MTC Congratulates the Teebox

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I'm not a golfer but I've always gotten a kick out of the Teebox.  Not just in anticipation of a Craig Rosengarden malapropism; it's a cool listen at work on Saturday mornings, 8 to 10.  Craig and Rick Arnett, a Ticket pioneer, have a nice easy manner, and like Rich Phillips and NASCAR, because of the skill of the broadcasters I find myself listening with some interest to talk about a subject I care nothing about.

However, this site has on several occasions noted that Teebox remotes were the worst-sounding show on The Ticket.  I won't repeat the detail, but the sound on their remotes was gargly and gravelly and hard to listen to.  Here are some early reports:

The Teebox Sounds Absolutely Terrible This Morning

Once Again, the Teebox Seems to be Broadcasting from Pluto

It never got any better, and I eventually quit mentioning it. 

The other day I thought I heard Rick say that they'd gotten some new equipment for their remotes.  I tuned in last week and my impression was that someone needed to get his money back, there was still a hedgehog in the gear somewhere.  But this morning they're broadcasting from a Park Place dealership in Fort Worth and it sounds great, studio quality.  So they must have gotten the toys installed.

It didn't seem right that they'd be so handicapped in their mix'n'mingle with George DiGianni.  Aurally, at least, they can now hold their own with him and The Orphanage.  Congratulations to them.

July 17, 2012

7:24 a.m.:   Stream down.

Ticket computers down, at least in the period prior to The Musers' 5:30 start.  At 5:35, Junior referred to it as "sabotage."  A minute or two ago, they made reference to computers being down again.

Did yesterday's Muser invasion over Gordon's promo recording make yesterday's Top 10?

Now there's an echo from time to time.  Faint, but very audible in the replay of the Fake Jason Kidd interview.

Speaking of which:  Pretty savage Fake Jason Kidd, essentially accusing him of illiteracy. 

OPEN THREAD -- More Tech Talk

OK, folks, I'm out for awhile with Mrs. Plainsman on vacay way far away.  Will not be listening to The Ticket.  I have an STD (Scorching Ticket Disquisition, for newcomers) in the hopper but it's not quite ripe yet.  Thought I'd at least get a fresh thread started so visitors wouldn't have to scroll through 50 comments.

While the out-and-out catastrophes seem to have abated for the time being, the station still sounds awful (I also have a budding  STD on that topic that needs a little more time on the vine) and there are still a lot of errors.  After a brief post-Jake-suspension period of silence, the on-air grumbling has returned.  

Commenters have noticed that Cumulus is looking for a new Chief Engineer for DFW.  I don't know enough about the hierarchy to know who this person would replace, or if it is a new position, or if it is for all the DFW Cumulus stations or fewer than all.  I was under the impression that the host-reviled Brett Blankenship was not a DFW guy but a little further upstairs at Cumulus.  On LinkedIn his title is "Market Engineering Manager, Tulsa, Oklahoma Area," but I dunno, maybe he's been posted here to supervise the bungled Victory rollout.  But I'm guessing he is not being replaced.  Anyone with a better idea, please weigh in.

Nothing to leave you with here except to get your impressions of station performance since the major meltdowns of a few weeks ago.

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Not sure when I'll be returning, so I'll have to rely on you guys to switch gears in the comments if something comes up.  Will try to keep an eye on comments, but maybe not.   Carry on, and hope to see you down the road.

[One last note on the last thread:  Some commenters have recommended that I start screening comments.  It's not a bad idea and I'm thinking about it.  I don't do it for two reasons.  The less-important reason is that I don't have time.  The more-important reason is that it has come to pass that when something breaks ("literally" and figuratively) at the channel, this site gets swarmed and commenters have the news way before I do.  So (1) I am hoping the site can continue to be a source for breaking Ticket news, and (2) I don't want Confessors to be discouraged by having to wait until 9 p.m. to see their and their co-Confessors' comments.  Once-a-day review would also eliminate much of the entertaining and informative give-and-take that commenters provide by being able to respond to one another in real time.  For now, we'll risk the occasional inappropriate comment.]

Thank you for continuing to shop at My Ticket Confession.

