“Our listeners are talking more about the Wings,” said Tom Bigby, program director of WXYT-FM (97.1). “There is more interest in the team.”

Ha!  I happened to speak with a few, national media types who are in town to cover the Wings/Stars series and they actually remarked they had listened to the Wings flagship station and wanted to know why the “talking heads” were not very well versed in the game of hockey.  They could not believe the raunchy talk that goes on and felt the folks on the station were more concerned about themselves than the issues at hand.

My answer was simple, join the club and don’t listen to them.  They want to shock you instead of inform you.

Posted by Paul from Motown Area on 05/10/08 at 07:48 AM ET

Chief, in all fairness to Mitch, he probably wrote the article two days before the game even started...so there would have been a few empty seats at that time.

Posted by Gabriel from San Diego, CA on 05/10/08 at 07:56 AM ET

Chief, as I was doing the GDT, I stumbled upon the same article—and read it in rapt fascination.  Mind you it is an hour earlier here on the Wind-Swept plains, and I have only had one cup-o-joe.  But my foggy synapses reached the same conclusion you did—WTF is going on?

Is DET all a-twitter about the Wings, are ticket sales and attendance up—as Windsor claims?

Inquiring minds want to know?

Gabe—very good!!!

Posted by Jeff OKWingnut from Hockey Netherworld on 05/10/08 at 08:14 AM ET

Gabe, you’re a funny bastard. I like you.

I’m with you Okie.  We need to get to the bottom of this situation.  I’ve got the A2Y investigative staffers all over it.

Posted by IwoCPO from Washington, DC on 05/10/08 at 08:17 AM ET

I liked Terry Foster’s blog post in the News, wherein he called out Mitch for being out of touch with what is actually happening in the city.

If it offends your delicate sensibilities to see empty seats, Mitch, then put your money where your mouth is and pay for them to be filled.  Otherwise shut up.

Posted by Baroque from Michigan on 05/10/08 at 08:28 AM ET

Funny, Gabriel.
And funny is what too many of our radio hosts unsuccessfully spend their time trying to be, to the exclusion of sports. These guys are constantly cracking each other up while I myself have yet to laugh out loud (or smile, for that matter) at anything they’ve said. I guess you have to be there.
Mike Valenti and Terry “Giggles” Foster seem to be auditioning for a show on Lifetime television. I really don’t care to hear anything more about Foster’s kids. “Gator” Anderson has yet to show me he knows anything about any sport. Comedy is not easy and these guys demonstrate that daily.
The audience is frequently more informed than the hosts. If they had any sense, they’d let their listeners drive the dialogue (it can’t be for lack of callers if my own experience of being on hold for an afternoon is any indication). Obviously their station management and advertisers aren’t aware how easy it is to tune out when we aren’t getting SPORTS talk.

Posted by BobS. on 05/10/08 at 08:36 AM ET

You guys have to cut the hosts of these shows slack.

Fact of the matter is, the radio, especially in their current format, is driven by what the listeners want to discuss. And let’s face it. Right now there are a lot of people that would rather talk about the Lions draft and the Tigers collapse. Even the Pistons, who used to get a lot of discussion, aren’t getting play on the radio like they used to.

Yes, when most of these guys open their mouths about hockey, it’s pretty rough. But you have to remember, they research and follow closest what the masses want to talk about. And even in Hockeytown, the masses want the NFL and MLB, hands down. While I firmly believe we have a great hockey town and state, I think the last few years have shown that we are, without a doubt, first and foremost a baseball city. And the marketing power of the NFL and MLB is unstoppable.

The last two weeks where attention to the Wings on the radio has picked up a bit, the listeners haven’t exactly shown themselves to know the game particularly well. I wish them well, and have no problem with these people, but it’s pretty clear that the playoffs-only Wings fans are out in full force.

One guy tried to proclaim himself a hockey nut, and proceeded to explain that Brunnstrom was overrated because he wasn’t a point-per-game player in the SEL. While I agree the Brunnstrom has been overrated to this point, the fact of the matter is that there’s a big misconception that players score more in Europe, when in fact the bigger ice surface slows the game down. Further, if you look at the SEL rookie seasons for some great Swedish players, like Zetterberg, Hakan Loob, Peter Forsberg, and Daniel Alfredsson, you’ll see that they performed below a point-per-game pace as well.

Granted, that’s the type of thing that you really do have to be a hockey nut to know, but it’s just a microcosm of the type of garbage fans have been spewing the last couple weeks on sports talk radio.

