Two Quick Hits on AP's Scrubs/Patch Comments -- Actually, Not All That Quick, as It Turned Out

If you haven't read them yet, go back to the just-prior post and scroll down to his comments (there are other good ones in there):   http://myticketconfession.blogspot.com/2011/08/scrubspatch-voyage-continues.html

Two things I want to comment on:

(1) Among the pearls in AP's essay is his reminder that these guys are not full-time broadcasters.  They have other jobs.  Some, not all, of the co-hosts do not have long-time relationships.  As a result, their shows sometimes sound like a couple of jamokes sitting around having a sports argument in a saloon somewhere.  And, as AP suggests, this might well be a virtue if it doesn't get out of control, and if it doesn't become physically difficult to listen to (as it might if, for example, the hosts end up talking over and interrupting each other).

 

(2) A note on my own experience with Ticket personnel: 

I was interested in AP's comment that his participation in online Ticket sites brings him into contact with Ticket personalities in ways that tends to give him a rooting interest in the guys he's in touch with. 

Y'all can see for yourselves how often Ticket guys identify themselves as commenters on this site.  Not very often.  Even more rare is a personal email from a Ticket guy who identifies himself.  (No TicketChicks have checked in to date.)  As the site has gotten more popular, however, it's clear that at least a handful of Ticket guys check it with some regularity.  Maybe more.

I also have strong reason to believe that several Cumulo-Ticket insiders comment anonymously, which is both a blessing and a curse.  A blessing, because they can pass along (what seems to me to be) credible inside information, sometimes technical, usually not competitively sensitive, that Ticket fans will find of interest and that can correct speculations that I throw out as well as my factual errors.  A curse because comments from anonymous insiders carry with them the possibility of manipulation -- not just manipulation of this site and Confessors' perception of the station, but manipulation of the anonymous poster's own position at The Ticket (if, indeed, responsible Cumulo-Ticket Overlords visit the site at all, for which I have almost no evidence).  Nothing I can do about it, nor would I even if I knew who the anonymous C-T insider posters might be.  Part of the intrigue of the online world we're all inhabiting these days.

But let's put the suspected C-T anonymous commenters to the side:  AP has identified an occupational hazard of a site like this, and this is as good a time as any to confess (of course) to it:    I'm a fan.  I like The Ticket guys, and it is an affection that, over the years, at least feels personal.  I want them to like me, too.  (Which, given my anonymity to date, I admit sounds fairly ridiculous.)    So the temptation is to be flattered when one of these more-or-less public figures takes the time to write, even if it's to disagree with something in the site, or to correct what they believe is a mistaken opinion I hold.  In addition to the hey-it's-cool-that-a-Ticket-guy-is-communicating-with-us factor, Ticket guys who make themselves known to this site are opening themselves up to adverse comment and further controversy -- including, I'm guessing, the occasional stern note from C-T management about confidentiality.  So they get some points for bravery, too.

And indeed, when one hears the other side of the story, there is an inevitable softening of one's view about whatever the controversy happens to be at the time.

This is a particular hazard for this site.  At the risk of betraying excessive self-regard, I think one of the reasons the site has attracted more followers as time has gone by is that I make an effort to offer praise and support where The Ticket succeeds (and let's face it -- it succeeds way more often than it stumbles), along with the critiques and suggestions.  And, irrespective of my own views, to present the other side of the story through the encouragement -- and, more recently, highlighting -- of the more thoughtful commentary from Confessors.  It may not always be as fun to read as the flame wars, but I'm looking for readers who care about the station and think creatively about it. 

I'm guessing that the Cumulo-Ticket Overlords and their on-air thralls are interested in those citizens as well, the P1's who listen carefully and opine thoughtfully about this large part of their lives.  If the CTO think this site has an ax to grind on behalf of some particular host or other guy, they'll write MTC off as just a (much, much) wordier version of some of the other more rambunctious sites for Ticket venting.

So while I love hearing from Ticket personnel, and while I cannot claim complete immunity from some uptick in sympathy and support for those who take the time to communicate, I do try to maintain some distance.  I've still never met a Ticket guy at any level, although there are several whose hand I'd like to shake sometime, just to say hello and thanks.  I've never called the station or a showgram.  I've never emailed any C-T management (other than in the very early days of this site when I would occasionally send them a link to a post, trying to scare up some interest).   I've probably spent a total of a half hour at remotes in the last seven years.  I don't personally know any of the commenters on this site, including AP.

