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Rosenthal column. Funny slams. LOL in bold.
So North has known his fate since August??
As in most things, a scene from "The Simpsons" immediately came to mind. It was the one in which Homer was living the high life, lighting cigars with dollar bills. His investment in pumpkins was doing so well that he ignored his broker's advice to sell his stake by Halloween.
"They've been going up the whole month of October, and I've got a feeling they're going to peak right around January. Then, bang! That's when I'll cash in," he tells his pals, blithely ignorant of how, like a rotting jack-o'-lantern, his stake would soon be a fetid mess.
What recalled this was Comcast SportsNet Chicago's announcement Friday that it will be dropping Mike North's live three-hour weekday program with Dan Jiggetts and Jen Patterson. How they'll hold up between now and their final show Dec. 31 remains to be seen, but if you're going to get rid of your "Monsters," Halloween Eve seems about right.
"Monsters in the Morning" has had one foot in the grave on CSN since August. That's when North and Comcast SportsNet Chicago President Jim Corno say they "mutually agreed" it would be one year and out for the ambitious -- and not inexpensive -- program, which launched Jan. 12 on both the cable channel and North's ill-fated Internet radio venture, Chicago Sports Webio.
In the end, the timing had less to do with ghosts and goblins than the fact that the cable channel's January schedule was about to be released. It will show "Sports Rise" in the 6 a.m.-to-9 a.m. "Monsters" slot, which would have made it clear North and Jiggetts' program was among the living dead.
(Not that it's so bad to be dead these days. Michael Jackson is doing all right at the box office with his new movie "This Is It." And DirecTV has put the late Chris Farley back to work with David Spade in a TV ad that succeeds if only in getting viewers to stop fast-forwarding long enough to mutter, "What the deuce?")
"This is a very amicable thing," Corno said. "It's not yelling and screaming or hiding and pulling (North) off the air, that kind of stuff. It's a business decision."
North, meanwhile, indicated he hoped to move "Monsters" somewhere in some form. Maybe TV, maybe radio. He also hopes he and Jiggetts will get to continue the dueling columns they have contributed to the Chicago Sun-Times.
"The 'Monsters' brand, I think, is going to be here to stay for a while," North said. "We've got things to do, Dan and me and Jen. ... Doing a three-hour show, 15 hours a week, has opened up other opportunities for us that we'll probably be talking about down the line, but today isn't the day."
One notable venue North isn't talking about is the Internet, at least not now.
Chicago Sports Webio, which simulcast "Monsters in the Morning" as its anchor, crashed and burned in spectacular fashion over the summer and nearly took "Monsters" down with it when backer David Hernandez, now facing federal fraud charges, was accused of running a Ponzi scheme.
It didn't help that Hernandez's NextStep Medical Staffing also had signed on as CSN's title sponsor for "Monsters." But North was able to find another title sponsor in LECET, the Chicago Area Laborers-Employers Cooperation and Education Trust, a construction group. "That propelled the show another six months," North said. "I don't believe when salespeople say you can't sell in a recession."
The irony of the Webio debacle is that General Motors just a few days ago announced it would follow plans by Chrysler and make an Internet router available as a dealer-installed option on certain Buick, Cadillac, GMC and Chevrolet vehicles. It was the widespread adoption of that sort of technology that was critical to a venture such as Webio, assuming the company had legitimate backing.
Corno said the decision to drop "Monsters," which is among seven sports programs nominated for a regional Emmy Award, was strictly economic. "The show was expensive to produce," he said. "We did the one year. ... Now let's free Mike up so he can find another home for the show."
Jiggetts, who reunited with his old WSCR-AM radio partner for "Monsters," will continue to work independently for CSN. With or without Jiggetts, the next move for North, who left the Score in mid-2008 after being unable to reach a new deal with CBS Radio, is less certain.
"There's nothing that I believe we can't do," North said. "But you know me. I want to host the Oscars someday. That's one of my goals. People say it will never happen, but people have said 'This won't happen' or 'That won't happen' over the years and they have happened."
Everything goes away eventually. "Even 'Gunsmoke' couldn't live forever," Corno said.
But regardless of whether he took a bath on pumpkin futures, Homer Simpson is now in his 20th season and still bumbling along.
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