Musers Quick Hit

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From this morning's Muser showgram:

GORDON:  I was on "It's Just Banter" recently  .  .  .

JEREMY [under his breath but clearly audible]:  Why?

FERNANDO:  [Explosive cackle.]

SOMEBODY:  Be nice, Jer.

Ah, Ticket politics.  We try to read the clues on who are pals and who are not, who's just teasing and who's not.  

It's been awhile since any Confessor has mentioned IJB.  I got the impression that most readers liked the podcasts.  Those gents still turning out quality stuff?

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TORN FROM TODAY'S TICKET HEADLINES -- Who's the Twit Here?

[NOTE:  This post was re-edited 12-11-20 AM to cut out excess verbiage and unnecessary material.  All opinions, even the ludicrous ones, remain intact from original composition.]

First, a gigantic thanks to the incomparable AP for providing Your Plainsman with today's audio and some of the Twitter traffic on the C.J. Wilson contretemps. By the way, AP, that tweet about the other CJ looking at his phone waiting for a call was a real sweet stroke.

I don’t have any better theories about “what happened” than AP himself – I assume AP is a male – which he was kind enough to offer as a comment to my prior post. He writes:

“My take is that Junior was perhaps quick to burn the bridge between KTCK and CJ Wilson with his tweet, and that the fault probably lies with a handler situated between MLB.com and Fernando:

“CJ <-> Agent <-> Handler 1 <-> MLB.com <-> Handler 2 <-> Fernando <-> Musers

“I'm assuming that Handlers 1 and 2 are under the employ of MLB.com, and a game of 'broken telephone' ensued, leading to the accusations of lying by both parties.”

Yeah, almost had to be something like that. Personally, I would not have been so quick to assume that Wilson was being culpably untruthful here. He may have realized right off that there was a screwup and even though he knew he was going to be doing calls that day, he tried to smooth it over by saying that he wasn’t scheduled to do radio that day. Covering for the various intermediaries AP identifies above. But he didn’t think fast enough, because that questionable attempt at diplomacy was quickly punctured when it emerged (via his own tweet) that he was going to do another Dallas show, Ben & Skin.

By the way – I haven’t heard whether he did do Ben & Skin later on. Anybody know?

Has Wilson ever been on the Musers? Does he have a past relationship with any other Ticket showgram?

So what are we to make of this dust-up? . A couple of thoughts.

(1) Fernando/Craig/Gordon May Have Overreacted Even if They’re Right that Wilson Was Being Mendacious. Quite aside from the right/wrong of this episode, was it prudent to make an enemy of Wilson so promptly and on the air? Without any further investigation?  Who is going to win when a local radio station, even one as popular as The Ticket, cheeses off a superstar for a team on the rise, a team where he has lots of pals who The Ticket would like to interview?

And this is taking place against a backdrop of intensified competition from at least one of the local competitors who would only be too happy to call up Rangers PR and say "You know, no one at this station has ever called one of your players a liar on the air."

Look:  I'm all in favor of integrity.  And, as noted elsewhere, we like it that our boys our fearless when dealing with the big shots, including their own bosses.  I'm only musing (!) that sometimes there is a price to pay for fearlessness, and maybe our lads will pay it here.

(2) Maybe There’s Something Else Going on Here.  Maybe this isn’t a Wilson/Ticket issue. Maybe Wilson is having issues with MLB. Or with Rangers PR. And this is his way of gigging that entity.

Or maybe there’s a long-simmering problem between Wilson and The Ticket not directly related to today’s FUBAR. Somebody knows. Somebody will disclose it to Your Ticket Confession, perhaps in confidence.

Or maybe he heard something on the station between the time he agreed to do the interview and this morning that didn’t sit well with him.

Or how about this? (Ooo, this is delicious:)  This was orchestrated between Wilson and Ben & Skin.   As noted, he’s appeared with them frequently, maybe they’re pals. Maybe this was a way to pwn The Ticket (former home of BS) and promote BS.  As Gordon has noted:  in the absence of evidence, the conspiracy explanation must be the correct one.  I was retracing Gordon's LHO Trail of Tears just the other day and I could have sworn I saw Greggo behind the fence at the top of that grassy knoll.

(3) How Important Is The Ticket?  Can you imagine any other outlet being stood up like that and doing anything other than smoothing it over, saying there’d been a mixup or technical problem, and they’d reschedule, and no one would be the wiser? Of course, the fact that The Ticket does not do things this way is one of the reasons we love it so much. And I’m glad they blew up – it’s fun for listeners and website journalists. But there was more than a touch of hubris in today’s proceedings. They called the Rangers’ (current) number 1 starter a liar because they think they can.