So, as I think AP's comments suggest, there's a tension between the interest of guys like him and me in getting closer to The Ticket insider community, and wanting to keep faith with readers.  Just know that I have it in mind and hope to keep the latter under control and the former uppermost in mind.  If I weaken, I'm sure you'll let me know.

*     *     *

Follow Your Plainsman on Twitter:  @Plainsman1310

AP's Excellent Adventure with JJT

We are all indebted to The (Incomparable) UnTicket, and this site is particularly indebted to one of its mainstays, the no-less-incomparable-for-being-a-natural-person AP.  He is a Confessor of long standing and frequent commenter, providing great information and opinion with a nice light touch.

Best, he has given this site permission to pass along his informative and entertaining account of the conclusion of Jean-Jacques Taylor's affiliation with The Ticket, as well as his own interaction with the redoubtable JJT and some JJT fans.  He also offers some tasteful commentary on the whole megillah.

My gratutide to AP for this contribution to My Ticket Confession.  It follows:

=====

Here's my understanding of events.  Sometime a few months ago (Christmas?), as part of the DMN [Dallas Morning News] partnership with the ticket, JJT became an on-air presence.  I think it started as a fill-in gig with a regular ticket host (Donny? Rich? I can't remember) that only lasted a few shows.

That then turned into a regular weekend gig with one Scot Harrison, who seems to be an acquaintance of the morning Musers.  I caught the first few shows, but thought it was rather light on comedic content so I only tuned in for the CDS [Cirque du Sirois] mix.  I believe it was around this time that you wrote an article about not being able to hear his voice clearly, Plainsman.

Another drydock opportunity presented itself when Norm went fishing, and I recall that Cirque du Sirois was originally announced as the fill-in show.  Being a CDS footsoldier, I was looking forward to it...but at the last minute, the Soul Patch was inserted.  I remember being quite upset with the programming decision, and I also remember wondering if JJT had "pulled rank" and asked for his show to fill in over CDS.  I think my rationale was that (A) Norm had mentioned CDS was going to fill in before he’d left on vacation, and a few promos may have run indicating this and (B) I tweeted Cash & Mike asking what had happened and I think they suggested I ping Cat [Ticket Program Director Jeff Catlin], which I did.  Around this time, I started wondering if JJT may have been angling for a career in radio.  [NOTE TO AP:  DID YOU EVER HEAR FROM CAT?]

JJT and Scot’s show (which was eventually named The Soul Patch) became a fixture in Elf’s old slot, and I started following JJT on Twitter as he’d now become part of the Ticket family.   I also started listening to their show on a more regular basis.  I noticed that JJT seemed to be using his Twitter account to promote his show by re-tweeting positive comments (and the occasional negative one as well).  I also noticed that JJT was a bit touchy over Twitter as well, as he’d call out his critics by writing things like “If you have less than 20 followers and 100 tweets, I’m not trying to hear what you’re saying” and then following up with “If you think I’m talking about you, then I am, if you don’t, then I’m not” (heavily, heavily paraphrased).

Another drydock took place a month ago, giving the Soul Patch another chance to fill in for Norm’s show for a week.  JJT went into Twitter overdrive, retweeting what seemed to be every show-related comment he would receive.  This is when I became convinced that JJT was trying to prove to someone that he was capable of attracting and growing an audience.  Some of his tweets were sports-related, and a few offered the level of insight he’d provide in his columns or on Norm’s show, but overall, I found the signal-to-noise ratio to be very low.  It’s tough to deliver content, context and/or comedy in 140 characters, but a few sports reporters do tend to pull it off.

On July 4th, the Hardline was doing what had to be the drunkest show they’ve ever done.  Corby had been working on his Scot Harrison imitation over the last few days, and he was mimicking a Soul Patch promo.  After Corby was done, he said something to the effect of “By the way, has he left yet?  Has that been announced? Are we allowed to talk about that yet?  He’s not? Oh.”  Two weeks later, JJT moves over to Sports Walmart (thanks Mike Marshall).

For kicks, I tweeted aloud the following a week after JJT had left:

Now that @JacquesTaylor has left the KTCK family for the dark side, I'm not sure why I (as a P1) should continue following him. Comments?

