Will Some Confessor Please Recommend a Reliable, Reasonably-Priced Shower Radio for Christy?

I wouldn't mind having that information myself.

(Probably not Confessor Christy.)

Thanks to the Confessor Nation for all consideration.

How . . . White . . . Was It?

OK, Confessors, Your Plainsman doesn't ask much of you (although I suppose slogging through my prose can be something of a chore).

But I do have an assignment to hand out.  No math.

I am in San Diego and will not return until after White Elephant Day.  I'm hopeful that you will take a moment and drop a comment if you hear anything that you find interesting. 

I hope you will pay particular attention to what goes on between the words.  If you saw a transcript of a lot of these showgrams, you would never get a full picture of the relationships at The Little One.  White Elephant Day is a great day for testing theories, revealing animosities, and unearthing new stars given a chance to shine.  I applaud The Ticket for taking these kinds of chances.

So P1 Steven, Christy, Scott, Douglas, Anonymous A through F, and all other Confessors -- get by the channel, as Mike R would put it, and let The Confessor Nation know what you find out tomorrow.

PS:  Thanks to AP from the (incomparable) UnTicket for offering to supply Your Plainsman with segments.  I'm doubtful I'll have time to review any of the showgrams, but if something blows up you know I'll be tuning in to the site. 

The General Unified Theory of BaD Radio -- Part 3 (Conclusion)

Part 1:  http://myticketconfession.blogspot.com/2010/08/general-unified-theory-of-bad-radio.html

Part 2:  http://myticketconfession.blogspot.com/2010/08/general-unified-theory-of-bad-radio_05.html

After all the verbiage of Parts 1 and 2, Your Plainsman had reached the utterly unremarkable conclusions (1) that Dan McDowell and BaD Radio are the most polarizing of the hosts and showgrams, respectively (a conclusion which seems to have been borne out by the traffic to this site and the comments to the posts); and (2) that Dan McDowell does not wreck BaD Radio and that the showgram is, on balance, a pleasurable listen (a conclusion which is borne out by the fact that it's a number-one show in the market [thanks to Confessor Christy for the research, and if you haven't checked her War-and-Peace-length-comments-and-yes-I-know-I'm-a-fine-one-to-talk comments to Part 2, you should] and has been around with the same two hosts for ten years).

You waded through all those syllables for that? 

But there's something else I've concluded about Dan, something that may be utterly wrong, something that may be so utterly wrong that you will question Your Plainsman's judgment.  Not that you don't already. 

But this conclusion is why I think I, speaking only for myself, find listening to BaD Radio such an off-center experience.

I got to Dallas in 2004.  I mostly got to hear The Musers and The Hardline, but I'd catch BaD Radio now and then, and a snippet here and there on the Top 10.  Bob and Dan on wife swaps and round tables.  And I'm thinking -- Dan:  smart guy, quick-witted, but something  .  .  .  .

Then The Ticket's fifteenth anniversary arrived.  They taped a show where all the hosts sat in two rows.  I hadn't ever seen the hosts live and barely knew what they looked like.  (I hoped I could find the video to see if my impressions and memories of that broadcast were accurate, but I can't find it anywhere.  Jeff C asked The Unticket to remove the video link, and I haven't found it on The Ticket website or You Tube.  If any Confessors know where it may be found, I'd be grateful for the advice.)  I wasn't paying particular attention to any particular host.

But I sat up when Dan McDowell entered and was introduced.

He appeared to be scared to death.  He looked like he would rather have been anywhere but there with his long-time colleagues.  Not one indication of pleasure to be there -- a co-host of a top-rated show on one of the most popular and remarkable radio stations in the United States, and he looked like someone had just told him that Dan Bennett was back at Ticket International Headquarters auditing his hard drive. 

As I say, I didn't know what Dan looked like at the time, and maybe that's the way he always looks.  But I was struck by his facial expressions and body language that night.   Surely, as a long-time major host, he must have said something during the panel presentation (and I understand that the broadcast did not capture the entire presentation to the live audience),  and I have the very dimmest recollection that he uttered one somewhat sarcastic phrase somewhere along the line -- that I can't swear to -- but other than that I don't remember a single contribution.

From that point, I began to pay attention to Dan's place within the whole structure of The Ticket.  And -- I swear, Confessors, if you tell me this is my imagination I will not disagree with you -- I began to notice that his colleagues displayed a very, a very, uh  .  .  .  odd attitude toward him. 

     --  I remember one afternoon long ago on The Hardline.  They were out in California, probably at training camp.  Mike just mentioned that he'd gone to a concert with Dan McDowell.  There was a moment of silence.  Corby asked something like:  How'd that go?  Mike said:  Fine.  Or maybe it was Fine, fine.   He might have said something else that is lost in the mists of time, but I guarantee you it was conspicuously noncommittal.   And that was the end of that. 

     --  I have caught references from time to time that early on in the Bob/Dan partnership, Bob couldn't stand Dan.  (I think it was recently, in connection with the anniversary of the "moron dog" episode.)  I sometimes wonder when I listen to them how they feel about one another now.  Like you always wondered whether Johnny Carson really liked Ed McMahon.