Here’s my ultimate point. As much as I despise the likes of Mitch Albom, Drew Sharp, and Terry Foster for pretending in their columns that the Wings don’t exist until April, you have to admit, that by and large, the population of Wings fans skyrockets 75% come playoff time. If the fans are going to skip out on the majority of the regular season, it doesn’t make good professional sense for these writers and radio personalities to devote their attention to it.

Where I fault the writers and radio personalities is here—it’s clear that they don’t, at the very least, do the necessary research come playoff time to make sure they understand how the team played in the regular season, what their strengths and weaknesses are, and why they have ended up in the position they are in. Even though the demand forces them away from the Wings for most of the season, the talking heads need to quit mailing it in come playoff time, dig deep, and provide accuracy. Not even insight, just accuracy. Then I would respect them more because their efforts would be genuine.

Posted by Nathan on 05/10/08 at 09:11 AM ET

Comedy is not easy and these guys demonstrate that daily.

But this sentence is damn funny!

Posted by BobTheZee on 05/10/08 at 10:11 AM ET

I like your points about the larger structures at play Nathan. I’m not so sure, however, that this is baseball town (the football thing I buy but am baffled by).

The tickets are so cheap and available to soo many games that it’s very very easy for any person to go. Wings tickets, on the other hand, require the sale of one kidney per game; you can’t blame people for waiting till the playoffs to attend in that kind of situation.

There is, of course, the complacency argument. If we were still the Dead Things and just happened to have a set of EuroTwins lead us to the playoffs, the story line would be much more compelling.

By the way, check out Steve’s live blog of Cherry’s appearance of Sportscenter last night. Cherry called Detroit a “redneck town” that wants to see more Probert and Kocur like play. He also picks the Wings for the cup.

Posted by Osrt on 05/10/08 at 10:22 AM ET

Well Bill, if you asked Don Cherry, I’d say it’s because you rednecks haven’t learned to drive a car yet.

Posted by Steve from New Jersey on 05/10/08 at 10:51 AM ET

Osrt, you make good points as well. I agree that complacency has played a big role with the Wings, and has also played a big role in what we’ve seen this year with talk about the Pistons down big time from the past five or six years.

There are a few reasons I think this is a baseball town. If you want to factor ticket/game costs into that, I’m with you all the way.

The Wings have a better tradition of winning than the Tigers do. Granted, there are differences because baseball has had more teams for a much longer period of time, and the playoffs are harder to come by in baseball as well. But when you look at what the ‘68 World Series meant to Detroit, I think it really gives baseball a hold on the town.

Posted by Nathan on 05/10/08 at 10:57 AM ET

Pat Caputo (one of the sports media personalities in Detroit who actually admits he roots for the home teams, attends games or watches them on television when he can’t, and then is able to write about it with occasional insight and without adopting a deliberately contrarian POV) happens to be on the radio riffing on Cherry and Albom’s comments. Roughly 1001 callers who were actually at the game are contradicting the ‘ocean of empty seats’ contention.
Cherry is entertaining, but given his costumes and general buffoonery, it would be more appropriate if he were delivered to the set in a little clown car. His Europhobia is about as dated as people who don’t like Japanese cars because of Pearl Harbor. I like fighting, but any Wings fan who would be more entertained watching Probert pummel someone than watching the Swedish national team we’re currently treated to has their head further up their ass than Cherry’s is up Doug Gilmour’s.

Posted by BobS. on 05/10/08 at 11:38 AM ET

In reading the linked article, I noticed something interesting.

That article - like most others at the Freep - you can comment on right at the bottom of the page.

But when I looked back at Mitch’s article...it seems you have to go to some other part of the site called the “Freep Forum” to comment on his articles.  (And only his, as far as I’ve seen.)

Delicate, indeed.

Posted by number9 on 05/10/08 at 11:53 AM ET

Thanks Chief.

Posted by Heaton on 05/10/08 at 12:24 PM ET

It’s probably not national news the way a few empty Wings seats are in Detroit, but here in Philly, for one of the anointed BIG THREE sports, the Sixers didn’t come close to selling out their home games against the Pistons in the first round.  And that for a team that hadn’t been to the playoffs in a few years and was supposedly an over achieving, blue collar team typically loved in this city.  Meanwhile, good luck getting your hands on a Flyers ticket.  Yeah, hockey’s dead. Show some more poker, ESPN.

Posted by dip from philly on 05/10/08 at 12:37 PM ET

I saw empty seats in round one i saw empty seats in round two in the lower bowl (you can’t deny it) now closet wingies fans see it’s time to attend games round three has brought them out of hiding.

Posted by cupster33 on 05/10/08 at 01:36 PM ET