It has fallen, at last, to this.

Posted by Hockeyinhd on 12/28/07 at 08:20 AM ET

The hits never stop here HD. They just keep on comin’.

Posted by IwoCPO from Washington, DC on 12/28/07 at 08:44 AM ET

Being a Lions fan must be almost a zen experience by now.  “How many different ways can a team fail” could be a koan for the modern sports fan.

Posted by Baroque from Michigan on 12/28/07 at 08:55 AM ET

I’m so glad you took up this cause.  Last week on WXYT it was Valenti who kept yammerin about how horrible the Lions are and they don’t deserve our time or money...yet his whole show is about them everyday.  Apparently reading my mind, Kaputo was on later that night and asked the question “Why do we the media and you the fans spend so much time talking about the Lions when we have the Pistons and Red Wings kicking ass right now?”

That call in segment lasted about 10 minutes.  The next night we were back to the Lions.

Posted by Jeff from Harrison Twp, MI on 12/28/07 at 09:07 AM ET

It’s absolutely pathetic Jeff.  And it’s not just the radio.  I’m sure the other 18 readers here are sick and frigging tired of me mentioning it, but of the last 120 columns written in a Detroit paper, 1 has been about the Wings.

Posted by IwoCPO from Washington, DC on 12/28/07 at 09:13 AM ET

I gotta assume then, that unfortunately that the stations know that this is what the market wants.  I’ve heard comments about that when they do try to talk Wings, it’s pulling teeth to get anyone to call in.  As you can currently hear, they get flooded with people wanting to talk Lions.  I’m more angry at Detroiters and citizen of HockeyTown (gag) than taking it out on the talking heads and diggers.

Posted by Jeff from Harrison Twp, MI on 12/28/07 at 09:18 AM ET

My drive-time entertainment.  WDFN.  I listen on the way to work in the morning.  I record the station from 3-4:45 pm and snip out the commercials.  Every weekday.  Waiting like a cockapoo under the table for Wings scraps to fall to the floor.

It’s wonderful to see this in print, iwo.  Like a frank discussion of the AIDS virus.

Didn’t used to be like this.  There was a time when the Wings were embraced on WDFN. 

To their credit, the station presents Cheli in his own segment once a week, and Kevin Allen maybe twice a week.  But is this really what Hockeytown has been reduced to on the air waves? 
Uh yep.

Posted by redcootie from Dundee, MI on 12/28/07 at 09:19 AM ET

Just curious, on a typical game night, what kind of rating do the Wings broadcasts get?  How many Wings fans are there in the DET area?

You have to believe the MSM doesn’t spend time on the Wings, because it doesn’t get the ratings. 

Having said that, it certainly appears they could devote more time on them—i.e. as opposed to none!!!

Oh, and just so you don’t feel like the lone ranger out there.  I was perusing the Denver Post reading their post-mortem on last night game, and came across their blowup action photo from the game, midway through the article.... Captioned for Hudler’s game winner, and --- Showing their college team --CLUELESS:  (Sorry couldnt figure out how to copy the photo)

http://www.denverpost.com/avalanche/ci_7824860

Posted by Jeff OKWingnut from Hockey Netherworld on 12/28/07 at 09:20 AM ET

Imagine the Toronto media if this was their team.

Their heads might explode from the unaccustomed level of success, but I don’t think they’d mind dying that way too much.

(On the other hand, Filppula and Hudler might not be able to leave their homes without a large posse because they would be crushed by admiring fans.)

Posted by Baroque from Michigan on 12/28/07 at 09:21 AM ET

On a side note, NHL.com gave Fill the “First Star of the Night” Going to have to find a moniker for that Finn soon.

Posted by Jeff OKWingnut from Hockey Netherworld on 12/28/07 at 09:23 AM ET

I wonder if the reason so few people call in is because the hockey fans have already essentially abandoned hope of hearing their sport mentioned on the radio, and have retreated to the internet.

If that is the case, it would take more than just a few call-ins involving hockey from time to time to actually pull hockey fans back into participating on the radio.  It would take a concerted effort, and I’m not sure that the volume of Lion-whine would allow for that.

