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After woeful 2008, North, Jiggetts will rescue local media
January 8, 2009
BY DAN MCNEIL
My editors get nervous when I suggest I'd like to write something that pertains to the point spread. They also bristled when I suggested we're due for a report on my brethren in the sports media.
I've decided to meld the two sensitive topics.
I'm betting on Mike North and Dan Jiggetts to do a compelling show when ''Monsters in the Morning'' debuts Monday on Comcast SportsNet. It's easier to plunk down a ''C-note'' on the under in a Bulls game than to project this, but I'm optimistic Northy and Jiggs will recapture some of the magic that made them the most popular tag team in the city for eight years.
And the Chicago sports media are due for a win. This past year was as disappointing for local media as it was for the teams they covered. Submitted for your disapproval, the following events:
* * North's 16 1/2-year run at WSCR-AM (670) concluded acrimoniously. North and Score management hurled insults at each other after North rejected a reported $750,000 salary. If North -- whose morning-show ratings were below par but not off-the-chart miserable -- was so bad, why would he be offered a deal that would've made him the city's second-highest-paid sports yakker? And why would he reject it?
Neither decision was sound. And the result was the end of an era that began when the station plugged in on Jan. 2, 1992. North was the station's lifeblood for a decade. His unorthodox, unpredictable, sometimes unprofessional style is what put the Score on the map.
* * Jay Mariotti, who bolted the Sun-Times after the Beijing Olympics, surfaced this week with an online column in which he sedated readers with a tale of struggles making deadlines in the traditional newspaper medium.
The cantankerous Mariotti, who always was a must-read for me, also unearthed revelations about the Internet being the wave of the future. I can't wait for his next offering, perhaps confirming Columbus' suspicion that the Earth is round.
* * Better point the thumb if I'm pointing the finger. My WMVP-AM (1000) radio show, the ''Mac, Jurko & Harry Afternoon Saloon,'' didn't keep its heavyweight title belt in '08. We were clipped by the talented but boorish ''Boers and Bernstein'' program on rival WSCR in the fall Arbitron afternoon-drive ratings.
A half-dozen times or so over the last several years, the Saloon has been No. 1 among adult men. That happened only once in '08. Anything less is unacceptable. We need to do our jobs ''a whole lot better.''
* * Also on the radio ratings beat, it's nothing shy of embarrassing that ESPN's nationally aired ''Mike and Mike in the Morning'' has become the highest-rated sports radio program in any time slot in Chicago. They do a fine show, but it's best consumed in markets such as Bangor, Maine, or Enid, Okla., or Salem, Ore. In big towns like ours, local sports talk never should lose to a more vanilla national show. Shame on all of us.
* * WMAQ-Channel 5's hiring of Daryl Hawks as lead anchor is the worst decision by a broadcast executive since the last Mike Adamle assignment. The hideous Hawks, who debuted in September on Channel 5's brutally produced NFL postgame show, makes viewers want to pull the covers over their heads more than any local anchor since Jon Kelley.
And we should pass around the hat so Channel 5 can buy some high-definition cameras for the next big event it produces, such as the Winter Classic pregame show. I only can imagine that NBC's Bob Costas was thinking, ''This is our No. 3 market?'' when he willingly joined the obnoxious Hawks on the no-budget set, shot in standard definition, before the puck dropped.
* * I want to say Channel 5 made me appreciate Comcast SportsNet's pregame and postgame shows, but I'm reminded of how execs there also behaved recklessly in '08 when they didn't renew the contract of the talented Kerry Sayers. Sayers and co-anchor Pat Boyle consistently were an enjoyable watch, the best 1-2 punch in town.
* * I'm rooting for North and Jiggetts. They're guys with whom I've laughed, cried and engaged in heated arguments and philosophical differences. The kind that led to my resignation at the Score in October 2000.
We as a trade need a win here, boys. I'm betting on you.
_________________ If anybody cares, Coztansa is in a new band: http://www.myspace.com/groverclevelandband
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