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The Hits Just Keep on Coming

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I don't know what kind of gag order the CTO has imposed on our heroes, but it's not working extremely well.

(1)  After the wretched "Up Your Ticket" ad ran on The Musers this morning, Junior said:  "I hadn't heard that.  Is it running?"  And George mumbled some slighting comment I don't remember.  Mortifying.

(2)  According to Confessors, continued stream issues.  

(3)  Gordon talks about how nice today's broadcast van is, Junior observes that it's because it is not a Cumulus asset.  Then they talk in rather disrespectful tones about an unnamed Cumulus technical guy, and Junior said that there was "a zero percent chance" that this unnamed technical guy could have made the broadcast work.   Pretty harsh stuff.  Several Confessors have expressed the view that of all the hosts, Junior is the loosest in the socket and might seek his destiny elsewhere.  Remarks like that certainly are consistent with that point of view.

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Isn't it nice not to have to suffer through any awkward Muser interviews with Peter Gammons this year?

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Ticket Tribute Guy is up with a blast at Cumulus tech.  http://tickettribute.com/2012/06/18/devils-quadrilateral-of-radio/

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Please treat this thread as open re stream news, issues, workarounds so the P1 can have one-stop shopping on this stuff.  If the CTO doesn't realize the importance of the stream to the station's popularity, then  .  .  .  well, hell, the CTO doesn't seem to understand much of anything about technical conversions, so never mind.

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June 7, 2012

7:58 a.m. --  A Confessor sends along this link regarding anti-Cumulus anger in San Fran, and a possible rally against management in support of another popular station Cumulus is said to have screwed, KFOG.  Here is a link to a very short reference: 

http://richliebermanreport.blogspot.com/2012/06/breaking-listeners-revolt-against.html

I agree with the commenter to that blog who said that it won't help, and I can't imagine the P1 bestirring itself to do anything similar here.  I do agree with the commenter who said that until the advertisers start leaving, nothing will happen.

8:00 a.m. -- This morning Rich Phillips took over Gordon's Muse/News duties.  He was grumbling about this and stated that "The P1's hate me." 

Is that true?  This site is not the Voice of the P1, but I am actually a fairly stout Rich Phillips fan, after some initial misgivings.  His Tickers are crisp, I like him as a host with Donovan and a Sturm sidekick during Cowboy season.  He's got an acerbic sense of humor, but at least he's got one.  His skills make Race Week listenable for me, who cares nothing about NASCAR.  And he's an absolutely first-rate play-by-play guy for the 'Stangs. 

8:06 a.m. -- Can we get a detailed report on the technical problems yesterday on The Hardline, and Mike's reaction?

8:07 p.m. -- Some miscreant from Ankara, Turkey, just attempted to access this site's gmail account.

May 31, 2011

8:40 a.m. -- Let's keep talking about unrest at The Ticket, it's delicious if rather unsettling to those of us who would prefer a smoothly running Little One with hosts and JV focused on bringing us only the highest-quality sports-guy-talk entertainment.

But I do have an off-topic question:  I keep hearing these Driverselect.com ads by Bob, Dan, and Donovan, and I ask myself -- are those prices for the described vehicles really that good?  Aren't those prices for late-model used vehicles about in the ballpark for car-lot prices?  Those discounts they trumpet are not from the purchase price of the vehicle, but from MSRP.  Not trying to screw BaD's endorsements up, but offhand those prices seem pretty un-head-turning to me.  I recently did some car shopping and checked the used prices on the model I was looking at -- nothing to write home about.  Any car guys out there:  What's the deal on Driverselect?


9:15 a.m. --  OPEN THREAD NOTICE:  Our priceless colleague AP from The (Incomparable) UnTicket has requested that Confessors assist in creating a list of all the screwed-up broadcasts, events, and technical issues that have plagued The Ticket in the last six months for a project he is compiling.  Please respond with dates and details if possible, and if not possible, describe the problem you heard.  I'll start with a couple.


    --  Frequently overdriven microphones (some use the term "overmodulated").

      --  Mics missing spit guards or screens, according to Danny, so that Ps and Ss pop and hiss.  (Gordon's live spot this morning was awful.)