(4) How Much of What Happened Today Is the Result of Inter-Showgram Competition?  As you know, Your Plainsman enjoys the sport of listening between the words to figure out what goes on at The Ticket other than broadcast greatness.  It results in wild guesses and probably many wrong ones -- I've had certain people in the know tell me I'm right about a third of the time, and others tell me that I'm amazingly accurate, so who knows; all I can tell you is that I'm guessing.  Here's my guess about this one:

The Musers could not have been happy about being pwn’d by a big-time interviewee which would unquestionably carry with it the prospect of BaD and The Hardline snickering behind their backs. They had to call it out and deal with it right then and there in a way that gave them a victory of sorts.  They had to acknowledge it -- they had to turn disaster into broadcast gold, which they did, which is why Ticket connoisseurs like AP got in touch with me, and I'm writing a big article about it, and P1 Steven and Christy and Scott and Douglas and several flavors of Anonymous are going to comment on it, and take that, BaD and Hardline snickerboys.

I also have a feeling that the brunt of the natural (and healthy) friction between these big-time showgrams is frequently borne by the producers. Which accounts for Fernando feeling particularly abused by these circumstances.

One thing is bloody sure --

(5) We Haven’t Heard the End of This. So let’s get started. Comments open . . . 3 . . . 2 . . . 1 . . . now.

The Ticket Should Do More of This -- and Also This Other Thing It Did

Of all the showgrams, I get to hear Norm the least. But I found myself in the car doing some work-avoiding chore or another the other day and was pleased to see that it was Norm time. I tuned in and caught almost all of Norm’s amazing report on his research into the evidence that the Cowboys’ – which is to say, Jerry Jones’s – financial condition may not be entirely healthy. If you did not hear it, the gist of it was this: Norm pointed to a number of pieces of evidence, some of them apparently not previously reported, that the Cowboys/Jones might be having some financial problems – and they might be severe. I won’t go into detail, I’m guessing most of you heard it, or heard about it. He considered both expenses and revenue.

This was an absolutely terrific piece of work by Norm. To the best of my knowledge, it was original reporting, and might even qualify as something of a scoop. I do not regularly read the News or Star-Telegram sports pages, but I do not remember hearing anyone else reporting on the techniques the Cowboys are using to fill the stadium. Nor do I recall anyone putting together pieces of evidence to paint a picture of possible financial unrest in the Jones regime.

I have two thoughts on this, one pretty obvious and the other a little less so.

FIRST: This was a real feather in The Ticket’s cap. If The Ticket becomes known not only for first-rate saloon sports/guy talk but also great reporting – and Norm’s segment actually goes beyond original reporting all the way to what one might even consider investigative reporting – man, there’s no longer any reason not to listen to the station if you’re a sportsy kinda guy or gal. Acquaintances of mine who don’t listen to The Ticket say that the station has too much guy, not enough sport. I would never advocate a diminution in guy talk, but if The Ticket did original sports reporting, there would be no excuse for any North Texas sports fan not to listen to The Little One, because no other local sports-talk station is doing original reporting, at least none that has come to Your Plainsman's attention. You wanna be a sportsy station? Great – hire someone discover news about sports. What The Ticket does now does not qualify as sports reporting. But what Norm threw out this week did. And it was riveting, news-making radio. Don’t send that clip to the Marconi people – send it to the Pulitzer people. (Except . . . there’s no Pulitzer for radio work. I doubt the Nobel people would have a lot of interest either, too bad for them.)

SECOND: OK, so it was great work by Norm, Norm is great, what else is new. As you know, Your Faithful Plainsman is at least as interested in trying to figure out stuff about what goes on behind the scenes as it is in what we hear on the showgrams themselves. And Norm’s great work caused something to happen here that I think we need to applaud.

Someone at The Ticket said: Hey – this is amazing stuff. We need to leverage this within the station. Let’s run Norm’s investigation as a segment on The Musers. And so they did, and it was as interesting there as it was on Norm’s show. (Unfortunately, while I knew the Norm segment was coming up on The Musers, I was not in a position to pay close attention. It is my impression that Norm was a live guest on The Musers, but I could not tell from the snippets I heard whether Norm was on live or whether they were replaying his original report, and I’m too lazy to download the podcast. I think Norm's Muser gig was live, but if anyone can advise I’d be grateful. Whether Norm was live with the Musers or on tape, the analysis is the same.)

I’d love to know how that went down. Was it a Muser who realized the gold Norm had panned out of the bits and pieces of Cowboy news that came his way? Or was it Program Director Jeff Catlin? Or Assistant Program Director Rich Phillips who went to bat for increased exposure for Norm’s hard work? Or someone else who thought that Norm’s insights deserved a drive-time audience? Muser producer Michael Fernandez, maybe?