Posted by Baroque from Michigan on 12/28/07 at 09:25 AM ET

The Lions are way dysfunctional and people always like to complain about something.  The Wings, on the other hand, have been very good and very consistent for a good 15 years now.  There’s been no controversy, except for the Cujo/Hasek/Legacy love triangle a few years back. I mean, I’m sure that the readers here could some up with something to complain about but honestly, with the way the Wings been playing lately, it feels a little dirty to complain about Lilja right now

Posted by Defenseman from Grand Rapids on 12/28/07 at 09:25 AM ET

Their heads might explode from the unaccustomed level of success, but I don’t think they’d mind dying that way too much.

Funny Baroque—as usual.

Maybe that is part of the reason DET MSM ignores the Wings—too damn used to their winning ways. Wings win another—ho-hum.

Wings PR needs to make a push on just how freaking hard it is to win, especially now with Cap restraints.  Wait, maybe Wings PR just need to make a harder push period.  Wheres the New Guy???

Posted by Jeff OKWingnut from Hockey Netherworld on 12/28/07 at 09:26 AM ET

Going to have to find a moniker for that Finn soon.

I say we just keep calling him “Filppula” until other people pronounce it correctly.  don’t let them off the hook so easily! 

Posted by Baroque from Michigan on 12/28/07 at 09:26 AM ET

Here’s the one big thing about this issue I’ve never totally gotten my head around…

So what?

Seriously, anyone who gets the majority of their sports content from newspapers, or even more sadly sports radio, is a total buffoon.  Who cares if the morons at the Freep or WDFN don’t spend time talking about the Wings?  I can’t possibly imagine a scenario where a self-sufficient human being has the following thought: “Gee, Baligian seems excited about the Wings, I think I’ll start going.”

How do I know that’s true?  Because people in Detroit’s sports talk spent about 15 months trying to get people to stop going to Lions games, or to at least walk out of just one of them, and got around 500 people involfed.  Wee.  Get two chicks to start flashing the crowd on Woodward and you’d make a bigger impact.

Detroit sports media is a collection of toothless old bears kept in captivity so long they’d drop dead of exposure 15 minutes after being released into the wild.

Why do people care what fluffy toys they gum in their cage?

Posted by HockeyinHD on 12/28/07 at 09:29 AM ET

Oh, by the way -

Hope everyone had a good Christmas, and if you are currently back at work it isn’t taking too long to sort out what happened while you were gone. 

My fill-ins didn’t do anything incorrectly, exactly - I’m just very particular and it’s good to be able to have everything set up the way I like it again. 

Posted by Baroque from Michigan on 12/28/07 at 09:31 AM ET

A lot of people would rather talk negative.  If they can’t say anything negative, they won’t say anything at all.  But they WILL find something.  The Lions are just a scapegoat to ramble on about the negatives, while the Wings on the other hand, provide these negative minded people with NOTHING to fuel their vocabularic desires.

If everybody lived by that old saying, “If you can’t say anything nice, then don’t say anything at all,” the world would be a quiet place.  You’d hear a cricket from a mile away.  And there would be no more use for talk radio.

Posted by cementslinger from Midland MI on 12/28/07 at 09:33 AM ET

Out-of-Town broadcasters wouldn’t know his nickname anyway, hell they don’t even know how to pronounce his given name— here’s hoping they have to continue to mangle it though!!!!

Does the Colorado air/water seem to cause Detroit “D” to have brain cramps??  Even my daschound noticed their lacksadaisical play lst night.  Good god, you know its awful when you cough one up in the slot to a guy playing his 4th game and he pots it!!!!  Even Nick had his moments last night.  Meech—pinching!!!!  Lilja --- egad.

Posted by Jeff OKWingnut from Hockey Netherworld on 12/28/07 at 09:36 AM ET

Detroit sports media is a collection of toothless old bears kept in captivity so long they’d drop dead of exposure 15 minutes after being released into the wild.

Why do people care what fluffy toys they gum in their cage?

Especially with the snow expected to move in this afternoon.

