Radio-TV Observer

A special USA-365 supplement by Mark Smith

10-13-2005

We are all media observers. We all watch, listen and read and we know what we like.

Media is a business designed to make money off the public by entertaining them. It often does not have redeeming value, logic or a moral base. But it isn't required to. I ask you to accept TV, newspapers and radio as the creative, possibility and mistake-laden free form entities that they are.

Don't make too much of what is said, written or aired. It isn't about you, it's about them. That also applies to anyone who dares to be a critic.

Today, we challenge readers to consider the 'hate' hype behind big game match-ups and the unintended message it tells our youth, and even young children.

(10-13-2005) I remember the 70s and 80s when Notre Dame played the University of Miami in football. Heavily hyped games with teams at their peak. Guaranteed national TV before Notre Dame started renting their own network on Saturday afternoons. There were nasty chants, trash-talking. A fight in the runway and guess what? Notre Dame dropped Miami from the schedule.

Maybe it's time to cancel the Andrean-Griffith football games. The hype surrounding last week's regular season match up was not what you'd want for high school athletics. Every other pre-game story was peppered with home much the two teams hate each other. How much the boys hate each other and how much the parents and fans hate each other. Then you had the greasy, beer-bellied media slobbering all over the event like so many like so many peeping Toms looking into a 13-year-old's bedroom. This is high school sports, folks. Almost no one analyzed the game. They took the simple-minded approach and played the 'hate' card. It was a little pathetic.

Some will say that they meant 'hate' in a sports context and that it's not real hate. Nonsense. Do the teenagers know that? If you don't mean 'hate' don't say it. If you mean it, then is this the same hate you use for homosexuals or women or Iraqis? It probably will be. High school is supposed to be a representative experience for the life that is to follow. Kids must not be taught to hate the opposition in a ball game and that thought needs to be snuffed out of their minds. Those kind of kids transfer to Columbine or grow up and do an 'OJ' when their girlfriend leaves them. Actually, what they don't do is grow up. Everything becomes me-against-the world.

TO PLAYERS: Get your act to together and talk about the game as a game. Stop using the word 'hate' inside the context of an athletic event. You know it's wrong and younger boys are reading your words. If your coaches use hate to motivate, reject it or you'll be a cancer all your life. This is a game and games are simply something you play until you get a life.

TO THE LOCAL MEDIA: Remember that you're talking about children out there on the field. You can't pay lip service to the good athletics does for kids and then revel in the 'hate' between two schools. Words have meanings that are different to adults than they are to kids. If you fire up animosity on radio, TV or in the papers, you create what happens at the gate, on the field and in the parking lot. Think about what you're saying about sporting events that don't have to occur if the competitive heat spills off the stove and sets the kitchen on fire.

What ever happened to analyzing the matchup of the offensive line of Griffith against the defensive front of Andrean? What ever happened to analyzing whether or not this was actually a big game? They will meet again in November.

When players say they hate other players, delete that from your stories. It's editing. You do it every day. The same way you'd delete it if a player said he hated his step father or hated his school. The same way you'd delete it if he said he hated the local newspaper. This is the reason why coaches don't want writers interviewing players. Writers aren't looking for insight; they're looking for a headline.

"WE hate them!!!!" is a great headline if you're the National Enquirer and you're a scandal sheet.

Apparently, there was some vandalism involved in the week before the game. I have heard only rumors. I don't know how much of it was true. But if there was, then media... YOU ARE PARTIALLY RESPONSIBLE! You jacked up the hate quotient irresponsibly and you all know it.

The only person who seemed to be thinking clearly was 59er coach Brett St. Germain, who forbade his players from talking to media during the week. He should be commended and others should follow his lead prior big games. Nothing good can come out of children in pressure situations speaking to irresponsible media for publication.

In the Post-Tribune column written by Mike Hutton on Oct. 4, there again rose the subject of the upcoming breakup of the clumsy 16-team Lake Athletic Conference (LAC). Hammond coaches are upset with the schools that are breaking away (Munster, Highland, Andrean, Griffith, Hobart, Lowell and Kankakee Valley) because they are leaving the four Hammond schools without a conference.

Forget for a second that Munster and Lowell and Andrean have no long-standing history with the Hammond schools, who didn't need the old Lake Suburban Conference teams (LC, CP, Lowell, Highland, Munster, Griffith and Calumet) and didn't want to play those 'suburban' schools anyway. The real power was in Hammond in the 50s, 60s and 70s. Never mind that the lack of a fan base for the Hammond schools in the last 20 years has hurt the Munsters and Highlands and Griffiths at the football and basketball box office or that gas prices make it insane to bus kids from Lowell and KV to Hammond 88 times a year in 20 different sports.