     --  Dan gets almost no good-natured joshing from the other hosts.  Danny blasted him the other day, but it wasn't good-natured joshing.  (See Part 2 -- Danny observed that Dan "bogs crap down.")  In fact, he's seldom mentioned at all.  Bob is mentioned; Donovan, the newest addition, gets a mention now and then.  Dan -- almost never.

     --  Again, could be my imagination, but on wife-swaps and round-tables where Dan is present, I get almost no gestalt of warmth between the other hosts and Dan.

     --  I keep hearing that BaD Radio is fan-friendly, and I believe it, but it's hard to find much about Dan online.  I looked for a photo of Dan by himself and other than rather disrespectful Photoshopped stuff all I could find was that postage-stamp image featured in Part 2.  This one, that appeared in a table of a number of local pundits predicting the Cowboys' season game by game:

I realize this has absolutely zero to do with his performance on BaD Radio.  But it has something to do with the way I hear him.

I think there's something going on with Dan at The Ticket, something that started when he got there and has not diminished, and may have grown, over the years.  Part of it, I speculate, is that he is an insecure guy.  This would explain his unfortunate tendency to belittle people who have scant ability to defend themselves.  (And some Confessors who defend and like Dan agree with me that this is an unnattractive feature of his broadcasting habits.)  Part of it may be nothing more than that somewhere along the line, he has rubbed his Ticket peers the wrong way.     

And part of it may be that he's just not comfortable being one of the Ticket guys for reasons that don't emerge on the air.  Not a carouser; not a late-night guy; not a hang-around-the-station guy; not some other thing.

Which leads to my final, largely irrelevant, element of the General Unified Theory of BaD Radio:

(3)  Dan McDowell is on The Ticket -- but he is not of The Ticket.

This, I think, is why I haven't fully embraced BaD Radio -- because Dan doesn't feel like a full investor to me, even though he's been a steady and popular presence there for a decade.  Can I think of an analogy  .  .  .  try this:   He's the the Mark Teixeira of The Ticket -- a talented performer, but holding the team at arms'-length.  And it feels the same way about him.

I was fascinated by the comments to Part 2 of this endless series.  Let me quote from a first-rate comment left by Anonymous, who is a firm fan of BaD Radio:

"[Dan] makes people uncomfortable. He goes places people don't like. And he enjoys doing it. And it's interesting to listen to. Dan is the only guy you really never know what he's gonna say.  *   *   *   BaD Radio is definitely harder to listen to than Musers or Hardline. It's the most un-Ticket-like. Or is it the most?" 

It sounds like Anonymous and I would agree that Dan is something of an outlier at The Ticket.  He finds it a virtue, as do some other Confessors who have left comments. 

I agree that he makes people uncomfortable.  I'm one of them.  I'm thinking that some of the others draw their paychecks from Cumulus Media, Inc.

It's Great to Listen to The Ticket.  But as I sit here in the hot, hot summer of 2010, it's only Good to Listen to BaD Radio.

But it is Good.

=======

Well, we've come a long way.  I'd been putting this off for a long time.  As George C. Scott said at the end of his opening speech in "Patton":  All right now, you sons of bitches -- you know how I feel.  (I am sure that no Confessors are actually sons or other offspring of bitches.) 

Thanks to all Confessors and visitors for your patience, and Thank You for Shopping at My Ticket Confession.

The General Unified Theory of BaD Radio -- PART 2

When we were last gathered together, I'd started thinking about BaD Radio. I said some nice things about Bob and Donovan.

You may think I'm going to be critical of Dan McDowell, but you would only be partly right. Early on in my Ticket-listening career I zeroed in on Dan as the source of my discomfort wtih BaD Radio, but I wasn't sure why. So in the spirit of fairness, let's review some of Dan's good qualities.

     --  He is very smart. I suppose everyone at The Ticket is pretty bright, but Dan gives an impression of both quickness and thoughtfulness. Example: A couple of weeks ago when Mark Cuban was first dipping his toe in the Rangers' cesspool, Dan came up with a great instant analysis. His point was that he liked Cuban as an owner where (as with the Mavericks) he's an emotional wild-assed fan. But he liked the thought of Cuban as an owner a lot less when he was acting more as a self-interested investor. Struck me as exactly right, and pretty soon we did see the unattractive side of Cuban with his apparent abandonment of Greenburg and Nolan, contrary to what he told The Ticket in a memorable interview.

     --  Good family man.  Likes dogs. 

     --  Quickness + intelligence = sometimes funny.  (Sometimes -- see below.)

     --  I have heard that he is very P1-friendly via e-mail and at remotes, along with Bob and Donovan.  That recommends him very highly, as I do not get that vibe from the other hosts.  Unfortunately, this particular quality is not one that has much to do with the broadcast on a day-to-day basis.   Important to the fan base overall, but not meaningful to me, as I don't attend remotes or correspond with the hosts.