I think the only reason people care is because media in general is in a transition state where the old rules no longer apply - at least not in the same way that they have worked before.  Newspapers are dealing with how to handle bloggers, sports are looking at other ways to reach fans, advertisers are trying to figure out a way to reach customers who use technology like Tivo to skip the commercials they pay stations good money for, and no one has quite figured out how to make a profit off os some of the new web and internet applications that people are coming up with.

Even something as simple as realizing that yes, the ratings for hockey on television weren’t the greatest, but as Mark Cuban pointed out, the ratings in Canada weren’t bad, and it isn’t as though they don’t buy cars and cell phones and men’s clothing just as much as anyone else.  If the current ratings model hasn’t even figured out how to cope with a viewing market that crosses one of the longest borders in the world, separating two countries that even speak pretty much the same language, how can they be expected to handle all the other implications of the changes in information delivery?

They are still dinosaurs, but unfortunately the dinosaurs make the decisions, and they will still put an emphasis on the same old ways as long as that is the only model they fully understand, even if it no longer applies to the media environment as it now exists.

Posted by Baroque from Michigan on 12/28/07 at 10:00 AM ET

The Wings draw good ratings, but, as Paul has stated, WXYT has been told to not talk about hockey from the talking heads in New York, and WDFN is more or less following orders as well--as are most of the Detroit media outlets.  What you listened to, Bill, is, save Kevin Allen and Chris Chelios interviews, the norm for Detroit sports talk radio for the vast majority of the year.  From August to February, it’s all Lions, and from February to August, they add the Tigers into the Lions mix.  It’s absolutely ridiculous, but it’s the way things are.

Regner?  Fired from WXYT.  Jamie and Brady?  They talked hockey, so Brady got fired.  Stoney and Wojo are at least more willing to occasionally discuss hockey than Valenti and Foster, who believe that Detroit has four major sports teams--the Lions, Tigers, Pistons, and the Wolverine-Spartan conglomerate. 

If you were to watch the Sunday sports wrap-ups on WJBK, WDIV, and WXYZ, you’d find the same thing--Lions Lions Lions Tigers Lions Lions, Pistons Lions Lions Lions, um, Wings for five seconds, Lions Lions Tigers Pistons Lions.  Bernie Smilovitz goes to cheesy clips and glosses over Wings news on Channel 4, it’s similar on Channel 2, and Channel 7 has the most substantive Wings coverage, but it’s still usually slotted third or fourth in the broadcast. 

There’s a reason that Nicklas Lidstrom and many of the Red Wings have Canadian satellite dishes.  They like to actually watch hockey highlights and discussion about the sport.

Posted by George James Malik from South Lyon, MI on 12/28/07 at 10:26 AM ET

To some extent, if the MSM do not cover hockey, the marginal fan will not go to the games. So it is a snowball effect.

Baroque, somehow I thought Kukla the emperor was making a fortune on the fine work that IWO is doing.

Posted by w2j2 on 12/28/07 at 10:32 AM ET

This past Thanksgiving, I was talking with my uncle, whose pastime is taking professional-looking photos of abandoned buildings and run-down neighborhoods-- a good hobby for a guy from downtown, being never short of subject material.  We were looking through a pile of photos, and turned over one of a burned-out house in Brush Park, and there was a photo of Tiger Stadium.  We reminisced about the ‘84 Series, and the greats, and how we’d miss the old corner and the flagpole in the outfield, and he got this glazed look in his eyes and said, “I saw the Lions win their last championship there...FIFTY YEARS AGO!”

Needless to say, growing up in A2, I had a much easier time of supporting U of M football and trying not to invest too much emotionally in William Clay’s Merry Men.

Anyway, been away for a while, off in rural County Antrim, visiting the in-laws for Xmas.  This is the first time I’ve had any significant time on a computer with any sort of fast connection.  Missed a bit, did I?

First, Chief, thanks and happy holidays to you and those of your ilk.  I heartily agree with the sentiments in the post about the servicemen, and I’m sure my father-in-law, second generation in career RAF service (retired), would agree.

Dub-- congratulations!  I wish you guys all the happiness and thick & thin that comes with marriage.  Anybody that has the good taste to stick with you has to a good person.  And I hope you got some ghetto-fabulous wedding gifts.  The Wheaties box is just another in a long line of awesome creations.  Scary talent you got there, rivaled only by Gabriel’s Belle Tire Wedding (also awesome).  Watch your back.