The comment was made in the article that, 'In the backdrop of all this is race.' Mike Hutton wrote it but this isn't about him. I have heard people say that. It's what I've heard Hammond people say. Folks in Hammond may be shocked to learn this, but south

Lake County and Jasper County isn't the Augusta National Golf Club. They have long since let in black, Hispanic, Oriental and Arabic people at schools like Griffith, Lowell and Kankakee Valley. They threw the Klan out 75 years ago. Hobart's best football player Richard Mitchell, doesn't look like he does because he tans well. He's black. Probably born that way.

It's okay for Hammond people to call the suburban schools on their emphasis on the almighty dollar. But to call Munster, Highland,

Andrean, Griffith, Lowell, Kankakee Valley and Hobart racist (which is what is being clearly insinuated) is highly insulting and grossly incorrect.

Lowell, Munster and Griffith people are not racists, by my definition, and I would know. Lowell schedules Gary West Side in basketball every season even though the Devils will probably never beat them. Why? Good competition, and they bring fans. Black fans. But Lowell doesn't care. Munster plays Wirt at Wirt every other year, those racist pigs. The Mustang fans go and pay their money. When Lowell plays at Morton all the white 'Devils' go up and put their money in athletic director Roy Richards' hands. When Morton plays at Lowell, they do not reciprocate. Even the next of kin don't show up. It's a joke. The LAC breakup is largely about money and it should be. Sports are extra curricular activities and schools increasingly have to justify the dollars. How can Lowell justify hosting Hammond and welcoming in nine paying fans when they can play KV and see 900 come through the gates?

I guess it's easier to go all 'Jesse Jackson' on the situation rather than face the question, 'Why do Hammond schools have no fan

support at ball games?' Lowell and Griffith are not rich towns but friends, neighbors and parents pay $4 to watch the kids play ball on Friday night. In Hammond, even at larger schools, they do not. Lowell just threw 48 million dollars into renovating the high school. Crown Point, Chesterton and Hebron have all built new schools in the last 10 years. When do Hammond kids get a new school? How can you have school spirit when your school is run down?

Why go out for the team? Why behave? Why learn anything? Spare me the tax argument. Taxes are high everywhere. Does that mean kids and teachers are doomed to sit in Korean War-era buildings that were old 20 years ago? Everybody in Hammond needs to just shut up about the LAC breakup. They have bigger problems. They failed to stop the deterioration of their own athletic programs, their own schools and their own city. I certainly don't blame sports coaches, but somebody is to blame. Any school official who cashed his or her check while schools and neighborhoods that are more than half minority became comparatively second rate, they are the ones that better worry about being called racist.

The day after the Andrean-Griffith game, the game story was not on the front page of the Post-Tribune. The entire page was coverage of the White Sox, which proves that the decision makers at the Post-Tribune don't understand northwest Indiana. The high school football games have to be on the front page this late in the season. The White Sox coverage, which is partly duplication of what the Chicago Sun-Times has, is not local sports coverage. It's not even local coverage of the Sox. It's the same stuff, almost word for word, that the Sun-Times has. If I wanted to read that, I'd buy the Sun-Times.

The NW Indiana Times had the Griffith-Andrean game on the front page with all the local scores and highlights as they should have. The

Post-Tribune had nothing local on the front page except for a paragraph to refer you inside to what you really wanted to read about.

Usually the Post is good about staying local. But this was a Harriet Miers caliber blunder. It was a judgment call and it was bad judgment.

Note to all local media: Something you should already know. Chicago gives 500% saturation coverage to Chicago pro sports teams. Coverage that you cannot beat or ever possibly hope to compete with. I am only speaking for myself, but I could not possibly in a million

years care less what local writers think about Chicago sports. They are no more knowledgeable than the alcoholic diehards down at the bar. I care what local writers think of local sports. They know things. Lots of things. Things that must be left out while the Times and Post ego-trip about their low-rent 'Sox coverage.'

The Times and the Post often forget they are not and will never be Chicago newspapers no matter how badly writers there may want to move up to the big town. If folks want to read eight pages on the Chicago White Sox, they will never buy the Post-Tribune and the Times to get it. That's like asking a dog what it's like in a cat house.

