Speak to Us, Gypo Nolan

I said I was going to move on from Where's Greggo Talk, but did not anticipate the gigantic response to the last post.  Thank you, Google.

Thought I'd throw up a quickie just to freshen up the thread, which I think also set some kind of record for this site.

Gypo Nolan is an occasional Confessor who brings us some inside dish from time to time that has the ring of authority.  I'm thinking he's heard something about Greg Williams's situation and could fill it in if he feels able to do so.

I suppose we'll all be tuning in at 2 PM tomorrow.  A commenter to the last thread has promised us that Greg will be broadcasting.  And I believe everything that anonymous commenters say, especially when they sound like The Girlfriend.

In the meantime, what's the scuttlebutt on Ben and Skin?  Headed to The Fan?  Good move or bad?

See you tomorrow at 2.

Train Station and Other Extremely Quick Hits

--  George DiGianni is doing a show featuring (among other things) genital herpes with a Dr. Cockerell.

--  George can make fun of himself.  His GenoStim ads now feature drops from his show, and today he remarked in the course of the keep-locker-rooms sanitary discussion that he always goes home to shower because, among other reasons, "I don't want to see a bunch of swinging sausages."  Then he paused; then said he was waiting for his engineer/op to make it into a drop.

--  Kevin Turner with Tickerman duties today.  The Mitchell Kerasik Watch is on hold.

--  A commenter on the last thread observes:  "From the comments made prior to and during the letter of suggestions from a listener that Corby read, it's pretty obvious that Rhyner doesn't care for listener input or opinion, period. Which leads me to believe that if he is aware of this site, he must loathe it." 

I think this is probably correct.  Of course, we would all like our favorite hosts to like us.  Even though this site is mostly highly supportive of The Hardline and worshipful of Mike R's legend, it's the slice that doesn't fall under the "mostly" part of the pie that probably rankles.  And who could blame him or any other Ticketarian who doesn't like MTC?  Would you like someone commenting on your job performance every few days, slicing and dicing your every inflection, and anonyously to boot?  No.  So I've never introduced myself to any Ticket host and probably will keep my distance from the larger specimens of that group for the forseeable future.

--  So, are we about to experience another Greggo eruption?  There is some suggestion that he has been mysteriously absent from RaGE the last couple of days.  Dare I type those legendary words: 

Where's Greggo?

 

 

BREAKING NEWS: Is This The End of Greggo?

Greg seems to be burning a bridge before being asked to cross it. 

Here are the series of Tweets issued by Greg Williams Sunday afternoon (thanks to Anonymous commenters for the reports): 

"TCUWhiteTrash GREGGO
I have so much 49'er information I want to share on our pre and post games shows on THE FAN...but.I was fired...and the other hosts agreed"

"TCUWhiteTrash GREGGO
All FAN FANS...ask Richie why I was fired..he just said he didn't think I possessed the necessary traits to do a quality post game show.."

"TCUWhiteTrash GREGGO
I really wish I was welcomed at Frankies today..but the other hosts have made their thoughts know...being fired hurts..."

"TCUWhiteTrash GREGGO
@bbshelton ..do you think people would listen??...I would definitely consider it....I miss it so much...but CBS made a decision..and I'm out"

"TCUWhiteTrash GREGGO
@richiewhitt ..Frankie's might be packed...too bad there's not enough room for me...but I understand...you guys DON'T want me there....."

The initial question was whether his "firing" related solely to Cowboy game-day participation, or his weekday gig.  The foregoing suggests the former -- as of 8 PM Sunday. 

Still not finding anything on the Internets about any of this.  To the best of this site's knowledge, he's still employed by The Fan as a weekday host.

But what do you do with a guy who issues serial sad-puppy whining  Tweets about being excluded from Weekend coverage?  Where he reports that his employment savior, media champion, and on-air partner Richie Whitt told him to his face that he didn't have the skill set to do a conventional pre/post-game show?  Has CBS/The Fan just made a decision to ignore these outbursts and judgment lapses?  Or will they do what any other employer would do?  Some kind of discipline, up to and possibly including suspension/termination. 

Suspect RWhitt and CBS/Fan poobahs are meeting tonight to decide what to do.  Oh, yeah, there will be lawyers there.

I have the same question Confessors have been asking:  What is he thinking?  Either he believes he's finished at The Fan and is reaching out for a final grasp at attention, OR he's fearful of it and thinks that by hinting at it online the millions of fans he imagines he has will rise up in his defense.

Either way, I have the same reaction as most of the Confessors commenting here -- it's sad, sad, sad.

Please let us know if you have any news on this.  Email:  theplainsman1310@gmail.com

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Follow Your Plainsman on Twitter:  @plainsman1310

MAYBE NOT BREAKING NEWS: A Greggo Firing, But Probably Not THE Greggo Firing

An anonymous commenter to the prior article reports that Greg Williams just tweeted:

"TCUWhiteTrash GREGGO
I have so much 49'er information I want to share on our pre and post games shows on THE FAN...but.I was fired...and the other hosts agreed"

He questions whether this means Williams was just fired from Cowboy commentary, or his main weekday gig.  I've done a very quick and superficial Google search and I find no recent items re The Fan terminating Greggo's services generally.

