Here's another event nobody cares about

Here's another clueless organization that just can't seem to get it right: The Miss America Pageant tanked on CMT Monday Night, drawing just 2.4 million viwers, compared to 3 million viewers last year. Like the NHL did with its All-Star game this year, Miss America moved its failing pageant to cable in 2006, and moved it to a weeknight against tough competition.

Who's running the Miss America organization, Gary Bettman?

I would write another T Dog Blog Think Tank article on Miss America blowing it, but I'm tired. I have a better idea: Read the post below and just replace the NHL's name with the Miss America Organization. It's the same thing basically. I'm going to bed.

By the way, some chick who's from that state that's also the name of a 1955 play won.

T Dog Think Tank: NHL blows it again

This is becoming a common theme here at the T Dog Media Blog Think Tank: _____ blows it again. Fill in the blank. Two weeks ago, it was radio. Again. This week, the NHL. Again. It's like we're playing The Match Game. Only this time, we're dealing with people much dumber than Dora.

This year's NHL All-star Game, which was televised in prime-time on Versus last Wednesday, plunged a whopping 76 percent from the 2004 contest held on a Sunday afternoon on ABC, the last time an All-Star game was held.

The article states that the game drew only a 0.7 Nielsen rating, about the same ratings MyNetworkTV gets on an average weeknight (speaking of failures.) If fact, it drew more viewers in Canada on CBC than it did in the U.S. on Versus.

While it drew more viewers in hockey-crazy cities like Buffalo and Pittsburgh, it completely tanked in the nation's largest markets, including New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago.

But I'll bet you one thing. The NHL will use any dumbass excuse to say the All-Star Game was a success. What are they going to say? At least we beat MyNetworkTV? Perhaps they should've read my first Think Tank article: NHL, Hawks, Broadcasters need to get with the program.

But they make the same stupid mistakes. Holding the NHL All-Star game on a Wednesday night in the middle of winter airing on an obscure network against American Idol ? Airing exclusive NHL games on the same night as Monday Night Football on some weeks? Moving Saturday afternoon NHL games to Sunday against the NBA and college hoops? The NHL is basically telling viewers you have a choice: It's either us or the popular shows. People are picking the popular shows. A chance to sell Sidney Crosby to America and you do it against American Idol? Idiots.

In Dallas, where the game was held, the event didn't even crack the Top 15 cable programs, averaging only a 0.5 rating. What was No.1 in its time period? You guessed it. American Idol.

And don't even get me started about the game itself. On The Sporting News website, I posted that I forgot all about the game, and that's what you get when you live in a city with NO NHL TEAM. Plus, even if I remembered, I wouldn't have watched it anyway.

But as along as people like commissioner Gary Bettman, Blackhawks owner Bill Wirtz, and their little munchskins (a.k.a the other owners and clueless advertisers) think that the hockey world only evolves around them and everything is fine, the league and the ratings will continue to suck. Those assholes are the real reason that the NHL is in the messed up state it's in.

So this week, It's the NHL that blows it. Again. But I am positive that the radio industry will do something stupid soon and fill in the blank for next week.

Meanwhile....

It has nothing to do with the subject matter, but it is worth mentioning: The NBA blew it. Again. They suspended Lakers star Kobe Bryant for tonight's Knicks game for an unintentional elbow to a Spurs player in a game Sunday, which means he couldn't play in Madison Square Garden - the only time the Lakers play there this season, which also means that New Yorkers won't see him play at all.

Haven't Knicks fans suffered enough? I guess you should ask NHL fans and radio listeners the same question.

Super Bowl Watch: When is too much... too much?

WBBM-Ch. 2 found that out when they put a Super Bowl countdown clock on the upper-left hand corner on the screen - continuously - and the complaints rolled in. (and as if their blue lower right-hand bug on the screen wasn't enough.) Well, it's gone - at least during network and at the top and bottom of the hour of a few syndicated shows. If your read the rest of the article, you'd think the Chicago media has gone nuts with Bears fever (A little too much, if you ask me - well, maybe you should ignore the Super Bowl Watch headline and the Go Bears byline just below the title of this blog, so it won't appear I'm being hypocritical....)

Super Bowl Watch: Stations are ready to cover the game

(First off, I'll be posting mainly in the late-night hours this week because of other commitments that have popped up during other hours of the day.... But I will post breaking news when I feel its warranted.... On that note...)