      --  Televisions not timely installed in the studio, and installation is a physical mess (see the photo Cash Sirois sent awhile back)

      --  TeeBox transmission took place in the midst of a swamp of static on May 12, I think it was.

      --  TeeBox remotes are always of poor sound quality, Rick and Craig end up with a gargly, gravelly, need-to-clear-throat sound to their voices.

      --  Last Friday's complete Hardline meltdown.

     --  I'll let others detail issues with the stream and mobile access, but we should at least note that access is being reduced to IHeart.

Let's support AP in this -- even if you think "oh, AP will remember THAT one," list it anyway.  Thanks to all.

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12:25 p.m. --  This situation harks back to something I wrote about in my "Apocalypse Sometime" post, from which I now liberally quote:

"Consider the position of the hosts, and maybe even a guy like Rich, who also seems unhappy with what's going on, even though he is Rich the Suit.

"They're placed in a terrible position. They don't like what's going on. They would like to advocate for the P1, but what can they do? If they complain too much, they could get disciplined, or perhaps even squeezed when renewal time comes around -- or nonrenewed. Some of them may have been made well-off by their years of service, but, like Deion, they can't do without their salaries. But if they hold their tongues and broadcast like nothing's happening, the listener begins to think of them as compliant, even complicit with the CTO. Their bond with the P1 is compromised as the growing crappiness is ever more apparent coming out of the speakers."

Isn't this what is happening?   In the past we've enjoyed the fairly harmless and fairly occasional barking by the hosts about management issues, it's what we all do at our own places of work, the difference being that our workplace utterances don't go out on the air, and we don't Tweet them.   But when management has really fouled up and the anger is genuine, widespread, and constant, it's not so fun for management anymore, and the whip comes down.

And our guys seem, well, whipped.  They have to take the crappy chief engineering and crappy management decisions and shut up about them.  They can't be on "our side" any more, which makes all the happy horseshit about how P1-oriented The Ticket is sound completely ridiculous.  Certainly not the hosts' fault -- but you can see the point I've been banging on for some time now:   Eventually, bad management seeps into the product and damages what comes out of your ear buds.  Confessors, you are hearing it even now and it is going to get worse.  

It's easy to say that "oh, The Ticket will never change as long as the hosts are there, and they're not going anywhere, The Ticket has survived crap management in the past, so no worries."

But it is not true.

May 30, 2011

3:37 a.m.--It appears this site (that is, Your Plainsman) may owe an apology to The Dancing Bear at First Base, one Ty Walker by name, who an Anonymous commenter reported had been suspended for Tweeting a Jeff Catlin email.  I had my suspicions, since I could find no Internet reference to this having taken place.  And if this report was wrong, then apologies are also owed to the CTO as well.

But they're still screwed up.

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8:09 a.m. -- Cannibalizing from some of my later-last-night comments:

Because of the existence of message boards and sites like this one, there are lots of ways Ticketarians could communicate dissatisfaction to listeners, not to mention through their own Twitter accounts and blogs. But there wasn't much of that, and I almost never heard discouraging words from Ticket guys behind the scenes.  That suggested to me that employees felt loyalty to The Ticket and, perhaps derivatively, to Cumulus.

But now, we do hear a lot of public grumbling in different forums and on the air.  This suggests that Cumulus and local Ticket management no longer inspire that loyalty.  /What we're hearing from hosts and JV has job-losing potential all over it; it follows (to me) that the conditions that gave rise to the previous loyalty must have changed, and changed dramatically.

Conclusion, as if you didn't know if you were a faithful reader of Your Plainsman's speculations: Things are much worse at The Ticket than they were even six months ago, so bad that the risk calculus for Ticketarians has changed.  Grumblers may risk the loss of a paycheck or two, or even a job. But the grumbler gains something, too -- he's embarrasses a management that for the last six months has done little but embarrass him and his professional colleagues. Worth it? Not it things are cool; maybe, if the grumbler thinks things are headed off the rails anyway.

So it's not the content of the grumbling that is of the greatest interest -- it's that Ticketarians think it things have gotten so bad (and believe me, it's not limited to catastrophic remotes, crappy Internet feeds, and bungled hardware/software implementation in the studio, although that would be enough) that they want to risk telling the P1 about it.