And along the lines of proposal stories, I may have lucked out.  Mrs. Andrew, being a very modern woman, proposed to me.  Eight years later and she’s still kicking my butt at everything.

Loved Draper’s comment about going back to Hockeytown.  See, this is why he’s worth a three-year contract.

Nathan, your comments about playing with pain and never being 100% are SO TRUE.  I play rugby in my spare time, and the amount of knocks, aches and bruises that I have mean that I never come to a game without some sort of pain.  The key is to make sure that it’s just the kind of normal playing pain, and not indicative of something more serious, but your body usually lets you know if something is terribly wrong-- the low-level buzz is replaced by something a hell of a lot worse that leaves you writhing on the ground.  And that’s why anyone should have respect for The Captain-- to play through the sort of agony that he experienced takes true spirit.

As for the prospective trades, I’m not liking the idea of mortgaging our future for a rental like Sundin, even as well as he’s playing right now.  Especially not with the talent we’ve got beginning to gel.  Maybe Feds, but the price would have to be right.  Besides, secondary scoring is finally starting to fall into place, and we should be okay come playoff time.  I’d love to see D-Mac back in the Winged Wheel, but hell, you already know that.

Baroque, I’m not with you on any of those namby-pamby animal designs for Ozzie’s mask (yes, I know honey badgers are vicious killers, but...yeah).  Put Opie rendered in airbrush on it.  Confuse opponents who’ll think he’s not wearing a mask.  Or else put on a nice montage of Sheriff Andy Griffith down at Emmett’s Fix-It Shop...’fixing’ Emmett.  Do-do-do do-do-do-do…

As for this blog, I always viewed it as the fiefdom of the Chief, a fascist dictator with the potty mouth of a three year-old.  What’s wrong with that?

And the best Xmas present I got this year?  The N. Lidstrom signature at the bottom of a two-year contract at a hometown pay cut, and the word that ‘we’ (his words, presumably meaning himself and his family) want to stay in Detroit.  God bless that man.

But then there are the other gifts you mentioned:

I don’t think Hudler is that much of a defensive liability.  Obviously he’ll never win a Selke and probably won’t see any PK time if it can be helped, but he’s not a say, Scott Hannan when it comes to shitty defensive play.  Put him on a line with two defensively-responsible players, and he can work wonders.  And then there’s how Uncle Mike sees him-- a primarily fourth-line player and PP specialist like Homer’s been for most of his career.

The reason Jimmy Howard’s stats don’t look like those of a future NHL starter?  The lousy start the Griffs had.  He’s been better lately, but that’s been his big bugbear-- consistency. Let’s see how that plays out before going the traditional Wing route of the revolving door for goalies.

Flip’s coming along nicely, and looks like that rarity of rarities, one of the Chief’s predictions coming true, is going to happen.  I thought just that after the Blooze game, and now more certain after the Dive passed with flying colors.  Where’s Thomas when you need to offer him salt & pepper with his crow?

Nice Christmas card anyway, Chief.  Cute daughter.  Cuter missus.  And you, ya little dickens, are just a sack of sugar and spice with a cute liddle button nose.

Off to Prague in early January on business.  Will try to spare time to head out to Pardubice.

Okay, I’m back.  Miss me?  Srt, let’s talk (or should that be ‘take?’) drugs again.

Saiorse!

(Oh, you may notice I’m not mentioning The Back.  I’m either in denial or else I’m trying not to jinx a comeback.  The hang-ups that come with emotional ties to a sports team.)

Posted by AndrewFromAnnArbor from a place far away from Christmas, MI on 12/28/07 at 11:17 AM ET

Couple comments about last night’s game, the ice was very bad at the Can.  Players were falling down all over the place.  I would have liked to have seen this game with the Wings not having played the night before.  I don’t think it would have been this close.

