Liz Collin, Eric Malmberg and Sven Sundgaard walk into a bar

 Lots to pontificate upon. I'm sure I'll forget something/somebody. 

OH THAT COVID!

A lot of what we've seen happen this year is a result of our exciting COVID economy. Not all of it, of course. People don't hate Liz Collin because of COVID. But there's no doubt COVID has hurt broadcasting and print media.

But how much? 

It's not as if 93X was running commercial free from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. each weekday. It's not as if Paul Allen went commercial free for the final hour of his chat fest. There were still commercials. 

Other than a slight increase in self-promotion, it seemed that there were plenty of commercials when Frank and Amelia read us the news. I can only assume that broadcasters had to cut deals and sell ads on the cheap to keep the revenue flowing.

So, it was the drop in revenue that ended the broadcasting careers of Dana Wessel and Ben Holsen, the former morning show dudes at Go 96.3? Maybe.

But it's not as if the geniuses programming 96.3 have ever gotten it right. I have no idea what kind of ratings that Wessel and Holsen pulled during morning drive, but I'd wager the return on the investment wasn't that great to begin with, and the COVID economy was the excuse Go 96.3 needed to cut expenses on a station that can't win, much like the Twins during the postseason. (Yes, by the time you read this, the Twins will likely have gotten that monkey off their backs.) 

I don't listen to Go 96.3, and I'm not going to start. I have no idea if those guys were the least bit entertaining. But from what I've seen of Wessel online, he seems to be a down-to-earth guy who isn't pompous and pretentious. But I know nothing, other than the dude seems to like Donkey Kong. 

YOUR CAREER IS DEAD, ERIC

The most recent tidbit to captivate the local broadcasting audience is that a dude who worked at public radio darling The Current is out of a job because he is creepy. 

It's the story of Eric Malmberg, and it is fascinating. Dude works for many years on local rock radio, establishing a rather unspectacular career. He was never on a morning show that I know of. He was never an afternoon drive guy. As far as I can tell, "Dead Eric" has a long career of being a throw away guy on local radio. So he gets hired by The Current to spin that hip, eccentric local and independent music that nobody can sell commercially (I jest, slightly) overnight and/or on weekends. This after nearly two decades of commercial radio success, or so I read. 

Who is this guy's sugar daddy? And how did The Current look at a dude who worked forever at KQ and 93X and decide that's what their on-air lineup is lacking? 

Somebody claimed via Twitter once upon a time that Dead Eric is the nephew of longtime talker Al Malmberg. Not sure if that's true, but I've seen references somewhere to Dead Eric being the son of somebody in the biz, or something along that line. 

Dead Eric has also made a buck or two, allegedly, performing music in a bar band. And most notably, he was a staff member of some degree for an organization I know nothing about, Youth Frontiers. He's cited as an employee in this blog post. 

So what does it all mean? Who knows, but here's what I have learned. 

Dead Eric is out of a job because he may have been inappropriate toward women he worked with during his past radio gigs. We still don't know exactly what he was or wasn't doing that was troublesome to at least 8 women, but it doesn't matter. When you're selling your persona as you babble into a hot mic, you'd better be squeaky clean, or have a tolerant employer. 

The Current wanted to be very tolerant when a reporter on the news side of the MPR corporation, who happened to be working on a story about Dead Eric's creepy past, quit in disgust because the story wasn't being aired. But the vitriol from the reporter's supporters forced MPR to give Malmberg a Timberland boot right out the door a day later. 

Being characterized as creepy by a respected journalist usually spells the end of your career, in at least your current market. 

I'm not going to defend the guy, but I am left wondering who is right and wrong. 

The journalist, whose name I didn't know, is highly decorated. It's unlikely she was chasing after Dead Eric on a whim, and I doubt she has a personal vendetta against him. Somebody came to her with information she thought was more damning than "he's a bit creepy around women."

Where there's smoke, there's often fire. 

It's a big move when a journalist quits over an employer's refusal to run with a story. Tells me the story is damning, even if the guy has never been charged with a crime. People guilty of crimes may be subjected to scrutiny of their actions, public or otherwise, before they're ever charged with their first felony. And if there's evidence that something serious has happened, but no criminal charges were ever filed, that doesn't excuse the behavior. 

I think the story is more than worthy of investigation by a reporter if there's evidence at least one person has been harmed in some way. How much harm does it take to make it a story? Does it need to be a criminal level of harm? Tough call. 

And you automatically get an extra ounce of scrutiny if you're a public figure.

The fact it's a 40-something dude with a bad haircut at The Current, when the reporter's paycheck comes from MPR, makes it all the more complex, and fascinating. 

I don't think the wall between the MPR news crew and the rest of the company was a factor, but then again.... it's a station that has taken a PR beating in recent years for its recent firing of a classical music DJ, its dismissal of asshole Brian Oake and its affiliation with the great Garrison Keillor. Don't automatically assume the corporate fathers and mothers aren't actively looking to avoid another demerit on their permanent record. 

