The Nation Is Restless

Holy crud-o-mighty, 80 comments to the last thread.  Record hits.   Some great comments, and some fine newcomers.  Can't tell you how grateful I am for all of your comments, expertise, and thoughtfulness.

But some in the Confessor Nation are unhappy with me for not providing fresh MTC fodder. (At least one is unhappy with the whole concept of a Confessor Nation.) 

It's true.  I'm sorry about that.  I've been out of town, tied up with family stuff, working on work stuff, not feeling tippy-top.  Jeebus, I've had GOUT.  Guys in my demo and physical condition are not supposed to get gout.  Like something out of an old New Yorker cartoon.

When I hear something that I think might make an interesting article, I write it down on a list.  My list is now six typed pages long.

The problem is that there is usually something of current interest, or something that the Nation has gotten excited about.   Stuff of interest to write about.   Which means that all those interesting topics recede into the past and get stale.  I mean, who wants to read about T.C.'s big prank, asking hosts to provide bit topics for him in late night calls?  Matt McClearin's account of alien encounter is deep in the past.  Interested in my latest thoughts on Gum Out ads?    I didn't think so.  If you want me to dip into the stale topic archives, let me know.

Now, as it happens, some of the topics on my list would still work.  Not as exciting as the recent tech flameout, but they'd do.    And I've got a Hot Sports Opinion in the oven that, unfortunately for you, is actually about sports.  I'm going to try to get to TicketStock next week for an on-scene report.  But tonight -- none of it looks like much fun to me after the recent behind-the-scenes drama.

So I thought I'd take this opportunity to find out if you sometime get the same feeling that I do.

I've been unavoidably away from the channel, and I don't have a lot of time to go back and check out what The UnTicket has selected for us.

And, as has happened from time to time in the past, I found out that I didn't miss it all that much.  Sometimes I can't wait to get back to the Ticket-listening routine; sometimes, takes me a day or two to get back into the habit. 

It has nothing to do with The Ticket itself.  I listen to the showgrams, they're perfectly fine, no one boring me, no one making me angry, no one being a jerk.  The SweetJack commercials are even starting to recede into the overall commercial noise.  I just sort of  .  .  .  forget.  I got to work this morning, realized about a half-hour later that I'd forgotten to switch the Musers on.  3:30 rolls around, I can usually spin The Hardline and do so nearly every day possible -- again, just kind of passed me by.

So sometimes, for reasons having nothing to do with any deficiencies coming out of the speakers, I take a break from The Ticket.   Sometimes I check out the competition, see if there are any topics popping up there, but it's usually so unlistenable that I switch the Philco over to KNTU 88.1 or some Real Jazz or Little Steven's Underground Garage or Deep Tracks on Sirius XM.  But usually back to The Little One.

Oh, I'll be back with an HSO pretty soon, and, shortly thereafter, I hope, with an STD.

Ever take a break from The Ticket?  And if you do, how do you spend that listening time?

And if that doesn't interest you -- the topic list is always wide open at MTC.

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Email Your Plainsman:  ThePlainsman1310@gmail.com

Living La Vida Ticket -- PART 2

[You can read Part 1 here.]

In Part 1, I began some rather diffuse musings on the relationship of the P1 to The Ticket.  My question was whether those who are not as devoted to the station have a point when they deride the fanatic devotion that many of us feel towards The Little One.  I asked how Confessors listened to the station and got a variety of responses, most of which sounded a fair amount like my own listening habits. 

Makes sense.  The ratings have been stratospheric for a long time, so obviously lots of people are listening, and since the ratings for the shows are tops up and down the broadcast day, they're obviously listening a lot. 

So -- are we excessively geeked over The Ticket?  Are we the radio equivalent of Star Wars enthusiasts (sorry, Ty, I love Star Wars, too) or people who confuse their video game experience with actual living?

I've lived in major metro areas on both coasts and the Midwest.   I have listened to sports radio for as long as it's been around.  Some pretty good stations, some interesting hosts.  When I married Mrs. Plainsman, we were living elsewhere, but her family is all here and I had no family where we were living.  It was inevitable that we would move to the Dallas area, and we did so in 2004.