Stations in Illinois and Indiana are gearing up to cover the big game:

- The CBS affiliates in the home-team markets - WBBM here in Chicago and WISH in Indianapolis are going big time to cover the game with expanded programming, live reports from Miami, prime-time specials, even marathons - WNDY-TV, sister station of WISH (both owned by LIN broadcasting) will air a 24-hour Colts marathon, beginning at noon Saturday. All stations involved are also offering interactive features on their websites.

- Meanwhile, what if you are a station manager in a market in between the two cities? No sweat, according to John Mann, president and general manager of WSBT-TV in South Bend, Ind. - home to a lot of Bears and Colts fans (and a train ride away from Chicago thanks to the South Shore commuter line.) The top-rated station in the 87th-largest market is also sending a crew to Miami and is expanding coverage after the game.

- Also, Toni Fitzgerald of Media Life (and one of the best media writers in this business, IMO) gives you seven good reasons why this year's Super Bowl will outdraw last year's game, though she does point out that the Bears aren't in the top five in the NFL in popularity (times have changed since 1985, haven't they? The Bears were No. 1 then.)

ET bumped for Bears

For those of you who need their Britney-Lindsey-Angelina-Rosie-Donald fix, move over: CBS-owned WBBM-TV is pushing Mary Hart out for a week to air "Mission Miami: Countdown to the Super Bowl", which covers the Bears at the big game, all this week at 6:30pm. But those who need that fix can tune to Entertainment Tonight's sister show The Insider, on WCIU-TV weeknights at 5pm and 7pm. You won't miss a thing. They're both essentially the same show (with different hosts, of course.)

T Dog Think Tank: Radio industry blows it again

If you haven’t heard by now, a woman died in a radio stunt in Sacramento earlier this month.

Jennifer Strange, a 28-year old mother of three, participated in a “Hold Your Water For A Wii” contest for local radio station KDND-FM, a Pop/Top 40 station in Sacramento, aka “The End”, as part of the morning show called “The Morning Rave”. This contest was about who can drink the most water without going to the bathroom. The winner would win a Nintendo Wii, one of the new next-generation video-game systems that came out last fall.

Ms. Strange was one of the losers in this contest, and sadly, she paid the ultimate price.

While commuting back home on January 12, she complained of headaches and had to be rushed to a local hospital, where she later died. The Coroner’s office concluded that her death was caused from complications related to “water intoxication”. A few days later, 10 people were fired, including the morning team that conducted the contest.

This tragic story has been talked about all over the place, including CNN, the local news here in Chicago, CNET’s Buzz Out Loud podcast, and even the BBC. Radio message boards have been jumping off the chain with this topic.

And now the fallout has happened. Consider what has happened in the last few days: The Strange Family has obtained an attorney and will file a lawsuit against the radio station and its owner Entercom; a local broadcaster has filed a petition with the FCC to deny Entercom from purchasing several radio stations from CBS (as part of a long-running feud with Entercom); and now the FCC will investigate to see if there was any wrong doing on the part of the radio station. And there be more fallout in the weeks to come.

Here is a 5-minute audio clip of the contest, courtesy of The Sacramento Bee. Listen for yourself.
http://www.sacbee.com/static/newsroom/kdndslides/

Sadly, she would never make it to the Justin Timberlake show.

Apparently, the local DJs were making a joke of the whole thing. They were even warned by a nurse who called the station that what the contestants were doing was hazardous to their health. The staff obviously didn’t do research on the issue. They assumed that nobody could die from drinking water. They were wrong. (Even I didn’t even know there was such a thing as water intoxication.)

Well, here we go again. The radio business gets a black eye, the business is bad because of consolidation, radio is cold and heartless, blah, blah, blah.
Well, they’re right. But instead of repeating what has been in the rest of the blogosphere, let’s just say this: It was a disaster waiting to happen. But radio will survive this latest embarrassment. Being a City of Chicago and Cook County resident, we’re used to them, particularly when it comes to politics and race relations. We get a black eye- but we survive. And perhaps learn from our mistakes.

Or not. And that’s why I’m not holding my breath regarding the radio industry. Something like this could happen again, because the people in radio are dolts, ratings are the only goal, the bottom line only matters and these types of outdated stunts will continue to draw attention – good or bad. The industry is like Cook County government when you think about it – cheap, underfunded, and bloated – with a lot of stupid people running stuff behind the scenes and running that stuff into the ground. Just this past week, the county is talking about making cuts to the Sheriff Department – meaning the bad guys will be freer to run rampant in areas where police protection is needed the most – and as a result – a life could be lost. More lives could be lost in cuts to health care at the county hospital. Like the DJs at that Sacramento station, the people running the county think this is one big joke.