Not that it matters whose idea it was. But I’d like to give credit where it is due. The decision to give Norm a prominent chunk of The Musers’ time illustrates the fact that even though we all enjoy what appears to be the somewhat ramshackle construction of The Ticket’s broadcast day, someone at The Ticket/Cumulus is on the ball. Someone actually thinks about how to put this product out on the air. It’s not just a buncha white guys (and Donovan) sitting around talking. It’s – all right, I’m going to get a little gooey on you here – an art to throw 13.5 hours of pretty cool programming out there every day, and to keep it on top for ratings period after ratings period. The Ticket is one amazing media property and it’s decisions like this, and the talent of its stars, that keep it going strong.

Of additional interest is the fact that Norm’s investigations were reprised on The Musers and not on The Hardline. Which makes me wonder if Junior or George might have taken an interest in Norm’s discoveries and urged their inclusion on their show. I will say that I didn’t sense the slightest resentment from any Muser in Norm’s cameo appearance.

Whoever it was, both Norm’s original report and the decision to let Norm guest on The Musers is the kind of work that elevates a station like The Ticket from Your Source for Fart and Dick Humor to an essential destination for people who are serious about DFW sports.

Bully.

Ty Wal-KAH!!

We listeners and Confessors listen to the shows, and we get to know these guys, and we speculate about them, and what goes on at the station, and who's a nice guy in private and who's a jackass.  And which guys don't like which other guys, and why.  Well, maybe not all of us, but I do.

I'm a little late with this item, but I wanted to think about it.  This Ty-Walker-at-the-Final-Four thing is absolutely fascinating.  The story was featured on both The Musers and The Hardline.  (If BaD Radio or Norm dealt with it, would one of you who heard it leave a comment?  My thanks.)   I'm sure I don't have all the details correct, but Westwood One needed a stringer to do some reports from the Final Four for some local stations.  Someone else there -- Sean Bass, maybe -- declined the assignment, byt Ty Walker took it.  Expenses paid, went to the game, got to pet the bulldog, hit a couple bars, and gave a couple of reports for an Atlanta station, maybe on the air for a few minutes total.  Something like that.

And not a single report from him on any of the Ticket showgrams.

Both Ty and Assistant Program Director Rich Phillips insisted that all of the producers had received an email that Ty was on this assignment.

Here's what I found most interesting:  The Musers did not question Fernando, and The Hardline did not question Danny -- at least not on the air.  Neither did either of them jump in and say hey, I never got any email about this.  So I assume that Rich and Ty are correct that the producers got the email.  The hosts, to a man, denied that they knew anything about it.  I believe them too.

So what we have here are the producers being aware that Ty Walker was going to be going to the Final Four, hosts wondering where the heck Ty Walker had gone, and nobody saying anything to anyone.  Ty Walker didn't tell any hosts; Rich Phillips didn't tell any hosts; no hosts undertook to find out where Ty Walker was during the Final Four; Rich Phillips' supervisor(s) didn't communicate to any hosts. 

It is hard to avoid the conclusion that somewhere along the line, someone did not want to give Ty Walker a platform to broadcast a report on The Little One from the Final Four.

So -- is the hard time that The Hardline gives Ty Walker not just a bit?  (Danny:  "Stay out of this, Ty!"  Gordon:  "Wanna switch your mic off there, buddy?") 

Is Ty Walker persona non grata across a wide swath of The Ticket?  If so, why is he still employed there?  If not, why didn't a single soul, not one, undertake to enlist his services while The Ticket had boots on the ground at the Final Four?

It is interesting that the hosts chose to shine a light on this apparent station snafu.  Which suggests that maybe Ty's OK with them, but not OK with the next tier in production.

We listen to Ty, and he seems OK.  We know he's young, large, reputedly without woman, and a Star Wars fan.  Does a very nice job with the Tickers.  Ocasionally steps in to provide internet-provided answers to pressing showtime questions. 

So he doesn't seem like someone you wouldn't want to hear from the Final Four.

Which suggests that there's something else going on, and consider:  It may have absolutely nothing to do with Ty.  In fact, I'm guessing that it doesn't.  It may be that inter-level communications -- and we have at least four levels here:  Cat/Rich; hosts; producers; and Ticker guys -- are not what they should be.

And it could be that these guys get too much email, and they're not exactly the types to sit in an office looking at email all day, especially email from management with "Ty Walker" in the subject line.

Can any Confessor shed any light on this fascinating episode?