One of the first few responses came from Jacques himself:
why don't do u do what u want to do instead of asking for advice#toughdecisions

A few P1’s took up the KTCK pitchfork and said they’d never listen to him because of his ESPN affiliations.  A few more seemed to take issue to my comment, notably:

TacoRobber  @ap_cdn @JacquesTaylor if a radio call sign is all it takes to stand between u and the best/rawest coverage in metroplex then I say unfollow
DocBrownsToilet:  @JacquesTaylor I enjoy the attitude you have toward those who would lob twitter grenades at ESPN. Such serious business.

(Note that I don’t have any issue with either of those people, and I tried my best to follow up with them, including JJT...I try not to be a standoffish tweeter!)

I still follow JJT (much like I follow Bryan Broaddus, Todd Archer, Mickey Spagnola and other non-ticket affiliates) for their Cowboy observations.  I still wish that JJT’s twitter signal-to-noise ratio would improve, though.

Norm eventually touched on the subject on air a week after JJT had left.  Apparently, Jacques had taken a month-long vacation from the DMN before he quit to go to ESPN.  His last drydock appearance on the Ticket took place during this time, well after drive-time hosts knew about his imminent departure.
This follows the trend of guys like Calvin Watkins, Tim McMahon and Todd Archer of veteran DFW sports reporters jumping off of sinking print-media ships to go to ESPN. 

The Soul Patch carries on with Scot Harrison and Byron Anderson, and a few loyal Soul Patch P1’s still listen as regularly as they did with JJT.  Goose Gosselin now takes JJT’s place as the opinion writer for the DMN.  I don’t know if Jacques will take an on-air role with ESPN; I haven’t seen anything to that effect yet.  He still seems to listen to the Soul Patch and from what I see on twitter, still maintains amicable relationships with Roy White (producer) and his former co-host Scot.

===================

Again, my thanks to AP.  

*     *     *

Follow Your Plainsman on Twitter:  @Plainsman1310

Your Plainsman Congratulates Sportsradio 1310 The Ticket on Its New Victory Park Studios -- and, As Usual, Has a Few Questions

I expected this, reading between the lines of some of the banter in the programs. No, I didn’t know it was Victory Park, but I figured the lease was up there hard by Turtle Creek.

My Ticket Confession congratulates The Ticket on this move. Although apparently they’re dragging the other raggedy-ass Cumulus properties along with them. One would like to think that this was an acknowledgement of The Ticket’s contribution to Cumulus’s bottom line and an enhancement of the broadcast quality. But no, sounds more like their lease was up and they got a deal.

So although it’s great news – we want our favorite hosts to operate in attractive surroundings – I’m not entirely sure why it should be cause for celebration among the P1 Nation. I guess we’re all expecting that the technical issues that plague The Ticket – signal aside – will abate. Is there any reason to believe this? Has anyone heard that the move will involve improved hardware or software? Isn’t it a lot more likely that they’re just going to move their stuff from the old place to the new place? I didn’t hear the announcment on the station, I’m just reading the publicly released stuff, so maybe something was said about getting some new stuff. But I think it’s more likely that we’ll hear even more technical screwups than we hear every day as they work out the bugs in the new studios. I hope not.

(And by the way – why isn’t there a link to this announcement on http://www.theticket.com/? )

And I’m wondering whether the lessor’s agent maybe needs to get clued in to the new tenants’ actual business. From the release:

“Brokaw said about 85 people will work in the new Cumulus office. ‘It will bring more people to the district,’ he said. ‘It provides Cumulus with a great venue for people to come see their programs.’”

Brokaw needs some gentle instruction on the nature of freakin’ RADIO. And broadcasting from the Old No. 7 Club or the AA Center is going to be just as much a remote as it is now.

At least the hosts can now park in the P1 Garage they’re always flogging.

In any event, I’m a lot more interested in the pending AM power increase, the details of which have been unearthed by the Incomparable AP and reported in a comment to Your Plainsman’s article here (see Comment 10). This power increase is of particular interest given Greg “Greggo” “Hammer” Williams’s move to drive time on 100,000-watt The Fan 105.3 and a fairly direct challenge to The Hardline. I’ll have more to say about that in future articles.

In any event, I hope the move goes well and that I’m wrong about just rearranging the ENCO on the Titanic.

Compare and Contrast: The Hardline in New York -- The Musers in San Francisco

Celebrity Confessor AP from The (incomparable) UnTicket has requested that I comment on the visits of the respective drive-time programs to New York and San Francisco.   (See his comment no. 6 to my prior post on my Ron Washington theories.)   It is AP's feeling that as the Ticket's "baseball show of record," perhaps The Hardline should have been sent to San Francisco instead of The Musers.

