competing. Their post-departure strategies were not entirely thought through, but none seem to be starving.
I'm not biased against them or, in fact, their tales of mistreatment. So why any partisan on either side would want this site to go away -- what's the point?
Delete
I think for some who are fans of Dan, Jake, Danny, and Sirois, anything that is not a glowing review of what they do or being 100% on their side on all things post-Ticket is not allowed. So they attack the people who they don't feel are on the side of the people who left or the people who are fine with how the Ticket is now. They don't like the Ticket now and they want you to also not like it so it's impossible for them to understand the alternative POV. It's a weird shared misery that they try to create. Like I said before, they now have more content of the people they want to listen to and that's weirdly not enough. They want to Cat fired, the Sweet Spot removed, Monty elevated (I actually agree with that), and McClarin back to Alabama. Then their boys can all return and things will be happy once again.
DeleteSomeone once said "People don't want to hear you're opinion, they want to hear their opinion come out of your mouth." Though I think that goes with both sides of the Expat discussion. There are people on both sides that want this to be a us or them situation. I am sure should we ever learn the truth from people actually involved we will discover that its a lot more complex than people want to make it.
DeleteThe comment section of this blog was founded on the notion of commenting about current Ticket and Ticket-adjacent goings-on. There has been a history of negative comments about Jake, TC, Corby, Norm, et al. For some reason these “any critical posts about current ticket hosts must mean they are deranged DZ fans” people can’t tolerate criticism of the current product. Mino and Sean are nowhere near the quality of host/show that previously occupied their time slot. McClearin was brought in because he was cheap and a known quantity. Very low risk. Doesn’t mean he isn’t a supremely weird dude. He was known as a weird dude since his initial tales of alien abduction, driving to Pittsburgh to fuck someone he met online, and his penchant for dating teenagers as a 30 and now 40 year old. Nothing new there.
DeleteAs a very unwise man once said…I guess I just don’t get it.
CORRECTION: "none seems to be starving." I regret the error.
ReplyDeleteAgreed. To me, shutting down the site is giving in to the trolls. They want this place shutdown. But I am not plainsman, so I get it if he is tired of running it.
ReplyDeleteI think it’s far weirder that anytime people post positive thoughts about The Dumb Zone they are met without fail by the “they won” “they don’t care about you” “the steel toed boot is about to fall” “wait until the actual story comes out” guy that for some reason feels compelled to try to stamp out anything but glowing Ticket/Cat/Peter talk. Just watch. They can’t let this post go without responding.
ReplyDeleteSure. The guys doing a failed Rhyner/Johnny Fever bit are pretty awful. There's trolling on both sides that's tiresome.
DeletePeter just posted the ratings on Reddit and said he was never a mod on the Reddit board. Musers and HL are still dominating.
Heo, you're perpetuating the issue with comments like this. Your bias is obvious. Snd you're no different than those who can't abide anyone who enjoys TDZ or TF (when it existed). You see anyone whose opinion differs from yours to be a boot licker, corporate shill, Cat butt buddy, whatever.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
DeleteHere is Peter's statement on reddit:
ReplyDelete"2) I did not, do not, and will not have any access or involvement as it relates to the moderation of this r/.
The best context I have to share is: I was contacted, back in May, by the previous lead mod (someone I don’t know and is an anonymous account) who explained they were giving up the role, was concerned over the fate of the r/, and asked if I was interested in replacing them.
I declined.
Anything that happened after that is 100% on them to share, explain, etc.
I don’t have anything else to provide, except that I’m only including this here because I told the current mod (another person I do not know and who is anonymous), at their suggestion, that I would.
Otherwise, a new Premier League season is here, and I’m distracted by the idea of United money-whipping Brighton into selling Baleba. "
*End Statement*
If I'm Jake and Danny, I'm hanging my head in shame, reaching out to Peter, and apologizing to my audience. The venom, the sheer hatred they fomented against a part time employee is absolutely shameful.
This comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteTrying to adhere to Plainsman's wishes. Take a look at some of the responses to his post on that thread. Kind of unreal.
DeleteThe comments on are Reddit are unreal. It’s disturbing. I seriously don’t get it. The steel toe about to drop, the boys are killing in with the DZ stuff can be funny sometimes or mainly harmless, what’s going on with that Reddit post is disturbing. People seriously attacking Peter.
ReplyDeleteI got the same vibe. Annoyed but what might have come down on Reddit by Cat but the hate is awful. Like that Black Mirror Bee epsiode. Who can we hate today.
DeleteAnd that's the rub, Buddy. "Might." Except we will soon be 2 weeks into it and not a single shred, not even a whiff of evidence. Yet the hate is real. The whole thing frightens me in that it is grounded in a deep seated, seething anger.....coalesced around a group of minor local celebrities coupled with a refusal or inability to tolerate any deviating opinion. Jacobinism to a T. Except at least the Jacobins believed in the tangible, clearly defined ideas they fought and killed for. There's a puritanic aspect to all this that is blinkered, unsettling, and sadly, reflective of our society.
DeleteAll because of TC, Jake, Danny, and Sirois. Utterly shameful.
ReplyDeleteI’m convinced half the hatred toward Catlin is because he got rid of/didn’t retain talent that some people like. I could have seen Bewm in the house w Donovan and Sirois taking Norms place. Jake with a long run in middays before moving to mornings, etc.
ReplyDeleteI’ve been told by someone in a position to know that bennet and Catlin were surprised by Norms retirement. (Hint- afterwards they had to mollify upset norm endorsement clients-“I signed a year long contract to use Norm as an endorser, what do you mean he’s leaving?”.)
I think if Catlin was Dr Strange and could have used the time stone to look into the future, maybe they retain Sirois. But Norm went out on top. Old but still getting great ratings. With Bennets history with norm do you think Catlin could have sold “I want to open you up to an age discrimination lawsuit and fire the 40 year veteran for the producer who’s never hosted a show by himself and has zero ratings history”.
I think you plan for the future- you give airtime to shows like Work in Progress to build your bench. But every current show has ratings success. Is anybody really suggesting replacing a successful show with an untried, unproven show?
It’s like going into Bobs Steak house and getting rid of steaks and making it a seafood place. You’re successful with steaks, why change?
Notice how Dan has absolutely stayed quiet from the jump. That should speak volumes, and on several levels.
ReplyDelete