In government, we can vote these people out – if we bother to show up at the polls- to be replaced by the same type of people. In radio, we fill out diaries, and if the station doesn’t do well, the management and the DJs gone and the station changes format – only to be replaced by the same type of people. Perhaps the only difference is that taxpayers aren’t paying for radio’s mistakes (and if it did, it would be a huge tab.)

So, you have to consider the alternatives. Music fans flee to Internet radio, CDs, iPods and other MP3 devices, so they don’t have to put up with the bullshit that the radio industry serves on a daily basis– just as much as people are moving to Will and DuPage counties so they don’t have to put up the corruption that is being shoved down our throats in Chicago and Cook County on a daily basis.

But yet they survive. They all will. It’s too bad that mother of three from Sacramento did not.

WBBM-Ch.2 to help with HDTV before Super Bowl

With the Chicago Bears in the Super Bowl, CBS-owned WBBM-TV has set up an HDTV hotline to help viewers who have problems receiving the station's HDTV signal over the air (antenna). WBBM has been notorious for having problems with its over-the-air HD signal.

For more information on how to receive the station's HD signal with an antenna or through cable, click here.

Spike O'Dell out at WGN - three years from now

Times may change, but many things stay the same in Chicago year after year - Daley in City Hall, Democrats controlling Cook County, WLS-TV topping in the Nielsens and WGN-AM ruling the roost in morning drive.

But a change in morning drive at WGN is coming - three years from now. Spike O'Dell told the Trib's Phil Rosenthal that he's retiring in 2010 from his top-rated morning show at WGN-AM.

Mr. O'Dell succeeded Bob Collins, who died in a plane crash in 2000. Mr. Collins was No. 1 in the Chicago ratings for 14 years. He, in turn succeeded Wally Phillips. He was No. 1 since sometime during the Nixon Administration.

New name, same old stuff

The "i" network, which changed from PAX two years ago, is changing its name again - to MyNetworkTV2!

Actually, its changing its name to ION, named after the company who now controls the network. Many industry insiders have joked that the "i" in the "i" network stood for infomericals, referring to the high number of paid programs that air on the channel. Others thought the "i" stood for idiots, which pretty much described the network exces there. (Or any other network, for that matter. Or the producer of that new Pussycat Dolls show on the CW.)

On this day 21 years ago....

This was ours.... It can be ours again on February 4. GO BEARS!!!

That's nice.... but the shows still suck

ESPN will begin to produce two of its daily shows, Cold Pizza and 1st and 10 (no relation to the former HBO sitcom) in high-definition, beginning in June. That's great in all, but the shows still suck, considering who's hosting them. (Perhaps they should concentrate on upgrading the content rather than the picture.)

Look for me to use the same headline when the announcement comes that Jerry Springer and Maury Povich's talk shows go HD.

Yes, it's still around

Phil Rosenthal has a short story today in the Tribune about the continuing sagging fortunes of MyNetworkTV and Fox's station operations president Dennis Swanson insistence that the brand will be big - someday. In the article, Mr. Swanson points out that his stations need prime-time network programming (Translation: our stations aren't paying anything for prime-time-unlike the CW and independent stations, even though our programs are drawing fewer viewers than the infomericals we run at 3a.m.)

Tribune Watch: Murdoch wants in

Add the owner of NewsCorp to the list of names that want the Tribune Co. Rupert Murdoch wants to buy the Tribune-owned New York Newsday, so he can consolidate back offices between that paper and the New York Post, the paper he owns.

But Murdoch owning the Tribune Co.? It may not be likely (because of the regulation mess), but the thought of it give me (and any other Chicagoan) shudders. Remember when he owned the Sun-Times? Enough said.

Goofy Greg is Gone

Sony Pictures Television has axed first-year talk show The Greg Behrendt Show because of poor ratings. The death blow came when Tribune, a partner in the talk show, dropped it on its stations in favor of the new Jerry Springer-spinoff talk show, hosted by Steve Wilkos.

The program was axed by other stations as well, including WDIV in Detroit. The station recently moved the show to 1:30am.

Greg is expected to continue production for now. No word on the show's final airdate.

Man laws repealed

In a move that really doesn't surprise anyone, Miller Brewing Co. has dropped its "Man Law" campaign, which is effective immediately.