I was looking forward to living in Dallas.  No, not because of the TV show.  I believed I would find a progressive modern city that had done what many metro areas had done with their downtowns.  I apologize to all DFW natives and other enthusiasts, but I was and remain disappointed.  (I wrote an article on my feelings about Dallas here.)  Since that article, we've had the debacle of the Super Bowl week.  Yeah, unusual ice and snow -- but the fact is that Dallas gets lots of ice storms compared with other cities because its temperature hovers around freezing more than elsewhere.   The city's response to this would have been appalling even if it hadn't occurred during the most anticipated sporting event in the country; its torpid reaction to the weather emergency during SB Week was symptomatic of a city that's governed by amateurs. 

Enough.  So I find myself in this overhyped city thinking I'll probably live out my days here, and not too happy about it.  (Other than my relationship with Mrs. Plainsman's family, which is delightful.)

But then one day, weaving down the expressway on my way to work poking at the scan function on my car radio, I cruise into one of The Ticket's in-and-out pockets of signal coverage and fortuitously punch in 1310 Amplitude Modulation and hear Those Oh-So-Gentle Musers trading quips about something or other.  I'm not sure if I picked up on whether it was supposed to be a sports-talk situation, but it was clearly some guys who were having a good time and not hollering into the mics or talking over one another.

I eventually figured out that they were on 104.1 Frequency Modulation too, and by adroitly switching back and forth I could usually cobble together a reasonably coherent listening experience.

And from that point on, my Dallas experience got a lot better.

So I think that if I'm honest with myself I have to concede that I do have an emotional attachment to The Ticket.  It's more than just passing entertainment for me.  As I mentioned in Part 1, running this site gives me a somewhat different relationship with the station -- it's more of a hobby than it would otherwise be -- but even in the pre-MTC days I always looked forward to my daily dose of humor, outrage, bad taste, the occasional nugget of information, fart drops, and almost no unpleasant news of the world.  During those hours, I probably am living La Vida Ticket.

But I don't feel geeky.  My admiration, while vast, is not unqualified.  That's what this site is about:  celebrating what's great about the station (most of it) and (I hope fairly) raising concerns where they appear.  The Little One cultivates a personal relationship with its audience, and, like any friendship, it has its rocky patches.  The P1 may stumble through them from time to time, but the friendship endures.

My conclusion:  Factoring out the hours I spend on this site, I think my relationship with Sportsradio 1310 The Ticket is just about perfect, and has not warped my personality to the point of obsession.

Factoring back in those hours  .  .  .  maybe, some.  (Can one be a little obsessive?)

So I'll leave you with this question:   Irrespective of when or for how long you listen, how do you actually feel about your relationship with The Ticket?  Not The Ticket itself -- I assume we all like it a lot -- but the extent to which it affects your life?  That's a pretty touch-feely question, but it has been on my mind for awhile.  Do you sometimes, like I do, feel like you're living The Ticket Life?

Living La Vida Ticket -- PART 1

I’ve been kicking this one around for awhile.  It’s still not well formed so  it will meander somewhat more than is my custom, and that's some meandering.     I’ll leave you with a question which I hope will provoke some comments, and I’ll bounce off those comments for Part 2.

Most of the people who visit this site like The Ticket.   There is the occasional naysayer with a grudge of one kind or another, either against this site or a Ticket personality, or, on occasion, with The Little One itself.   Once in awhile, a commenter will take me or the Confessor Nation to task for taking it all too seriously, for, in effect, caring too much about what is, after all, just a sports/guy-talk radio station.

I blather on a lot about fairness in these articles, so let’s be fair to these critics:  Are they right?  What does it mean to be a P1?  Does it materially affect our lives?  Would we really miss it if it disappeared tomorrow?   Certainly the station encourages its listeners to listen every moment of every day.  Mike daily requires listeners to mill about the premises making sure that every radio is turned to The Ticket.

So I invite you to join me in an informal exploration of the impact of The Ticket on our daily lives; whether it is a positive or negative influence; and if your relationship with the station has changed over the years.

I believe that almost without exception – and perhaps without any exception – Ticket personalities deeply and sincerely appreciate the loyalty and enthusiasm of the P1.  They express it on the air.  Most pay some attention to email and Twitter exchanges.   The station spends an enormous amount of energy and cash staging free events that the P1 enjoys.  This site occasionally hears from station personnel, and on very rare occasions I’ll get a private email of comment, correction, or appreciation.