And by the way -- if you accept Danny's invitation to contact the CTO, send them the link to this site.  They can start here (http://myticketconfession.blogspot.com/2012/05/apocalypse-sometime.html) and work their way forward.

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2:40 PM -- NUMEROUS REPORTS THAT JAKE KEMP MAY HAVE BEEN INVITED TO RELAX AWAY FROM THE TICKET FOR A WEEK. 

See comments below for possible/likely reasons for this generous offer by the CTO.

I'll be by the station if I can, but if anyone can confirm, please post.

May 29, 2012

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7:40 a.m. -- Playing around with something different.  With my time availability dwindling and likely to dwindle further, I'm going to try to get quick hits up from time to time for whatever interest they may have, but mainly to provide a continuing and occasionally refreshed forum for those who care enough to leave a comment.

The usual articles and thought pieces will continue to appear as I'm able to get to them.  I invite anyone with a hankerin' to write a piece to drop me an email, and, of course, I will be pirating emails to generate content for this space either anonymously or credited (with permission only). 

In any given day, there may be added material that will be headed by the time it was posted, thrown up as things occur to me.

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I was out of town over the weekend.  Did The Orphanage comment on last week's technical disasters (I understand they had some technical challenges of their own)?

Did George DeJohn and the TeeBox have a real handoff on Saturday?  (The prior weekend the handoff was torpedoed by the worse TeeBox transmission quality ever, and the week before that, I 1think, was the George D-Craig R tiff.)

Does anyone have any information on Greg Williams's medical condition?

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1:35 p.m. -- We hear from folks who think I'm (and some commenters are) overblowing the whole Ticket technical crisis.  Entirely possible they're right.  The show does manage to go on, mostly.  

But the commenters here and to the site that T4 directs us to (see comments to this post), including a well-known local broadcaster, makes the same point I made a week or so ago -- when things go bad and good people start to leave, everything suffers.  Not just the ability to stick plug A into port A, but morale, initiative, the desire to do well, the desire to come to work every day.  It shows in the product, and, eventually, it will show in the cast of characters who emerge on the air.

A Radical Proposal on Ticket Tech

Okay, I think we've established that Ticket tech is truly bad. Or, at the very best, not appropriate for The Ticket.

And many thanks to the Anon, obviously either a Ticket, Cumulus, or radio insider who's picked up the news somewhere, for his authoritative disquisition on the OpX system.

What I can't figure out is -- why?  I suppose it's a word that Mike uses -- "leverage."  The audience is the biggest and best, it won't stop listening, Cumulus makes enough money with it, so why improve (1) signal, (2) remotes, (3) in-studio tech, (4) Internet stream?   Small expenditure, big revenue.  Leverage.  What's not to like, as a CTO?

Now, let us confess (of course):  We can hear the station.  It broadcasts.  We like it.  The negligent IT and tech administration doesn't render it unlistenable most of the time.

But the persistent failure to fix problems that have existed for years is not only disrespectful to the listeners, it's degrading to the amazing talent that has assembled there and remained over the years (for which the CTO, let us further confess, deserves some unknowably small amount of credit).

Which leads me to a question that I was going to address back before I gleaned that Mike had signed his contract without the benefit of the conclusion of my highly speculative series awhile back on Mike's new deal:

What does the CTO care about?  Well, I would think they would care about keeping their talent, even if they don't care about giving them appropriate tools and a grown-up signal. 

[ALERT:  WILD-EYED ADVICE TO FOLLOW.]  

Which is why, if I were a host in demand in the market, as each one of them must surely be, and my noncompete weren't too long, and I really, really cared about the IT and tech  .  .  .

.  .  .  I'd start holding out. 

No -- no, first thing I would do is call a meeting of my fellow hosts, or at least those maddest about the situation.  Oh, this is much better: 

I'd see who was interested in taking the Ticket act, en masse, to another station.  Don't sign the damned contracts, or -- no, this is even better -- make any noncompete contingent on a new signal, appropriate in-studio tech, and a couple of new mobile remote suites, fixing the Internet stream.  That way, if things didn't improve, an entire showgram whose hosts (and essential Y-monks) had signed such a contract could quit and move instantly if promises along these lines were not kept by a date certain.  Producers -- doubt they even have a non-compete, George and Craig and Gordon could take Fernando and Jeremy right along with them, and adios Cumulus.  Cumulus wouldn't go for it?  Well, that's nut-cutting time, isn't it?  You either stay and live with the crap, or you go to a competitor.  Or retire.  Or go to another market that the noncompete doesn't reach.  The more showgrams signed on, the greater terror they could inflict on the CTO.

