The_Admiral

Is it UH THING for CBS local news to wildly underperform? Channel 2 in Chicago has been almost a rumor for at least 20 years now. At one point their news department stopped producing local morning news and turned the timeslot over to disgraced sports talk radio host and giardiniera pitchman Mike North, and I believe several weekend newscasts have been replaced with infomercials. I think what newscasts remain sometimes end up in fifth place behind WGN and Fox.

I'm amazed how much money Friends has made. By the last three or four years (out of ten), they were making absurd demands because none of the principals wanted to do the damn show anymore, but NBC kept calling their bluff and meeting said absurd demands. And now Netflix is paying $100 million to license the streaming rights for one year. One single year! Why?

It's interesting to flesh out the alternate timeline where CBS doesn't get any big ideas about baseball (which it made a complete and utter hash of, a topic I'd like to see a similar oral history written for) and has the funds to match a Fox offer and keep the NFC. The AFC and Fox may have been a better fit, with the smaller markets and the old outlaw-league teams, but it's possible NBC shuts them out as well and Fox just putters along as UPN with better shows.

https://www.theringer.com/nfl/2018/12/13/18137938/nfl-fox-deal-rupert-murdoch-1993-john-madden-terry-bradshaw-howie-long-jimmy-johnson-cbs-nbc

I'm fascinated by the NFL's TV realignment in the '90s, particularly how the Packers moving from CBS to Fox meant channel 6 in Milwaukee did the same, leaving the market CBS-less for a few months until channel 58 (that high!) took over. Also, NBC's successive losses of the AFC and Seinfeld made them go all in on the awful Friends, and with too much money tied up in Friends, NBC cheaply filled programming hours with reality shows, one of them starring that one guy. 

If CBS didn't poach baseball from NBC, maybe lots of bad things don't happen.

On 12/8/2018 at 6:43 AM, WideRight said:

They make no sense from a media standpoint.  Placing teams in cities that already are packed with major league franchises (all 4 sports) is already a questionable move, but if his target audience is more conservative, 'Murica types, he would be far better off looking at Birmingham, Orlando, Texas or other Red-State locations.

There are jamokes in every corner of this great nation.

I want to note for the record that CHED identifies on-air as "Ched," which sounds it would be a word in a game of Balderdash Against Humanity or something.

Fans would be attracted to all those things if the teams weren't filled by CFL/arena rejects.

I said I would never watch the NFL again and then the Bears stopped being horrible. And I don't even like the Bears. Imagine how this brought back people who do.

I'm sure this seemed like a great idea a year or so ago when the NBA hyperpartisans/embedded p.r. agents of the media class were writing all this stuff about how the NFL was dying and the NBA was primed to pass it, but it seems like enough people forgave the NFL since then and don't need another football league to give them what the NFL wasn't. 

On 1/27/2018 at 3:02 AM, Gothamite said:

Do you think replacing black with blue is supposed to be telling us something?

If you're going for Black Lives Matter ---> Blue Lives Matter or just the league's aspirations for some general level of black erasure, I think that's a reach, and much too semiotically rich for the likes of Vince McMahon. The XFL was black and red because all WWF stuff then was black and red. I think it's red/white/blue now as basic mindless patriotism, which is bad enough. 

6 hours ago, charger77 said:

Would the Blackhawks do it for Chelios and Seabrook?

I don't see any way they don't: Chelios's friendship ended with the Red Wings, now the Blackhawks are his best friend, so he's back in our good graces, and I'm guessing all the three-timers get their numbers retired: Toews, Kane, Keith, and Hossa are all headed to the Hall of Fame, Seabrook and Sharp fall short but are firmly in the retired-number tier of franchise players, and the case for Niklas Hjalmarsson might be borderline but I am very firmly yes on retiring #4.

4 hours ago, BringBackTheVet said:

That's dumb.  If a guy is that significant, then hold his number out of circulation for a few seasons until the emotion dies down then decide what to do - but don't go back.  Retiring a number - especially after another significant player had it retired for them - is just silly.