I guess the first thing we have to consider in this particular case is that this was probably not a radio station decision -- I'm guessing it was a sponsor decision because the sponsor (StubHub) actually footed the bill for the trip and provided the tickets, if I understood the hosts of both shows correctly.  They chatted with the nice lady who runs StubHub a couple of times on each showgram.   StubHub might well have thought that it would get more bang for the buck by spreading the stubs around a little.

Let's put that aside and examine these road trips from the listeners' perspective. 

A couple of thoughts:

(1)  These are radio talk shows.   They're not The Amazing Race where one's physical surroundings are a significant part of the actual broadcast.  So the value of a road trip can only be discerned in the difference between what we hear every day on the air and what we hear when they broadcast from the road. 

I was struck by this during Cowboys training camp this year.  I always think that it's going to be cool to hear them broadcast from training camp, and then  .  .  .  I can't recall a single Cowboy insight from any of the showgrams this year (in fairness, I seldom heard Norm or BaD) that resulted from their presence at the training camp.  Now there were some bits -- Corby's hit-and-run interviews of Cowboys after practice and various hangers-on, the Musers' encounters on the street at night.  Both of those can be very entertaining.  Were they worth it to The Ticket sending the broadcast teams and technical crews down to San Antonio for however long it was?  Don't know.  Doubt that Cumulus gets more ad revenue from road trips.  Or maybe it's a promotional thing, they do it so they can say they did it.  A goodwill thing, point of pride.  Did it result in significantly enhanced (1) radio broadcasting or (2) Cowboys insight?   Maybe a little bit.  Little tiny bit. 

Point is -- road trips don't do much for me one way or the other. 

In fact, now that I think about it -- this year I don't evem remember the drive shows doing any sit-down player interviews with the hosts.  I may be misremembering this, but in years past I seem to recall that they had players and coaches lined up to do a bunch of interviews but it's not coming to mind this time around.  (Not that I miss player/coach interviews -- they seldom have much of interest to say, and when they do say something interesting, there's always the risk they'll get in some trouble.  So who cares about player/coach interviews and, for that matter press conferences?)   So if you're not going to interact significantly with the activity that has brought you on the road trip, what exactly is the point?

(2) Turning to AP's thoughts on the Hardline/Musers:

I agree with AP that the Hardline is more Rangeriffic.  Even Danny arises from his cynical cultural torpor to show some enthusiasm for, and knowledge of, baseball.   And, of course, Mike is Baseball Jeebus.

I'm not sure that the relatively greater advertised fondness of The Hardline for the Rangers translates into a better experience for the listener.  Hard to say.  I'm not sure the stories of the hard partying when the Hardline boys go out of town is of great interest to the listener.  Sounds kind of like guys whose minds might not entirely be on The Great Game.  We do get an account of their travels to Yankee Stadium and their time at the game, and that's interesting to listen to.  But we didn't get much man-on-the-street this time around.  I will say that I did like Danny's brief reports from Yankee Stadium on the day when they sent him on ahead because the game conflicted with their broadcast.  I know Danny isn't everyone's cup of tea, but for some reason the jamoke just tickles me.  But The Hardline's presence in New York City really didn't leave much of an impression that was a result of them being there. 

The Musers, of course, are broadcasting in the dead of night in San Francisco, so other than their game account, -- which, like The Hardline's was interesting -- we get recorded audio of their encounters.  Which, it must be said, are greater in number than the Hardline.  And pretty well done.  Each guy collected some tape. 

I don't want to say that I like The Musers in San Fran better than I liked The Hardline in New York, or the other way around either.  I will say that each show exhibited their characteristics with about the same vividness as they do in the studio -- the ramshackle, not-much-show-prep Hardline, and the more buttoned-down, spread-the-duties Musers.   Liked 'em both.  Not hearing a whole lot of gee-whiz arising out of their proximity to the Rangers post-season, but maybe some marginal sizzle.  They're both great in their own way.

But neither is a whole lot greater on road trips.

So to answer your question, AP -- I can't say that The Hardline's baseballphilia earns them any greater entitlement to post-season ball on location.   I might feel differently if they had used their their enthusiasm -- and their media contacts -- to more colorful effect in NYC, but they didn't line up much beyond the New-York-is-Cool stuff.  So I'm OK with the Musers in the City by the Bay.