The Current had no choice but to kill Dead Eric's career, at least in the local market. I don't expect to ever know the creepy details of the allegations, but I do wonder, what if Dead Eric isn't guilty of a crime, and simply is too dumb to understand personal boundaries and creepiness? We assume he's a fully functioning adult, despite his outdated teenage haircut, but what if he's not? What if MPR rejected the story because there's not enough damning evidence that he's more than slightly creepy? (I don't buy the argument that because the victims were anonymous, the story couldn't clear MPR's lofty standards.)

I doubt, highly, that Dead Eric is squeaky clean, based upon what little we know. But I do wonder what happened to the idea of innocent until proven guilty. His career in this market, and likely most everywhere else in the free world, is dead, and none of us have even had a chance to hear the evidence in the case against him. But as we're well aware, in the court of public opinion, you don't need a lot of facts to render a verdict. 

I'm shocked, of course, that so many people were upset and threatening to cancel their ongoing financial commitment to all things MPR. I thought that MPR's base of support was down to a few dozen people following the Brian Oake outrage. 

How soon does Malmberg launch his podcast? Maybe he can a part of the Brian Oake Network

WE'LL MISS YOU, ALI

I haven't been watching much early morning TV since the pandemic began. But I was disappointed to find out we were losing Ali Lucia. Not for any good reason, of course, but nonetheless I was disappointed. 

I learned just enough to know that she's leaving for Chicago because of her husband's career. I wouldn't be surprised if that's the end of her TV career. She has a young child, after all. 

As I've said before, there's a reason why so many known names leave the glamour of TV and radio for jobs as the face of a company or government agency. 

I'd bet the husband's fancy new gig in the Windy City makes up for Ali's paychecks at WCCO. 

This Twitter thread was quite impressive and candid. It's from former WCCO reporter Mary McGuire, who is yet another hometown girl made good. She left TV in January, evidently. It's not clear to me what she's doing now, but all indications were that she wasn't continuing her career in front of the camera. 

There are far worse jobs than TV news reporter, but you'll never convince me it's a great job, unless you don't need the paycheck, or you're as indispensable as Jeff Passolt was. 

As for Ali, it's funny that she left about a month after WCCO dumped Kim Johnson, for seemingly no meaningful reason. Would they have cut Kim if Ali had left first?  

Neither Kim nor Ali left a legacy in Twin Cities broadcasting, but I'd take either of them in a heartbeat over Jason DeRusha. (He's a food genius! And has one hell of a forehead.)

LIZ COLLIN IS DESPICABLE

I have enjoyed watching the hatred lobbed at WCCO over their employment of Liz Collin. And, of course, I wrote extensively about the outrage a while ago. 

There's a lot I could write about the morons who took their protest of Liz and her handsome hubby to their home in Hugo. I don't support it, and Mr. Liz Collin is an easy target that deserves criticism. But at the end of the day, I find both Liz and her employer to be despicable. 

Her husband, Trump lover Bob Kroll, is well known locally for being the union mouthpiece of Minneapolis cops. That's enough to make you a public figure, arguably, but when you're the subject of media reporting, (being a racist homophobe, allegedly,) and getting up on stage at a Trump propaganda festival with a T-shirt proclaiming cops love Trump, you most definitely are a public figure in this town. 

It really doesn't matter who you are married to when it comes to your job as the union honcho, but when you're married to a local TV babe, people are going to wonder how your relationship affects what your wife's TV station does or doesn't do regarding its reporting of your union leadership and issues involving your police department. There should be no effect, but some people will always assume there is. 

I don't know how long Liz and Bobby have been lost in each other's eyes, but Bobby sure didn't want anyone to know he landed himself a trophy wife. Irony at its finest. The marriage couldn't have been a secret, but they certainly wanted it to be, as Bobby threatened to boycott Star Tribune reporters if they referenced the fact that he is married to his trophy. It was a story about him and his actions, and a story he granted an interview for, that raised his dander. The story notes his threat to boycott the Strib if they mention he's married, out of concern that it would hurt her career. 

He's right. It does. But that doesn't mean he gets to hide the fact from viewers of WCCO or any other media outlet. And he has carried out his threat, because he's as petty and misguided as those who showed up at his home to protest the fact both he and his trophy are still employed. 

So why does that make Liz despicable? 

Liz doesn't control her husband. She doesn't dictate what he does and doesn't do. But she's a part of the local media. And she has to know that her marriage won't remain a secret forever, no matter how embarrassed she is by it. More important, she has to know that her marriage, and her employment, will be scrutinized whenever the public finds out. And the longer it's kept hush-hush, the worse it looks. 

I have no idea what goes on behind their closed doors in Hugo, but given the fact that Liz can't convince her buffoon of a husband that it's grossly unprofessional to blacklist a media organization for daring to ask about his cozy relationship with a member of a prominent local news outlet, that makes her despicable. She is a party to her husband's malfeasance. Highly despicable.