However, this site did report on a Cowboys pre-game last year in early November where Greggo was there one minute, and not there the next.  You can read that report here:  AND AGAIN -- WHERE'S GREGGO?    As to whether he returned to Fan Sunday Cowboy programming in subsequent games, I don't know.

So I'm guessing that the Tweet means -- to the extent Greg's Tweets may be said to have useful, much less credible, substantive content -- that he was disinvited from the Cowboys pre- and post-game on The Fan, and not that he was fired from his daily host duties.  I would think he would have Tweeted more colorfully and fully had that taken place, and the Twittersphere would have exploded.

If any of our incredibly wired Confessors can fill us in on the inside baseball at The Fan regarding Greggo's Sunday duties, the Nation would be grateful to hear from you.

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Haven't caught the entire Ticket pre-game, but Rich, Mark F, and Junior sound great.  Bob Sturm is a splendid sports brain and broadcaster, but for a succinct, well-reasoned, elegantly-expressed sports analysis it's hard to beat Craig Miller.

Got a Question; Actually, a Question and Then a Little PS Question

OK, Cowboy season over.

At the beginning of this season, the national consensus was that the Cowboys had top talent, some depth, and were favored to make a strong run to a championship of one sort or another.  Although blown out in their final game in last season's playoffs, they finished strong during the regular season (especially the defense) and won a playoff game, yay.

Turns out, they sucked.

They sucked for a variety of reasons.  Phillips sucked.  Players with strong 2009s sucked in 2010.  There was a dinstinctive lack of on- and off-field nonsucking leadership among the elite players.  Coaches, oh yeah, they sucked too. 

Now that the whole season has sucked, however, I'm hearing things like "the talent was overrated" and "we've got to draft at [name any one of a half-dozen positions] because we have no depth and our starters suck."

In other words, the pre-season expert conseusus has completely turned around, and those same experts (and Cowboy fans who agreed with them) are now saying exactly the opposite.   Now mark:    They're not saying that the players just sucked in the course of playing their 2010 games -- they're saying that the talent level sucked from the outset.  

I don't propose to argue this one way or the other.  Here's my Tickety question:  Did anyone at The Ticket predict anything like this?

This is a sincere question, and not one intended to be critical.  There's no reason for the Ticket experts to have had any insights that the national experts didn't have.  I'm only curious as to whether anyone at The Ticket -- anyone, hosts, producers, weekend guys, Alexis, board ops, the Ticket Mouse -- saw this coming.  I'm not sure whether to count guys like Mike R who seem simply to dislike the Cowboys.  (Or am I wrong about that?  I may be.)  Yeah, I think we can count Mike R -- what was his pre-season outlook?  Was there a discouraging word from anyone up or down the broadcast day?

I don't get to hear Norm or BaD very often, so don't know their pre-season views on the Cowboys.  I have a dim memory that maybe Dan McDowell was skeptical. 

I recall an interview with a pre-season analyst who puts out a detailed mathematical analysis of the teams in some kind of a magazine or yearbook or something.  I think the interview was on BaD Radio.  The analyst thought that the Cowboys would be last in the division.  (I recall that among the reasons he gave was the age of the offensive line.)  I don't recall BaD's reaction.

As I say -- I'm not saying that the Ticket guys are bad analysts -- I'm just wondering if someone at the station deserves a pat on the back as having seen things more clearly than the rest of us way back when.  Maybe the Sports Humorist?

==========

PS:  Isn't Greg Williams usually on the Cowboys post-game show?  He doesn't seem to be on this evening.  Anyone know if he's on vacation for the holidays?  Has he been on RaGE?

Have a fine 2011, all.

Where's Greggo? -- Part 23

Tuned into The RaGE yesterday a little after five during a Hardline advertising/Traffico/Traffico/Ticker extravaganza.  I didn't hear Greg or any reference to him.  Anyone RaGE listeners out there who can enlighten us on whether the RaGE participants offered any explanations for his absence?

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New topic:    Face it, when you're alone in your car or just listening casually, you rarely laugh out loud at The Ticket.  Not because it isn't amusing, but because when you're flying solo there's no occasion for the social interaction that laughter enhances.  But today I had one of those solo LOL moments, actually, a couple -- The Musers' obit photo talk.

AND AGAIN -- WHERE'S GREGGO?

I'm going to need a hand from knowledgeable Confessors here:

I'm listening to the Cowboys pregame on The Ticket.  Sean Bass and Larry Brown.  They're doing a great job, a very impressive show.   Sean has prepped and it shows.  I've never been wild about Brown, always thought he was OK, but today he seemed to have some really good insights on what was going on with the Cowboys.