I agree with that. But you know what, I've been sitting on this wild conspiracy theory that most observed history of the New York Rangers is fictitious. I consider myself fairly well-versed in hockey lore, but I never know who the hell they're honoring. I think they're made up. I think I could do a man-on-the-street bit outside a Rangers game asking people if Andy Singer's number should be retired to properly commemorate the "Chorus Line" from those great Rangers teams of the early '60s, and I bet at least one guy would tell me that's what his dad has been saying for years.

I'm no stranger to plummeting heritage AM stations out here: WLS was one of the biggest stations in America at one time, and now, as a dying conservative talk station under failing Cumulus ownership, is right down there with our own classical station and has at times finished behind a gospel station. It's gotten so bad for them that they had to breach their White Sox and Bulls contracts because they couldn't afford the rights anymore. 

Nevertheless! Call me old-fashioned, but all major sports teams and some minor ones should have a place on terrestrial radio. I understand that the Kings are doing some sort of "expanded audio experience" deal with iHeart, but as we discussed over the summer with the Hurricanes firing Chuck Kaiton, providing a free local radio broadcast is really a bare minimum for team marketing and exposure, and there's no reason they can't do all this online stuff but also stick the games on one disgraced AM station or another for those who are out of wi-fi range but still want to follow the game. I guess it's a sign of the times: when the Expos discontinued local radio in 2001 or 2002, everyone was like "that's it, this team is as dead as dead can be, no team has ever been this dead," but now the Kings do the same and it's Actually Good.

KABC is obscure? Hasn't that been a longtime Dodgers flagship? Still, I don't think it's an improvement to go from having free radio to not having free radio. Data is expensive, car radios are not.

Tom Wilson got thrown out of a game again. Next he should be thrown out of his union.

The Devils and Kings, in the #1 and #2 media markets, no longer have free, over-the-air radio broadcasts at all. Streaming only. That's pretty sad.

Someone at Brandiose is like "okay, now the gay teenage runaways, are they more of a tertiary logo or do we go all the way down to quaternary there, and should they all be holding bats?"

Well, like I said, TSN's panicked overpayment for their TV rights probably kicks into leaguewide revenues a bit, though I guess that does rely on them being in Ottawa. Their 2003 team is still a sentimental favorite of mine, probably the best roster to get stopped short of a Cup Final I've ever seen. I get a laugh out of how they never seem to follow any sort of long-term trajectory and just bounce around among good, bad, really bad, and hairsbreadth from winning conference at random. And Bryan Murray always seemed like a good longtime hockey guy. The owner turned out to be an undercapitalized jerkass but I don't think they're the lifetime embarrassment to professional sports that they're being characterized as.

On 11/20/2018 at 11:22 AM, SFGiants58 said:

I’m just waiting for the Springfield (Illinois) Clowin’ Pogos. You know Brandiose has that identity prepared.

They're just storing that one away in the basement for now.

Much like the Islanders, I'd expect that the Senators are locked in by their oversized TV contract. They won't move, but Melnyk has to go.

Kinda hate the glee people take in ripping on the Senators.

Can't believe things are getting so confrontational with the shut up man

Quote

At one point, Calabria was approached by a trainer who claimed to have run an unusual experiment involving the jersey. The trainer said he placed the old and new uniforms in pails of water and weighed them. He found the fisherman jerseys were heavier and concluded that they were slowing down the players on the ice. Calabria was incredulous. “That’s hardly scientific, OK? Hardly scientific,” he said, still annoyed years later. “How much more could the patch of a new jersey weigh over the old jersey? A hundredth of an ounce? A fiftieth of an ounce? That’s the reason the team was on an eight-game losing streak? The patch? Really?”

And that young trainer...would go on...to design uniforms...for the San Jose Sharks. And now...you know...the rest...of the story.