And yet, do you sometimes get the feeling that even they are overwhelmed with the obsession that some listeners exhibit?  Don’t you sometimes hear jeez, give it a rest in their voices?  I’m going to explore the relationship between the P1 and the hosts as human beings in an upcoming post, but the point I want to make here is that it’s not just grumpy commenters that exhibit occasional impatience with the intensity of some listeners’ enthusiasm for 1310 AM/104.1 FM.

The Ticket does play a big role in my life, and I would have said that even if I’ve never started this site.   It is the case that keeping this this site going has changed that role.   My need to come up with topics of interest to The Nation means I listen with greater care, scribble down things that strike me, and get by the channel during times when in my pre-MTC life I might have been spending my time in that most idyllic of states -- quiet burger reflection.

But for guys like me and AP and maybe a couple of others we hear from, following The Ticket has turned into a fairly time-consuming hobby.  This site started in 2009, and after a slow start where I was talking mainly to myself, I’ve averaged around 15-20 posts a month.   (I’ll never forget the Confessor who, after I’d been blog-silent for awhile and maybe would get a handful of hits a day, wrote to say how much he liked the site and how I should write more.  Got me going.)  I keep a list of potential topics.  Looked at it the other day.   Got about forty items on it right now.  A lot of them are stale; others look less interesting to me now than they did when I wrote them down.  Others are gigantic topics that would take me chunks of time I haven’t had the last few months.  (By the way – I do a general-interest blog that I neglect and that I have more than once thought of emphasizing at the expense of this one – to date, it’s decidedly the other way around.)    Others I realize I’ve done already.  For example, among my recent favorite moments on The Hardline are the Mike/Corby live spots for GumOut – but I did a piece on that last July [LINK]..     (But wait!   I just noticed something interesting in rereading that article.  Ooo, I’m going to save this one.  The only thing I can promise is that it will be another one of my Listening Too Hard entries.)  

A typical gathering of P1's

But let’s put aside my extra Ticket obligations, since they are atypical.  Here’s the extent of my devotion to The Ticket:   I begin listening right around 5:30 am, as Rich is finishing up his pre-Musers Ticker.  Mrs. Plainsman indulges my listening while we share the bathroom, as long as I turn on cable news before I leave.  I have a fairly long commute, and I get to my workplace almost two hours before the place starts hopping.   So I listen to The Musers from the beginning of the show until the 8:40 bit, which I’m going to hear the next morning anyway.  I’ll miss the last hour and change.   If I’m on the road during the day I listen to Norm and BaD, but unfortunately those opportunities are limited.  If I’m paying attention to the clock, I’ll flip on The Hardline sometime between 3:30 and 4, and listen as much as I can for the balance of the work day, on the drive home, and at home until I hear Mrs. Plainsman putting the oxen back in the shed.  I am fortunate to have an employer who lets me have a radio on in my work area. 

I should listen to the Top Ten to get some notion of what Norm and BaD are up to, but family duties, the other blog, and even writing these pieces invariably intrude.   I’ll strap on a radio and headset if I’m off for a jog or bike ride (although in general, I think it’s dangerous to listen to the radio whilst biking and I’ve pretty much quit that).   I listen as much as I can on weekends.  I don’t listen to podcasts; alas, I rarely even listen to clips on The (Incomparable) UnTicket unless it’s a big deal that a site like this should know about or something that AP has commended.  I don’t follow anyone on Twitter.   I only very rarely ever stream the station if I’m not in range of the sputtering terrestrial signal.

I’ve only been to a couple of remotes, and then only briefly to check in.  (Remotes are on my article-to-do list.)  Never been to a Ticket event.  Never called a show.  Never spoken to a Ticket employee other than once at a remote just to say a brief “thanks” before I left, which the host politely acknowledged.  Wait, I think I asked a Ticket Chick for a T-shirt once.  Don’t have any buddies or relatives who listen much at all. 

So there you have the extent of my average-guy devotion to The Ticket.  Four to six hours a day during the week, and probably two to four hours over the entire weekend.

That doesn’t strike me as a crazy Ticket-listening schedule.  I listen when I can and when the time is otherwise unchallenged by much of any other activity.    I’d like to know how you guys (and Jonaessa, and Christie, and all distaff Confessors) listen to The Ticket.  I’d also be interested in your thoughts not on The Ticket’s content, but on how you feel about the time you spend with it. 

I’ll conclude next time with some thoughts on how the P1 relates to The Ticket, and whether the Ticket-geek accusation has some truth to it.