As hockey fans do we have to accept that our sport is just not taken seriously by the MSM?  I’ve given up reading almost all MSM coverage and rely on blogs for my information instead.  Spector, A2Y, BOC, etc give me the news and a good dose of hockey humor.  I think sometimes the NHL tv (lack of) contract with Versus has really damaged the sport more than the lockout and the ridiculous schedule.

Posted by hockeychic from Denver, CO on 12/28/07 at 11:25 AM ET

WDFN talking Wings hard.

Posted by Jeff from Harrison Twp, MI on 12/28/07 at 11:27 AM ET

Haha...I apologize for directing you back to WDFN.  Back to Lions it is.  They talked Osgood/Hasek, then saying Wings are the pick for the year.  And we’re done.

Posted by scsgoal31 from Huntington Woods, MI on 12/28/07 at 11:37 AM ET

@ AndrewFramAnnArbor -

If you want both confusion and scary, Osgood could always have his mask painted in the colors of one of Don Cherry’s louder ensembles. 

(Actually, Don Cherry scares me a little when it looks like he raided one of my closets from the past.  That purple velvet thing he has?  i once had an evening jacket very similar - but I wore it with a black camisole and slacks, not a lavender tie and pink shirt.  Still, it could be the identical jacket.)

Posted by Baroque from Michigan on 12/28/07 at 12:14 PM ET

Baroque - “What in the world is Don Cherry wearing this week?” is a popular game in my house on Saturday nights.  It provides some very good humor anyway.

Posted by hockeychic from Denver, CO on 12/28/07 at 12:19 PM ET

“What in the world is Don Cherry wearing this week?” is a popular game in my house on Saturday nights.  It provides some very good humor anyway.

You got that right.  That rainbow plaid number a week or so ago?  I actually yelped in surprise when I glanced up (I think that was when he said Darcy Tucker was the best player on the Leafs - I guess it wouldn’t hurt them at all to trade a schmuck like Mats Sundin, then) and saw that thing.  Then I called my mom and told her to turn on the television on CBC, only to hear a pause, and then a “what the hell is that?”

Posted by Baroque from Michigan on 12/28/07 at 12:25 PM ET

In the interest of being constructive (which will pass quickly), I have a couple questions:

Rather than what the MSM is doing right now, what would you rather have them do?  Then, once they did that, would you watch/read them because of it?

Here’s my point… there just aren’t a ton of ‘stories’ out there about the Wings right now.  Sure, there are some ‘events’, but not a lot which goes anywhere past that.

It’s not like the ‘coverage’ the other major teams are getting is anything approaching substantive, you know.  Wojo or Albom writing a column is hardly anything approaching insightful.  The only in-depth information the MSM gives sports teams are of the Tigers from Lynn Henning and others (the most informative team coverage by a factor of 10), and of the Lions from Kowalski… and it’s not like he’s even right half the time anyway.  Inflamatory, sure, and certainly entertaining… but mostly wrong.

Talk radio’s no better.  They pick their 6 or so topics at a pre-show meeting, mostly from sports headlines, and then wax pompously and often wildly absent-of-factually grandiloquent while they struggle to fill 3-4 hours of air time (less 45 minutes of every hour with commericals).

Here’s the reality:  The paradigm has forever shifted away from the media uncovering the story to the news merely reciting the stories they are given.  People who count on the MSM to provide interesting coverage of what interests them make about as much sense as people who’d depend on a horse-drawn carriage to get to work in the morning.

Sports is such a big money business now and media has become such a fractured and powerless collection of sycophantic athlete wannabes and never-weres that they’ve abrogated their historic functions to the franchises and sports they’re supposed to cover.

In other words, if the Detroit Red Wings decided they wanted to be a bigger popular local story in Metro Detroit they could do it immediately.

- Have open practices. Like, more than one.

- Extend an open invitation to anyone in the MSM that on such and such a day the whole team and staff will be available for interviews between 10am and 4pm.

- Set up something similar if less encompassing for bloggers.

Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.  It’s not the MSM’s fault.  They’re idiots, and it’s impossible for me to blame an idiot for acting like an idiot.  They are what they are, a mostly gutless collection of people huddled tightly under their mega-corporate umbrellas providing the most antiseptic distillation of things in order to keep their jobs/subscribers/blahblahblah.