This assumes, of course, that there are other stations to go to.  It's dreaming (even more than I'm dreaming by even proposing this) to think that anyone would uproot their entire programming to take on The Ticket guys, but on a showgram-by-showgram basis?  ESPN or The Fan?  They'd love to have The Musers.

Don't leave comments telling me I'm crazy.  (Oh, all right, go ahead.)  It's not that crazy.  Some of these hosts are angry.  And they should be.

Horrifying thought:  Is it possible that some of the guys, a little bit, like being The "Little" Ticket (I'm not necessarily referring to Mike here).  They like being the scruffy, underpowered, tech-challenged underdog constantly whipping the be-jeebers out of coddled lame-o sister stations and better-financed and reliably audible competitors? 

I hope not.  I personally don't find the meltdowns amusing (except for the way that Danny handles them on The Hardline, which can be counted on to crack me up), and from the comments it seems to me that the Nation doesn't perceive any benefit there, either.   And, again, I find it insulting that Cumulus offers an audio product this lame especially since AM technology has been around for over a century and FM for over 60 years and stations have been doing remotes for decades?

Hosts, arise!  You have nothing to lose but your comfortable incomes through the noncompete period!!  (I wonder if Lenin got his start this way.)

Mike, you really should have waited for my advice.

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OPEN THREAD: Is Ticket Tech Really as Bad As It Seems?

We need to hear from some radio experts and, ideally, Cumulo-Ticket insiders.

I used to think:  The Ticket does a lot of remotes; I'm sure those present some technical challenges as they move from venue to venue.  So, atrocious signal(s) aside, in my early years of listening I tended to give Ticket tech a pass.

Then:

(1)  I heard the hosts grow increasingly testy about the lousy technology they had to deal with in the studio.

(2) It occurred to me that the number of remotes mean that they should have figured out how to do them fairly seamlessly.

(3) There was the absolute disgrace of the move to Victory, during which, apparently, a large chunk of Ticket history disappeared in addition to the overall amateurism of the transfer.  If no one lost his/her job in that disaster, then  .  .  .  well, I guess you see a lot of this in ossified corporate cultures.

(4) The tech meltdowns in the last two Hardline remotes, one of which won the E-Brake today.  Now, I will say that Hardline meltdowns tend to be extremely entertaining, between Danny's exasperation and sarcastic sing-songy efforts to broadcast over the mortification and Corby's and Mike's disgusted commentary.

It occurs to me that I've been listening to sports radio and other talk radio for a long time, and I've never heard anything as technically error-prone as The Ticket. 

Really -- what's the problem?  Bad equipment?  Bad IT/AV administration up the ladder?   Insufficient investment in personnel? Or are we (am I) just wrong about how lousy Ticket technology is?

Please advise.

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OPEN THREAD: Ticket-Listening Tech & Talk

I've noted an uptick in the number of questions commenters have on how to listen to The Ticket other than via the Philco.

To start this off, I'd like to collect all of the various ways it is possible to listen to The Ticket other than through a conventional radio.  There is, of course, the online stream accessible on the website.

There.  I've exhausted my knowledge of the topic.

I'd like to give listeners a list of as many other ways of listening to The Ticket -- mobile and non -- as possible. Can some of you get us started with a catalogue of online sites and programs?  While knowledgeable listeners are doing that, you are also free to throw out questions on problems you're having, and someone out there will probably have encountered it and solved it.

If you're savvy, please contribute to (1) listing the programs and sites available for listening (podcasts, too), with any preferences you may have; (2) questions and problems; and (3) solutions.  If this is too huge a topic we'll break it down in future episodes.

Don't know why I didn't think of this before. Might actually do Confessors some good for a change. Thanks in advance for your contribution, be it information, problem, or solution.

Ranjit, Chad, if you're out there, please check in.

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