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'm as big a fan of Monty + The Machine (aka "Not a Podcast") on Saturday morning as most of you seem to be. A raucous, slacker-anarchic show even with only two voices. Fun, different, some good Emerging Demo Sports Takes.
It's still kind of finding its way, though; still poking a sharp stick into the side of The Ticket. Is it a good strategy? I dunno. I shake my head sometimes, but I don't punch out.
Yesterday, for example.
The Machine was on fire, returning to his roots as a guy who talks a lot. The guy has a very unique radio timbre, and it's an interesting sound to have coming through the buds, but the guy gives some signs of being positively Sturmian as the syllables pour out of him, irrespective of what else is happening on the show at the time. I thought that he and Justin had really worked out a nice balance in the last couple of months, but Justin's 1-1:30 news was a jumble of both of them talking at once. (Hey, Machine, don't get upset -- love the show, love what you got. OK? This is just what one guy is hearing. Maybe I'll hear from Confessors who ain't hearing the same thing. And I'm estimating a P1 readership for this site on the order of 0.05% and a Cumulus readership south of that.)
And then there was the Eli Jordan Ticker. It was cruising along at its usual dramatic pace, when all of a sudden there was a bunch of talking going on over his report. I thought it was Machine, but I could be mistaken about that. Could have been both him and Justin. I tried to tell if whoever was talking over the Ticker was doing it accidentally because of a mis-hit board button, or just crashing the Ticker for the hell of it, but since the whole thing was incomprehensible, it was hard to tell. I will say this, Eli didn't miss a beat, so it wasn't clear to me that he could hear the host-noise going on over his report.
But I think he did, and I think he did not believe it was a technical meltdown, because:
After it was all over, Machine and Justin tried to get Eli to get on-mic to . . . well, it wasn't clear what they wanted to talk to him about, although they said once or twice they wanted to "ask him a question." But Mr. Jordan was having none of it, a 100% layout, Eli has left the building, leaving M+M to vamp embarrassingly for a bit before moving on.
And M+M didn't blame the technology.
I dunno, guys, dunno what you get out of jabbing the Musers, don't know what you get out of jabbing Eli, don't even know what you get out of pretty harshly jabbing the Siroises as you also did yesterday (and do a lot). I know, I know, it's a M+M bit to be the snotty newcomers. Maybe that's what Cat is looking for, maybe you've got a deal with Mike and Cash.
But it's starting to take on just a bit of a hostile cast, pretty aggressive for a show that may feel established to its hosts but does not to most everyone else (all right, maybe just to me). I really want to be hearing M+M on the air for the foreseeable future, so I'm hopeful that they will give some thought to the whereabouts of that fine line between bit and bloviation.
(1) Yes, I do like me some Eli Jordan. The Ticket has some fine Tickermen, Ty and Sean and others; even T.C. is, in one sense or another, a must-listen.
But Eli sounds like nothing else on the Ticket -- nothing, that is, since the departure of Ticker God Rich Phillips. Eli is kind of a cross between a throwback Mr. Broadcast Pipes with the staccato delivery, and a reg'lar Ticket jamoke. His voice commands attention, which I deliver even though I have almost no interest in any of the results he's discussing.
By the way, have you caught Eli and Ty's "Country Force" fill-in show? Pretty good little show, pretty darned good little show. I've always liked Ty as a host and he and Eli make a pretty cool team, I thought. Good showgram title, too. I could hear more of that.
(2) This morning the Musers were (unfortunately) reprising the Eighth-Grade-Graduation-Presidential-Candidate-Impressions Kid. Craig said to Gordon something like (precise recollection dim): "You should name him as your successor, since your last designated successor was a complete failure." And they all had a good chortle, and Craig said: "But at least he ended up leaving and wrecking one of our competitors," OWTTE.
To whom was Craig referring?
[PS: Any show replaying viral videos = burnt segments.]
For all of you who are tempted to slag me for writing a big fat post about a would-be Tickerman, spare me. Spare us all. It's Tickety. It makes me wonder how things happen at The Little One. I'm going to write about it. You gripe about the selection of subject matter, I'm taking your ass down.
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First, Mitchell, if you're out there, permit me to apologize for spelling your name incorrectly for quite some time now.
Second, a Confessor reports hearing on a BaDD podcast that Mitchell is transported from New York to Dallas to do his Tickers a half-day on weekends.
Third, this site has had some fun with the challenges that Tickers have presented to Mitchell. I didn't really feel good about that teasing, because I supposed that Mitchell was a radio tyro, some kid trying to make it, kid somehow got a tryout from The Ticket in the face of what I supposed were better audition clips with which, I also supposed, the Pan-American Catman had been deluged. So while he was clearly struggling with . . . copy . . . which I supposed he had composed . . . and seemed initially unaware that what he was delivering was a "Ticker," I was kinda rooting for improvement so the lad could get his start in a cool profession. Alas, as the Indispensable Brad C has memorialized, things have not gotten much better as of a week ago:
He has been savaged by The Hardline; but then, who hasn't? Bono, possibly, aside. Confessors have been similarly skeptical of his abilities.