When the Wings decide they want to be a relevant story in the local zeitgeist, they will be… it just hasn’t been particularly important to them for the past 10 years or so.

Posted by HockeyinHD on 12/28/07 at 01:01 PM ET

I stopped listening to ‘Detroit Sports Talk Radio’ years ago Chief, and back then there was a lot more Wings talk.  The reason I gave up on it wasn’t because of the hosts or lack of Wings content, it was the @*& #%@! callers.  Their lethal idiocy was robbing me of brain cells I could ill afford to free up - every time a caller was put on the air, I felt like the Germans at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark.

After avoiding MSM for a while, I landed here for my hockey fix.  Sarcasm, Wings, Wit, Sarcasm, Wings, photoshop (thanks for fixing the banner - that was scary yesterday), Sarcasm Wings rinse and repeat.  Besides all that, my brains don’t melt here. Perfect.

The MSM has catered to the LCD in an attempt to safeguard the ad revenues they (narrowly?) view as their only source of sustenance.  They would have to work very hard to win you and your crowd of (what - 19 is it now?) regulars back - something they’re not likely to do.

Rail away Chief, spray ‘em with all 9 yards - too bad they’ll never feel it.

Posted by Hoser from Downer Peninsula, Michigan on 12/28/07 at 01:45 PM ET

I’ve tried very hard not to chime in here, but it is starting to get painful.  What happens in sports radio and/or talk radio does not bother me one bit.  I have a nice selection of AM and FM recievers and one thing they all have in common is an OFF switch.  I simply do not listen. 

I had a converstion with my dad about 15 yrs ago, and asked him why he paid no attention to stuff like this. 

“Well, son, I found that life is just simpler and more enjoyable if you don’t concern yourself with it.  All I need to know is what is going on.  I can come up with opinions on my own, and do not feel a need to share them.”

The airways are crammed with depressed individuals desperately trying to drag everyone into their rut.

I also have no problem with the Red Wings organization protecting the privacy of its athletes.  I think more franchises should do the same.

Posted by HockeyTownTodd from upset when blogs don�t live up to my expectations on 12/28/07 at 01:53 PM ET

Just a note: When the Pistons, Tigers and Wings all went head to head last year during the playoffs, the Wings won the TV battle there. Detroit is still a hockeytown, even if the MSM want it not to be.

Posted by Chris from Marquette, MI on 12/28/07 at 03:33 PM ET

The way I see it, the MSM can ignore the Wings all they want to. I got XM Radio for Christmas and the NHL Radio channel is a god-send. I asked for it specifically for the fact that Wings talk or any hockey talk in general is relegated off the airwaves of DFN and XYT. You’d think that at least XYT would discuss the Wings, being as they’re the “flagship” for the team, but alas they’re ignored worse than the fat kid when picking teams in basketball.

We as hockey fans must just accept this reality and remind ourselves that the Lions are king for sports talk because their ineptitude raises debate amongst the fan base. There is nothing exciting or new to talk about with the Wings, because to them every year it’s the same ho-hum, boring regular season where they win 50+ games. Program directors know that the Lions will garner more discussion because they suck, and nothing will change that.

Art talked about the Wings on Wednesday afternoon, but it was a negative spin about JLA being old and in a bad location. That’s the only Wings talk this year: attendance woes and how much the Joe sucks to see a game. Nevermind the fact that Zetterberg is a Hart candidate, Datsyuk dazzles every night, the young kids are coming on or that Chris Osgood is having a storybook year.

Negativity will always fuel sports talk, and as long as the Lions are futile every year, the same fire the coach, fire Millen and dump the QB discussions are going to be held every day.

If you want hockey talk, go to XM and away from anything local.