Quote

Decades later, Milbury, returning to his role as a hockey analyst, admitted on air that he had indeed spit at Samuelsson. “I did spit at Ulf Samuelsson, at least in his direction. I lost all sorts of respect for him when he told the press about it afterwards. It was just a gesture.” His broadcast colleagues looked incredulous that Milbury would claim to have lost respect for a player who was the target of the coach’s own saliva. The quote epitomized Milbury’s odd perspective on appropriate behavior in hockey.

Frankly, I think everyone should spit at Ulf Samuelsson if the opportunity arises. As with the shoe, Milbury was in the right.

I'm Not Mad I'm Not Mad I Just Think It's Funny '96:

For the designers at SME, the scene was humiliating. Never before had a jersey created by the agency resulted in such an outpouring of disdain. “They had riots in the street over the damn thing,” remembered illustrator Pat McDarby, laughing in disbelief. “People protesting over a logo that we did was pretty funny and embarrassing.”

From the "90 percent of life is showing up" files:

Quote

Recognizing SME’s success in developing the logo for the NBA’s Raptors, the group also entertained the dubious argument that dinosaurs were native to Long Island millions of years ago. That, too, was quickly dismissed.

From the "100 percent of life is a dick joke if you want it to be" files:

Quote

O’Hara thought the early designs for the mascot looked either “too Disneyesque” or too complex, with crabs tangled in his beard or fish at the end of his hockey stick.

This is what this thread is for:

Quote

Despite the problems with the costume, Di Fiore was enamored with a dream job as a mascot for a professional sports team. Still, he lacked a skill he feared was crucial to being hired. “Even though I was a jock and played sports,” he said, “I never really learned how to ice-skate really well.” He tried to convince the Islanders that hockey mascots didn’t spend much time on the ice anyway, since the Zamboni came out between periods. The Islanders agreed: They wanted their new mascot interacting with fans in the stands and on the concourse. Charisma was required. Skating ability was secondary. Di Fiore was hired in September at the rate of $75 per game.

The Islanders had the first component of their new brand. What they didn’t know, because Di Fiore had not told them, was that the man hired to represent their new brand was recovering from alcoholism, cocaine addiction, and depression. What they did know, and had little power to prevent, was that the 1994-1995 NHL season, which they hoped would be a test run for the Islanders’ new identity, might never happen.

 

I don't know whether I'll read the whole thing but I'm enjoying it so far.

ROLLING EDITS:

Sounds Like a Mountain Goats Lyric But Ok

Quote

When Di Fiore started dancing, a fan shouted that he was blocking his view of the game. When he ventured into a group of children, a ten-year-old boy told the reporter, “I’d like to assassinate him. I think he’s stupid. I think he looks horrible, and the Rangers are going to win.”

I’d like to assassinate him
I think he’s stupid
I think he looks horrible
and the Rangers are going to win
and I hope you die

I hope we both die

After approving the Fishsticks logo, call it getting Capone for tax evasion:
 

Quote

Walsh has never publicly provided his version of events. In 2014, he was sentenced to twenty years in prison for committing fraud at a commodities-trading firm, and his incarceration and tarnished reputation may have emboldened the meeting participants to finger him as the logo’s benefactor. Walsh did not reply to a letter sent as part of this project to the correctional facility where he resides.

Oops:

“For the first time in 4 years, I say they’ll get in,” Art Feeney wrote in Islander Insider. “I’ve been wrong 2 of the last 3 seasons… why should I be right now? An obvious reason is Mike Milbury.”

https://etd.ohiolink.edu/!etd.send_file?accession=ohiou1467907905&disposition=inline

"We Want Fish Sticks!": The Failed Rebranding of the New York Islanders

A dissertation presented to
the faculty of
the Scripps College of Communication of Ohio University
In partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the degree
Doctor of Philosophy

Okay, this guy's at least a lurker. Show yourself, Bad Islander Logo PhD!

No, there's a type out there.

White liberals are more than happy to cede black people's innate athletic superiority if it means they can claim the edge on intelligence for themselves.