And Todd Archer -- on fire!  The best I've ever heard him.    Really incisive commentary on what was going on with the Cowboys.  Why don't we get this Todd on The Ranch Report?  I'm wondering if the Cowboys' suckitude frees some of these pundits to say what they think.  It's clear that sources within the Cowboys are worthless -- there is no reason in the world to worry about Cowboys insiders not talking to you if you're publically critical.  Whatever the reason, he basically implied that Wade Phillips is constitutionally incapable of telling the press the truth about his players.  Good stuff.

But that's not important now.

I thought I'd switch over and listen to the Fan 105.3 Cowboys pregame.  I'm not sure who all the personalities are on that show.  Coach Joe and another guy, and another guy, and Greg Williams.  I don't think Richie Whitt was on this pre-game.   But I will tell you this:  (1) I heard Greggo's voice briefly, see below.  (2) Christie Scales, after her hilarious interview with Jerry, sent it back to three people she named, one of which was "Greg."  (Jerry was almost rude, had no interest in answering questions, the shortest Jerry answers in history, and Christie was brilliant, having another question ready immediately when Jerry would clam up.  This may have been edited, but it sounded to me like Christie was totally on the ball.)    And I see in my internet research that the Hammer is supposed to be on this pre-game show.

OK, here's what I heard:  They were talking about "the frozen tundra" of Lambeau Field, and that led to a mention of NFL Films narrator John Fassenda, and one of the guys said that Fassenda was the best voice of the NFL, and then you heard Greg say:  "I resent that."  I guess it was supposed to be a joke, but since Greggo is not the voice of anything, it didn't make any sense, and the other guys on the broadcast were clearly taken aback.  In retrospect, I wonder whether maybe it was a drop.  But I don't think so.

That was the last I heard from Greggo for the hour or so remaining on the broadcast.  His name was never mentioned again.   When they were talking to Brad Scham, he referenced "Joe" and one other guy by name -- I was jogging at the time and didn't have any way to write this stuff down, was it "Wally"? -- but no mention of Hammer, and when the show signed off, his name was not mentioned.

So here's the question -- did Greggo just blow it again?  I did not hear the first part of the show, so I can't say 100% for sure that he was even on the show.  I certainly heard his voice, but it was so brief that, as I say, I can't say it wasn't a drop.  He apparently is supposed to be on the show, at least as of the time that Christie Scales taped her interview with Jerry.  But for at least the last hour of the show -- no Greg Williams.

So -- have we just experienced another Greggo the Hammer meltdown? 

Sorry I don't know any more about the personalities who are supposed to be on the Fan Cowboys pregame.  All I can say is that if Greg Williams was on that show, then he ran into a problem well before the show was over and was gonzo for over an hour before it ended.  If not, then I apologize to the Confessor Nation -- and to Greggo -- for this alarming post.

I invite knowledgeable Confessors to enlighten this site.  Many thanks.

You Can Depend on Greggo -- He'll Always Let You Down

So it appears that the return of Greg “Greggo” “the Hammer” “HeeHoo” Williams to non-drop radio via KSEY-AM 1230 (Seymour/Wichita Falls) has run its course. John Clay Wolfe, his benefactor at KSEY, has announced that he and HeeHoo have parted company over HeeHoo's compensation, and he will once again vanish from the airwaves.

Key phrases from Wolfe's blog entry:

       “he and I could not agree on the terms I believed we had ironed out in the beginning”

       “we couldn’t have been any further apart from getting a deal done”

       “the terms that I offered to Greg upon inception of this project . . . will still be on the table in the same form until further notice”

Sounds like an early handshake deal, a “let’s see how it goes” deal.  It apprently goes good (according to Your Plainsman's commenter Anonymous, HeeHoo "sounded better than he has in a long time").  (Thanks to Anon for the report.)

Comes time to settle on more permanent terms. Turns out, there’s no agreement. Either there was an honest misunderstanding at the outset; or J.C. Wolfe is reneging; or HeeHoo is trying to leverage his good reviews into a better deal than the one he had agreed to in order to get his foot in the door.

We can’t know the right and wrong of this situation. Maybe the emerging talk of possible syndication of the show suggested to HeeHoo that the handshake deal needed to be enhanced. Maybe some HeeHoo behind-the-scenes unpleasantness suggested to Wolfe that he take some steps to minimize his risk. And maybe there was just a plain old misunderstanding.

One thing I don’t see in Wolfe’s account is any talk of an agent or a lawyer involved on HeeHoo's behalf. An agent eager to get his client back into live radio might have been expected to counsel his client that he was no longer commanding the attention of program directors at major metropolitan radio outlets (who don’t have a lot of mad money themselves these days), but instead was sitting across the table from a guy who is trying to make a go of a 1-kilowatt AM that only reaches about 23 of HeeHoo's old fans.

Somebody in this little drama is deluded. I join most – although, I sense, a declining percentage – of the P1 Nation in wishing HeeHoo the absolute best and an eventual return to broadcasting to something other than open prairie. But just like you just gotta start somewhere, sometimes you just gotta re-start somewhere.