The ads, which featured celebrities such as Burt Reynolds, former coach and Fox football analyst Jimmy Johnson, and WWE wrestler Triple H (who's injured again) sitting around The Square Table, discussing and establishing "Man Laws", which included no fruit in beer (hell, who knew that?), and no baking on game day. (And perhaps if they saw Byron Harlan's antics on Sunday, they would have made this man law: no creating Soul Train lines at Soldier Field. LOL)

Miller Lite has struggled to maintain market share- it has been slipping the last 12 months, while its rivals, Bud Light and Coors Light, have gained market share. The brand has not really had a successful ad campaign since the Great Taste-Less Filling campaign of the 1970's. Recent campaigns have been forgettable: The ads created by the fictional ad executive "Dick" in the late 1990's and 2004's Miller Lite vs. Bud Light presidential-themed campaign in which Miller Lite "ran" against Bud Light and took potshots at its rival in ads.

A new, toned-down campaign launched during the Bears-Saints game on Sunday.

Meanwhile, you can still access Miller Lite's "Man Laws" website here.

Bears also win in the ratings

The Bears weren't the only winners in yesterday's NFC Championship Game.

Fox's ratings for the event were up 21 percent from last year's Carolina Panthers-Seattle Seahawks tilt. The Chicago Bears-New Orleans Saints game drew a whopping 25.1 rating and 42 share, and it drew 43.2 million viewers, the most in 10 years.

And yes, like the AFC Championship Game that played later that evening, it outdrew the season premiere of American Idol.

Locally, Fox-owned WFLD-TV scored a huge 46.1/74, the highest ratings for the station since the White Sox's 2005 World Series run. The game peaked with a 50.5 rating between 5 and 5:15pm, at the end of the game.

The Super Bowl will be a big boon for CBS-owned WBBM-TV, which scored huge ratings back in the day when it had NFC games and the Bears were on their first Super Bowl run, and for LIN's CBS affiliate in Indianapolis, WISH-TV where they currently carry Colts' regular-season games. Last night's AFC Championship Game on WISH averaged a 38.9/56.

And finally, as witnessed by yours truly, one of the most bizarre reports I have ever seen came during WFLD's post-game show (scroll down a few paragraphs.). Byron Harlan, one of the station's reporters, was out interviewing fans outside Soldier Field when he asked somebody "Do you love the Black Man?", referring to Lovie Smith being the first African-American to take a team to the Super Bowl:

Harlan: "Do you love the Black man?"

Man: "Yes!"

Harlan: "He loves the Black man! He loves the Black man!"

Then, somebody turned on a boombox and played "The Super Bowl Shuffle", and Harlan encouraged them to form a Soul Train line. (That's right. You heard me.)

When they went back to the studio, Corey McPherin and Tom Waddle looked somewhat stunned.

Strange, but funny as hell. Somebody send this to TV's Bloopers & Practical Jokes!

Slogan change at Defender

The Chicago Defender, one of Chicago's oldest African-American newspapers, has dropped its branding from the paper's front page. The slogan, "Honest. Truthful. Unapologetically Black." was discontinued by the paper's owner, arguably to go in a different direction.

The slogan was created by Executive editor Roland Martin, whose contract to the Defender was not renewed. He gave the paper new life when he was installed as editor, turning around a brand that many in the black community (particularly among younger audiences) saw as stodgy and outdated.

Roland Martin is the morning drive-time host for Midway Communications' black talk station, WVON-AM (whose future headquarters are right down the street from my house in the old Soft Sheen building.)

Peyton Manning destroys competition in prime-time

Last night's AFC Championship Game between the New England Patriots and the Indianapolis Colts, was the highest-rated program of the season, topping the debut of American Idol. The game (which the Colts won 38-34), featured the biggest comeback of all time in a championship game, led by the Colts' Peyton Manning. The Bears won earlier in the day in the NFC Championship game, beating the Saints 39-14, putting them in the Super Bowl for the first time since 1986.

The Bears and Colts face off in Super Bowl XLI, from Miami's Dolphin Stadium, on February 4.

On a side note (and to this African-American, it is worth mentioning), The Bears' head coach Lovie Smith and the Colts' Tony Dungy are the first African-American coaches to head to the Super Bowl.

Oh by the way... GO BEARS!

AFC destroys competition in prime-time

Last night's AFC Championship Game between the New England patriots and the Indianapolis Colts, was the highest-rated program of the season, topping the debut of American Idol.

BEARS ARE GOING BACK TO THE SUPER BOWL!!!!!!!!!!

GET YOUR BAGS PACKED.