A Handful of Reactions to the Surprise Dual Ratings Dips

ITEM:  An hour each of The Musers and The Hardline suffered a loss to competitors on other sports stations.  (Barry Horn report here.)

(1) Agree with those who urge not reading too much into that.  Recall that BaD showed a similar dip not long ago, and it turned out to be a one-book phenomenon, although truth to tell I haven't done the Internet research.  I just haven't heard that it repeated.  The severe dip for that one hour of The Musers looks especially anomalous.  So yeah, just sort of massage your butts lightly for now.

(2) Agree with those who think that this might well have animated Checkout Mike to show greater interest in his show and guest appearances on other Ticket offerings, the latter of which had become a severe embarrassment to him and the station in recent years.  You can be a curmudgeon on your own show, but his is-he-really-there? appearances on other shows, pre-games, and round tables had started to suggest something approaching a lack of respect for the rest of the station.

(3) My guess is that Jeff Catlin did not lecture anyone about stepping up his game as a result of this ratings book.  No inside info here; just tidbits I pick make me think that with the exception of correcting seriously bad behavior, The Pan-American Catman is fairly hands-off with individual performances.  Also, these guys probably see the ratings the minute Cat does -- they don't need any additional motivation.

(4) The Musers' dip was in a heavy Gordon-inflected hour.  Confessors know that I am a Gordon admirer, but in recent months I have wished for less juvenilia/sex talk/perversion talk/political talk and more of anything else.

(5) Confessors also know that I am not a Corby basher, but after a comeback from severe OverCorby/Checkout Mike a couple of years back, The Hardline has noticeably backslid into lassitude, severe misogyny (I thought that had left the building with Greg Williams), and, well, OverCorby/Checkout Mike.  (I don't have a big issue with Danny's participation most of the time, with a big carveout for current-events talk, where he's dog-paddling with Corby in the low-information punditry fever swamps.) 

(6) Confession:  I'm one of the ones who is tuning into Mosley and Cowlishaw more and more.   Switch back and forth.  (Sorry, KT, just can't warm up to Ben & Skin.)  They're off the air at 6, so I usually get me some solid slabs of late-show Hardline, but from 3:30-6, while I always start with The Hardline and most of the time find something to engage me, it's taking less and less for me to dial in the next preset down the dial.

"Sorry, Mike and Corby.  More than three vagina references per show sends me to Tim and Matt every time."

A Few Muser and Random Quick Hits

Sorry I've been away.  Running like mad.

(1)  I think it was Junior who announced that he had discovered the perfect deodorant -- Old Spice Classic.  I laughed out loud.  I was tired of the heavily promoted sticks I'd been using and thought "hey, I used to like the smell of Old Spice aftershave [those torpedo-shaped bottles with the grey plastic cap], I'll give this a try." Got home, took off the cap, and about passed out.  It was the most potent sweet fragrance I'd ever experienced; it would stun Mike R's proverbial mastodon.  It almost embarrassed me to glide it on, but I did.  When I got out to the field, the receptionist told me I smelled nice.  So it either works or doesn't, depending on your point of view, but I imagined myself trailing vaporous hydrocarbons for the rest of the day.  I'm still using it.

(2)  A long time ago I made a note of a novel that Junior said was his favorite:  One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.  He mentioned it again on the occasion of Marquez's death on April 17.  I was also very moved by the novel; I read most of it lounging on a chaise on my uncle's patio in California one summer.  It's a wonderful read, even in translation, and I commend it to you.  Its first line is widely quoted:  "Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Areliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice."  (Trans. Gregory Rabassa.)  And you're off and running.

(3)  I was tired of people, including sponsors, saying "well played" or "nicely played" as though every praiseworthy act were nothing more than a game stratagem, the first time I heard them.

(4)  The consultants may be back at The Ticket.  The Musers were making great fun of something or other in the show being an "activation event" or "event deck" or "activation event deck."

(5)  Calling Gordon Keith, calling Gordon Keith:  You, like I, am a large P1 of McDonald's coffee.  Have you found lately that stores no longer allow you to take your black coffee and go to a little stand where you may select the proper number of Splendas and half-and-half cups and complete the final preparations on your own?  They ask you what you need and put it in themselves, or give you the packets and cups which you must specify at the time the purchase is negotiated.   Come to think of it  .  .  .  I've actually encountered some bad McDonald's in the last year, orders wrong, spotty service.

(6)  In the last thread, a commenter drew our intention to a Reddit subfile dedicated to The Ticket:  www.reddit.com/r/theticket.  It's pretty cool.  I confess, it made me wonder whether this site is any longer of value.

(7)  Why are these Muser quick hits?  Because, well, it's like this.  I mean, it doesn't really mean anything, much, and I don't really have a good explanation, to be perfectly honest with you (as Corby might say a few times), but:  I've been listening to a lot more of Cowlishaw & Mosely's Afternoon Show on ESPN lately.  They finally got Cowlishaw's mic situation fixed so he's mostly audible.  Like the chemistry, like the topics, like the talk.  Like the shorter ad breaks.