     --  Again, along with Bob and Donovan, much less smutty than The Musers and especially The Hardline.  I speculate that this is why the showgram has a reputation as being the most popular show among women.  (Irrelevant aside:  Not only that, but being broadcast during the work day when many women are home or out running errands or driving the kids around, the percentage of women who are able to tune in will be higher than it is with the other shows.  Hence its reputation as a hit with the ladies.)

So, some very good things.  Against these positive elements:

     -- Those pipes. Not fair, I know. Highly subjective, I know. I just find that sound unappealing and there's nothing either of us can do about it. BUT: I got used to Howard Cosell. I got used to Pee-Wee Herman. I could get used to Dan.  So the voice shouldn't have anything to do with it.

     -- He calls out colleagues on the air. And not in an amusing, teasing way, but in a way that should be saved for private meetings with whoever has upset him that particular time. When I was listing these pluses and minuses I hadn't heard his attempt to read an internal memo on the air that would likely be embarassing to Ticket producers -- the one that got BaD booted off the air for 1.5 segments. When I heard it, I thought yup, sounds like something he'd do. Yes, other show hosts flog underlings on the air. Usually it sounds like good-natured joshing. With Dan, it sounds like mean-spirited scoreboarding of guys who don't make a fraction of his coin.    I discuss this in my article about his memo-reading.

     --  Norm is right:  Dan makes a joke out of damned everything.  Jokes are good, right?  Lotta jokes on The Ticket, right?  Two problems:  (1) His jokes are frequently offered by interrupting other speakers.  (2) The jokes are almost never of a quality that justify the interruption.  Dan's humor tends strongly toward the sarcastic, cynical and, most of all, smug.  Danny Balis is not the chief Dark Cloud on The Ticket.  Dan is.  As a result:

     --  He's a segment killer.  He does this in a couple of different ways:

         (1)   I can't believe I heard Danny B say it on Monday, August 2, the same day I wrote this:  Danny was badgering Corby and Mike, who were squabbling over some irrelevancy or other, to get the segment back on topic, and Danny said -- I wrote down his exact words -- "You're almost as bad as Dan McDowell in terms of bogging crap down."   Yeah, that's it.  Dan bogs crap down.   In this regard, Dan reminds me of Ben and Skin -- each was so interested in commenting ironically on the other's previous ironic comment, that the communication of actual content was agonizingly delayed.  The other day I was waiting for BaD to get going on an advertised segment, and Dan simply thrashed it to death with his interruptions and not-so-hilarious asides.

         (2)   He says the same thing over and over again.  Bob gets criticized for long-windedness, but Bob is more like Your Plainsman -- he goes on at extreme length, but he's going somewhere.  Dan takes one thought and repeats it ceaselessly.  Even Bob had had enough the other day.  Dan had delivered a lengthy disquisition on how upset he was about some guy -- to tell you the truth, I couldn't understand exactly what this guy was supposed to have done -- who was hosting some kind of online chat that was somehow connected with The Ticket's online presence, and who referred to Dan as a c-bomb, if I understood him correctly.  When Dan turned to Bob for agreement, Bob noted with some irritation that Dan's time-consuming rant had done nothing more than encourage people to search online for this miscreant.

*****

I've heard from listeners (see comments to previous post) who believe Dan is the best host on The Ticket and that BaD is the best showgram.  Good, thoughtful comments.  I've also heard from people who dislike the guy and think he should be fired.  (Didn't his firing get a vote on E-Brake of the Week last week?)   As I look back at the Dan ledger sheet of assets and liabilities, I can't say that the the latter so outweigh the former that he can be said to turn BaD radio into, well, bad radio.  I can listen to the show.  I rarely switch it off when I have it on.  Yeah, I wish he were different, but to be fair I have to say that the overall BaD Radio listening experience is positive.

And then I realized that this the most pixels I've ever devoted to a single host in a single article in the year I've been flogging this site.  Which leads to the first element of the General Unified Theory of BaD Radio:

(1)  Dan McDowell is the most polarizing figure on The Ticket and, accordingly, BaD Radio the most polarizing showgram.

Yes, more polarizing than Corby.

And I'm listening.  I'm trying to listen more.  It's sorta aggravating, but I do it.  Even the people who outright dislike the guy must still be listening in order to offer that opinion.  Which leads to the second element of the General Unified Theory of BaD Radio:

(2)  Dan McDowell's negative influence on BaD Radio, if any, is not so great as to render the showgram unlistenable.

So far, these are pretty wimpy elements, I concede.  I mean, obviously -- the showgram has been on with the Bob/Dan team for ten years, so someone is listening and liking it.  But remember, I'm writing about my struggle with the thing.  And my conclusion that the showgram is worth my time, despite misgivings about one of its marquee figures.

I've got one more element that is even more diffuse and abstract, and one that gets at my personal discomfort with the show.  I still haven't gotten to what really -- I guess the word is intrigues -- me about Dan McDowell.

I know I said this was going to be a two-parter; nevertheless, PART 3 -- finally, the conclusion -- will appear in a few days.