Posted by Jeremy from Oregon, OH on 12/28/07 at 06:56 PM ET

I don’t live in the Detroit area, therefore I only know what I’ve heard when I was in the area.
Back when LA Kings were at the Joe I was in the Area for the 3rd period and post game on XYT.  I actually missed the immediate post game (out of the truck) but caught a call in and discuss episode shortly after the game.  It was actually interesting because the DJ/Host would answer a call and have a discussion, with the caller, about the Wings.  I know this episode went on for at least 45 minutes.  I don’t remember the DJ, and even sent an email asking who the DJ was with no reply as of yet.  But it was nice to hear a dj actually have interest in what the caller had to say.  For what its worth…

Posted by cementslinger from Midland MI on 12/28/07 at 07:36 PM ET

i am a friend of seans,the reason i was told they don’t talk more hockey is they don’t get the calls from fans.trust me as a friend of close to 20 yrs if ppl actually called in,he would be talking hockey.the whole xyt u-m/msu garbage during lions,wings,tigers segments makes me want to puke.all those u-m/msu lovers hosting the shows on that station make me sick,get thru a segment focusing on given pro team.karshs u-m stuff no matter what sport they discuss is sickening,i swear lloyd gave birth to him.not everything relates to u-m/msu,despite that stations on air chatter.at least valenti has cut out the lighting of his private parts out of his on air repetroire for awhile.at least drew sharp makes some salient points.the rest is a waste of salary.gator needs to take his “comedy act” elsewhere,nobody cares if he gets laid,he needs to do his job and knockoff his infantile i can’t get laid bit.if he acts the same way in person,its no wonder he’s a virgin.

Posted by Speedy Sammich from DTown on 12/29/07 at 01:30 AM ET

I think it’s pretty obvious that the sports talk radio situation, at least in terms of people calling in, is mutual in that people don’t expect to “get through” the screener if they want to talk hockey.

As for complaining about the situation, I’m not sure that banging the drum against the fact that sports talk radio tends to glance at the front page of ESPN for ten seconds and talk about whatever catches their eye for the next two hours...banging that drum every day isn’t going to change anything, but it’s still good to talk about it.  Intelligent discourse (or something in the vicinity of informed discussion) is always useful, and the truth of the matter is that people don’t talk about this stuff, they just grumble and change the radio station.  May as well air out all the laundry in the same place, you know?

Sports is such a big money business now and media has become such a fractured and powerless collection of sycophantic athlete wannabes and never-weres that they’ve abrogated their historic functions to the franchises and sports they’re supposed to cover.

In other words, if the Detroit Red Wings decided they wanted to be a bigger popular local story in Metro Detroit they could do it immediately.

- Have open practices. Like, more than one.

- Extend an open invitation to anyone in the MSM that on such and such a day the whole team and staff will be available for interviews between 10am and 4pm.

- Set up something similar if less encompassing for bloggers.

Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.  It’s not the MSM’s fault.  They’re idiots, and it’s impossible for me to blame an idiot for acting like an idiot.  They are what they are, a mostly gutless collection of people huddled tightly under their mega-corporate umbrellas providing the most antiseptic distillation of things in order to keep their jobs/subscribers/blahblahblah.

When the Wings decide they want to be a relevant story in the local zeitgeist, they will be… it just hasn’t been particularly important to them for the past 10 years or so.

This would be heaven on earth for us bloggers, and it isn’t going to happen--even the “more than one open practice” plea, despite the fact that it’s bloody obvious that a couple of open practices a month, especially under the auspices of charity fundraisers whose expenses could be written off, would receive good turn-outs and would generate ticket sales, especially if there’s more than four or five days’ worth of notice and some actual plugging thereof in the media.  The MSM’ers show rare bursts of creativity on occasion, but expecting in-depth analysis...Eh, not so much.

As for “us bloggers,” the Wings say that the press box and locker room are too crowded (seriously), and they’re not exactly sure how to approach credentialling us...but it’s at least progress that they’ve acknowledged that we exist at this point.