Fourth, however, I was quite, quite wrong about where Mitchell came from.
This is Mitchell Karasik delivering his 2010 MLB preview:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wfnkbm46hZA
Surprised?
Mitchell Karasik has not only been around for awhile, he has run what is apparently his own production of something called, variously, "LockerBlogger" and ":60". Always dressed smartly in a coat and tie, he has scored some pretty big interviews. Here's his Miles Austin interview at some kind of function from a couple of years ago when Miles was doing good:
Here is his interview with Orthodox Jewish Boxer Dmitri Salita, Part 1 (I have not been able to find Part 2):
Thus: Fifth, the PAC was almost certainly not pulling a resume out of a stack when he invited Mitchell to do some DFW Tickers -- he was enlisting a somewhat experienced talker, a guy with some credible sportsy media experience, even if it was his own medium. Unless, of course, the PAC had nothing to do with this and it was imposed upon him by some CTO. Although I have not been able to find any Internet evidence of any affiliation between Mitchell and Cumulus or CBS (with the exception of the somewhat tenuous speculation which I shamelessly offer way, way down at the bottom here). No, his affiliation appears to be solely with his own company LockerBlogger, described on his beta site (www.lockerblogger.com) as follows: "LockerBlogger is a Sports Social Media Company that Connects Athletes, Charities, Fans and Brands through Education and Philanthropy." (But where did he score that bank of screens and ritzy studio-looking background?)
At first I thought BaDD must have been pulling our leg about MK flying in to do these Tickers. But when I heard Brad C's recording from only a week ago (above), I realized that it must be true.
Sixth, what Someone Out There knows, is:
Why?
Here's a little extra tidbit to interest you: A Mitchell S. Karasik was married in Collin County in 2008. His parents live in the NYC metro. (Scroll down here to view record) No idea if it's the same one, but the Internet nuggets are suggestive. So maybe MK is looking for a way to spend more time in the metro for family reasons.
But let's return for a moment to his qualifications. Hey, I admire the guy for living the dream. He's got this sports-philanthropy-social-media thing going, and whatever that is, it does get him face time with jocks. (I didn't join the site, but I've seen other things leading me to believe that this "LockerBlogger" is affiliated with MK's videos of the same name.) How did he do that? ALERT: CRASS SPECULATION FOLLOWS: I'm wondering if Mitchell might have some independent wealth in his background. The father of the Mitchell Karasik married in Collin County in 2008 -- which, I stress, I cannot definitively link up with OUR Mitchell Karasik, but there don't seem to be a lot of them in the U.S. -- is Stephen Karasik. Stephen is an independent investment banker the New York City area. Perhaps he invested in our Mitchell. WARNING: SPECULATION GETS EVEN CRASSER BELOW.
In any event, he's got a long way to go to join the accomplished Tickerman fraternity -- all right, a long way measured in astronomical units, if not parsecs -- but he's not a complete schnook, you know? Those interviews are at least enthusiastic, and the fact is . . . he gets them. Maybe this kind of initiative appealed to the CTO somewhere along the line. So let's be fair -- they're trying. They're trying to get some guys with maybe some gee-whiz potential to affiliate with the station.
But I suspect Mitchell's path to Saturday mornings on KTCK is a lot more interesting than that. Someone's either going to pretend to know in the Confessions to this post and we'll all have to wonder if we're getting pranked, or someone is going to lay a tip on me that I will be duty bound to keep confidential. (It happens, rarely.) How did he come to do Tickers for a station he doesn't know, reporting on teams he's not familiar with, where he is required to speak the names of athletes he doesn't know how to pronounce? More intriguingly, why is he still doing it?
Well, my curious Confessors, here's another little tidbit for you: There is a Steve Karasik who is a multi-Emmy-winning Senior Coordinating Producer for -- dramatic pause -- CBS Sports. Looks like he is about Mitchell's age. His father is not Stephen Karasik, according to wedding announcements -- it's Robert Karasik from . . . Manhattan. I'm way, way off the reservation here, but I wonder if perhaps Robert and Stephen are brothers, and Mitchell and CBS Steve are cousins.
While this is, I must Confess, not Responsible Ticket Journalism, the possible connection of Mitchell to CBS Steve, and Mitchell's possible family connection to the DFW area, may go some way to explain why the guy is getting airtime on the greatness of The Ticket. Maybe that's also how he scores those snazzy production values for those studio interviews.
CBS -- again.
Inquiring Confessors want to know.
But you know something? Whether I'm on track with any of the foregoing, or galaxies off -- I wish Mitchell Karasik well, I really do. Even as a Tickerman -- maybe he'll study up and we'll get used to the somewhat exotic cadences he brings to his readings. After all, one of the qualities The Ticket brings to sports-talk radio is its willingness to showcase unconventional broadcast voices. So let's give the guy a chance. (To help expiate my guilt over teasing him at the outset, and in admiration of the initiative he's shown in his non-Ticker ventures.)