And here's the bigger point. I'm sorry to have to tell you this, but there aren't that many people who care about the Chicago White Sox. WLS-TV, Channel 7 in Chicago is running a series on the nightly news called 'Meet the White Sox!!' Why? Because nobody outside of the addicted baseball lunatic fringe knows who any of them are. Can you imagine a series in Chicago media called, 'Meet the Cubs?' Me neither.

Every other local opinion column I have read about the Sox playoff run refers to how the Sox have finally somehow outdone the Cubs. In 2003, I do not remember any words about the Cubs even mentioning the Sox. Why the difference? Because the writers are stretching. So few people truly care about the Sox they have to drag in somebody else to create conflict. (That's what writers do.) As Chicago's sports talk stations found out this week, you have to pit the Sox against the Cubs to get calls. Because no one cares about the Sox against the Angels. Just talking about the White Sox is about as boring as Stephen A. Smith's ESPN show.

1.) When annoying loudmouth Chris Berman is calling the playoff games of the White Sox at 3 o'clock in the afternoon, you can be certain the networks have relegated them to dung status. He is a hack announcer, who should be calling dog races. All mouth. Brain gone south. Also, when a manager just gets fired (Lou Pinella) and the network shoves him into the broadcast booth on your team's game, you know your team is low rent. They are using your game as an experiment to try out an unqualified announcer. If he's bad, so what? At least he didn't screw up a Yankee broadcast.

2.) When network announcers mention the sellout crowd at playoff games, you know your franchise is lunch meat. The Red Sox, Cubs and Yankees draw sellout crowds every game as the White Sox would if they were popular. When the Sox drew 14,000 fans in September when they were trying to hold first place, that told you all you need to know about the entire fan base. You can't make an effort to kill your fans base for years and then ask 'Where are they' when you start to win.

3.) When the announcers on playoff games keep telling you, "This White Sox team is really good!!" they know they have to convince you because you've never heard of half of them. Announcers never say, 'This Yankee team is good' or 'This Red Sox team is good.' They don't have to. You know them. You care about them. When someone repeatedly tells you they aren't scared of something, that means they're terrified. Bet on it.

4.) When another Sunday Chicago Bears come-from-ahead loss dominates media and talk show discussion (and TV ratings) over your 'championship' baseball team, you know that people care about your team as much as President Bush cares about the people of Iraq. When a perennial loser doing what they do best... losing... wipes out coverage of your once in a decade victory, you are lower than that yellow snow next to your puppy dog's feet.

5.) When most of the nation is being fed (on TV) the National League championship series between Houston and St. Louis (Two dominant media centers, for sure) while your team's game is relegated to the 'Fox Re-run Network,' you know your team is about as popular as lemonade at Kate Moss' birthday party. The networks were praying for Boston to beat the Sox because even Chicago people don't care about the White Sox. How can they possibly get anybody else to care?

Bottom line: As long as the Sox keep trying to outdo the Cubs and whine about how everybody's always against them, they will never have the fan support they should have. Folks just don't like whiners. In the next few days, try to find a Chicago newspaper covering the White Sox that DOES NOT mention the Cubs for so much as one day. You cant do it. I've tried. Some people like to think of the Cubs as lovable losers. At least there's love there. Most people just think of the Sox as losers and constantly complaining losers. No amount of writer and announcer spin will make people love them.

You may have heard about the earthquake in Pakistan where 40,000 people died. You've got to make an effort to follow it in the newspapers and on TV because the US media obviously doesn't really care about those people. CNN"s Anderson Cooper basically moved to New Orleans when the hurricanes hit and 1,500 were killed. He probably still jets down on weekends to stand in the street and do live reports.

You'll note that Cooper isn't in Pakistan when the greatest natural disaster of our time is occurring out of the eye of the US networks. The Fox Network goes live whenever George Bush burps, but they can't find the time to send more than a couple of stringers to Afghanistan. The news media has found that coverage of third world people dying is about as appealing to Americans as a Jeff Foxworthy marathon.

The networks aren't totally to blame. They go where the ratings go. Despite what they say, they don't really care about the dead people. They just want more viewers. That's why cable news still devotes full hours to a partying Alabama college girls' disappearance in Aruba FOUR MONTHS AGO. Young blond southern co-eds are much better for ratings than Muslim children dying by the thousands. Don't expect Harry Connick Jr. to fly to Islamabad to sing songs for the families of the missing. Liberal or conservative, 40,000 dead in Pakistan is a minor story compared to a hurricane in the southeast. And don't expect local school children to have bake sales raising money for the Pakistani people. America is an extremely self-centered nation. We are taught from an early age not to care about people who are not like us. We are taught that they are the enemy. And when our us-against-them president declares a 'War on Terror' on the Muslim World (We've invaded two countries, but we look the other way at US puppet Saudi Arabia) how can the people be expected to care about foreigners being slaughtered by a tsunami or an earthquake?