In general, regrettably, I maintain my assertion that the sports media, in general, has the attention span of a small child who is instantaneously distracted if somebody drops a bright, shiny quarter on the ground, even if there’s a bus coming at them.  To some extent, I think that their dispassionate desire to go after “the story” (whatever they see the newspaper-selling hook as being, and yes, they still believe that their job is to sell newspapers) as mostly-impartial observers is why bloggers exist--there’s something to be said for subjective and emotional commentary, especially as a go-between between impartial observers and highly subjective fans, but that’s a topic for another day…

And HTT, regarding the Wings’ desire to keep their players’ private lives private, I don’t really care about finding out what Tomas Holmstrom’s three hellion kids’ names are, or what Hank does at home with Emma Andersson (Expressen’s Mats Olsson described Zetterberg’s life as “every man’s [bleepy] dream” in a column declaring him the biggest Swedish sportsman/sports story, and I thought that was bloody vulgar)...But I think the details that render Red Wings players more than two-dimensional are the simple ones.  I don’t think the MSM “gets” that finding out that Holmstrom wears the same three gray t-shirts under his pads for every game, and as such, he has a hard time figuring out which one is his “lucky” one (as he told NHL.com’s Dan Moriarty), I thought it was absolutely hilarious when Mike Babcock admitted that, despite the use of an on-call video coordinator and all sorts of coaching-specific computer programs available in the Wings’ high-tech-oriented room, he uses Themebook notebooks to compile his “playbooks” on other teams, and the fact that St. James is willing to add a little of Pavel’s biting sarcasm, even in his limited English, to answering questions was wonderful if you ask me, because that’s why the guys think he’s funny--he might not be able to recite Shakespeare in perfect English, but it’s hard to “nail” sarcasm in one language, never mind two, and from what leaks out of the Wings’ room and the Russian press, teammates see Datsyuk’s hockey IQ translate into a tremendous sense of humour in the locker room…

It’s those little details that give fans a foothold into making a personal connection with a player or coach.  Any writer will tell you that subtle concrete details are the “hooks” that draw readers into stories, and that the manipulation thereof is how you build up a picture or an image of a certain character (sorry, English degree leaking through at 5 in the morning), and when you translate that into non-fiction and “sports journalism,” the bottom line is the bottom line--I don’t think fans particularly care whether Jiri Hudler has a take on the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, and I’d rather not see journalists delve into the details of Babcock’s religious tendencies, but little hockey-related hooks can add up to ticket and merchandise sales, as well as images of three-dimensional people with quirks and defined personalities.  Otherwise, the organization’s desire to keep players’ private lives private is fine by me--it’s the fact that they want to keep everything private that drives me nuts.

I guess the irony of this whole situation is that the tangents that we read each other going off upon as we skim through the comments in response to Bill’s topic are deeper and more insightful than anything you’d hear on sports talk radio, so, in a way, the protest of the lack of Wings-related commentary on sports talk radio has generated the kind of substantive discussion that you’d never actually find on the dial, and in that sense, Bill’s protest has been widely successful.

Except for the intellect and soul-sapping endeavor that is actually trying to listen to WDFN or WXYT for four straight hours.  Bill will never get his time back, and maybe that’s the great tragedy here

That, or having to actually talk about the Lions…

Posted by George James Malik from South Lyon, MI on 12/29/07 at 05:58 AM ET

I guess the irony of this whole situation is that the tangents that we read each other going off upon as we skim through the comments in response to Bill’s topic are deeper and more insightful than anything you’d hear on sports talk radio, so, in a way, the protest of the lack of Wings-related commentary on sports talk radio has generated the kind of substantive discussion that you’d never actually find on the dial, and in that sense, Bill’s protest has been widely successful.

I wonder if that isn’t one of the strengths of the internet.  There is only so much insight that even the most intelligent caller can fit into a brief comment to a radio show while talking on their cell phone in traffic, but an internet conversation can continue for hours, allowing participants to think through their remarks and expand on them when prompted by questions from others.

And someone should give Holmstrom about $2.49 and his problem would be solved.  Get a bottle of fabric paint with a pen-tip at any craft store and label his identical gray t-shirts 1, 2, and 3 at the back of the neck or on the sleeve.  Problem solved and he can easily find his lucky shirt! 

Posted by Baroque from Michigan on 12/29/07 at 01:25 PM ET

Cool idea.  So, is this just more proof that Detroit’s hockeytown monikor is just bunk?

The Avs get a fair amount of play on the sports radio station that broadcasts their games, but do not get near the play that the Broncos or baseball gets in the papers.

Posted by Bob in Boulder from Boulder, CO on 01/04/08 at 07:53 PM ET