The Chris and Chris sports talk radio show (3-5 p.m.) on WCFJ (1470) AM is very good on Fridays, because they are able to talk to prep coaches BEFORE the game. I know of no place else where a radio show gets away with that. You might think coaches would be busy at that time but actually, they're probably stealing the money on Fridays. They don't have anything to do until 6 o'clock. The ones I've heard seem glad to be on the air and I'm surprised how talkative they are. It's good and it is good prep for the night's game coverage.

The Region Sports Network is producing some one-camera video tapings of big high school football games and showing them on ComCast cable 26 at 10:00 p.m. on Thursday nights.

It really fills a void made by WYIN (Channel 56) TV's decision to discontinue broadcasts two years ago and Com Cast cable production troubles then canceled this season's game of the week. The Griffith-Andrean game will be shown on Oct. 13 at 10 p.m. and tentatively, the Whiting-Kankakee Valley game will be shown at 10 p.m. on Oct. 20, 2005. One camera shoots look amateurish at times, even with the best cameramen. But, for the fan, they're better than the 'No camera' shoots we've gotten this season.

This could be a breakthrough. For 20 years, the folks with the equipment have lacked the desire to do more than minimum contests. The weekly highlight shows are increasingly well-produced but they do not, in any way, compare to a game taped live. I would hope that eventually there can be two or three tape-delay games every week on TV during the basketball season. After all, this is Indiana.

Broadcast groups tend to lie or cover up the most important question, which is, are you making money doing this? So, the RSN could be rolling in dough or as bankrupt as American Airlines for all I know. Hopefully, they financially can continue to produce games during

the basketball season and hopefully they can get two cameras to make the games look good. There are an unlimited amount of games that would be watchable to the entire region. All the major tournament championship games could and should be on. One thing about the RSN, their business isn't cable TV subscriptions or begging for donations. All they do is prep sports. I have a lot more faith in them doing games than I do Channel 56 or Comcast.

I'm buying it. She looks like a better looking, less stereotyped tall clone of Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton. I love the evil Republican

senator (is there any other kind?) and her downright nasty Vice President. The President's kids are whining brats and her husband is a weenie, but the show has towering potential, largely because people don't think of Geena Davis as a TV actress, even though that's where she started. Davis plays a strong understated CIC with a movie star's flair. And the timing is perfect with the 2008 elections on the horizon. It's the only new show that's a hit. The only new one that's in the top-20 of the weekly ratings.

It's nothing special, but Freddie is likeable. He's surrounded by very cute ladies (Freddie lives in a house full of women) and television finally found something for co-star Brian Austin Green to do. The ex-cop from NYPD Blue is adorable as Freddie's sister. They're not going to be throwing any Emmys Freddie's way but TV isn't rocket science. It all rides on the star and it's hard not to like Freddie.

Watch quick because it will probably be cancelled, but Bratt and Hopper are very good as heads of an elite US Government covert activities wing that globe trots and handles major crisis. Sunny-faced Kelly Rutherford is an angry ex of Bratt's who is above him at the Pentagon, just to juice things up. If you liked JAG (and it was on for nine years), you'll like E-Ring.

Wonderful childhoods memories. Very vivid. If it's not all real, it should have been. I hope he isn't exaggerating situations too much, but even if he is, it's great TV. A little dark, but very funny and the voice-over-narration is perfect. Some people just have funny voices. I don't know how long he can keep it up. There's only two or three years in a series like this before you start repeating or exaggerating yourself.

Tyra is way over the top in a lot of ways. But she's a 5-foot-10 supermodel who isn't afraid to make fool of herself on TV in front of an

audience. That's the No. 1 prerequisite for TV stardom. This isn't the Cannes film festival. It's daytime TV. Tyra's show is a mish-mash of different ideas and she'll have to decide what works. But Tyra Banks is core-level raw daytime TV. She looks good and she's loud. Read: Kelly Ripa. I'm sure Jenny Jones and Rikki Lake started this way and they were on for a decade. Trust me on this one.