By the way, WCCO-TV isn't off the hook. The geniuses running the station had to know all about this, of course, and basically admit as much. Since the death of George Floyd, the station has made its anchors read a disclaimer occasionally, noting Liz is married to the buffoon and hasn't reported on police matters in more than two years. 

WCCO only started doing this after the public starting claiming that she shouldn't be employed because she is married to a racist. So the disclaimer is only important now, and not months earlier, when the Star Tribune spilled the beans in a story I believe ran in their once bulky Sunday edition? 

The disclaimer should have been made by WCCO before the Strib ever outed the buffoon as being married to a TV babe. That makes WCCO-TV despicable, too. 

Liz is accused of being racist by association with Bob, but the only thing she's really guilty of is questionable taste in men. So WCCO has meekly stuck with her. She was nowhere to be found for at least a month after Floyd's death, and the couple of times I've seen her report since she quietly returned, she was never on camera. No live shots from the field, and no weekend anchoring that I've seen, although I haven't seen a weekender in a while. My theory is that at this point, WCCO is running out her contract and is going to let her quietly disappear. If not, why are they willing to weather the storm for her when they were willing to kick Kim Johnson to the curb during her vacation for seemingly no meaningful reason? 

It's not apples to apples, but MPR canned Malmberg within a day of the angry masses rioting in cyberspace. Part of MPR's statement dismissing Malmberg read, "Our hosts have to be able to attract an audience that wants to listen to them and trusts them and over the last 36 hours those conditions have changed for Malmberg."

Couldn't the same be said for weekend anchor Liz Collin? 

IS SHE NUTS?

There was a funny moment in that aforementioned Twitter thread by Mary McGuire. 

As people discussed how little they earned when they started their career, or how little they were earning after many years of experience, there was some discussion about risk, or reward, and/or the safety net people (white people, I think) have when they choose to pursue a career in journalism. 

It seemed out of place, and it came from a long lost member of the Twin Cities media, Mary Alice Rosko. Known for her goofy way of gallivanting about the metro for Fox 9 bright and early, she gave it all up to explore Minnesota, and occasionally write about it on a blog, or something. 

M.A., as she liked to be called, is older than you would likely guess, and must have a sugar mama out there. That, or she inherited a fortune. There's no way her career paid such dividends that she is free to roam as she wishes, without a financial care in the world. She was at Fox 9 in some capacity for nearly two decades, and I'm guessing it wasn't her first gig on TV. But there's no way she was highly valued at Fox 9. 

Her financial means aren't really important. What we do know is that she gave up the glamour of TV to wander aimlessly, and in finding herself on the lonesome highway, she's losing touch with the world around her. 

Rosko deleted the tweet, as best I can tell, but it was made about Aug. 1, when every discussion and issue had to be about race. And I feel like M.A. interjected race into the discussion by making some claim about white people having a safety net of some kind and being able to afford to take a risk in pursuing a media career. I guess that means non-whites in broadcasting couldn't possibly have such a safety net. 

I wish I had a screen shot of the tweet, because it was out of place, and wacky, to say the least. Current Fox 9 weather gal Jennifer McDermed took exception to M.A.'s claim, which suggested all white people had some sort of privilege that mitigated any risks they took in pursuing their career. McDermed disagreed with M.A.'s wackiness, and tweeted "I wouldn’t say ALL. Many took a gamble when jumping into this field."

And then McDermed responded in follow up at some point, noting M.A. had blocked her. 

For that? M.A. was triggered by that? 

I'm not sure when or why M.A. became so unhinged, but perhaps it's best for Fox 9 and all its viewers that she wasn't still part of the morning program this past summer. 

As for McDermed, I use to like her. But when I made a suggestion, a simple silly suggestion, that she might have been cut loose by Fox 9 over the holidays last year because the station was renting a meteorologist for a few newscasts, she replied about being on vacation. I would have been happy to hear that, but her condescending response to some anonymous account proved that she's still a kid, despite the fact she should be tweeting like a working professional at this point in her life. 

"Nope, I’m back tomorrow! You see.... I also get vacation days at work. It’s nice. I get to spend time with my family. #vacationearned #dontvacationshame"

I don't know how "vacation shaming" had anything to do with my comment, whatever vacation shaming is. 

In her defense, I was sarcastic about her absence, making fun of the "self-important promos for how vital the weather 'team' is" in my comment. 

Yeah, I could have been less sarcastic, but I'm not employed by a local TV station. It's a bad look when you are, and that's how you respond. But hey, all kids make mistakes in the early years of their career.

And at the end of the day, stations don't care about how you conduct yourself via social media.  

OR DO THEY? 

That brings us to the story of "Nature Boy" Sven Sundgaard. 

I'm a bit stunned that KARE-TV went so far as to announce that he was kicked to the curb in May due to "continued violations of KARE11’s news ethics and other policies."

Tantalizing, isn't it? KARE didn't say much, but they said a lot more than a lot of stations say when they give a prominent face a one-way ticket on the express bus to Unemploymentville. 

We don't know what KARE'S statement actually means, but we know Sven couldn't stop himself, or his boyfriend, from pleasuring his many fans with online discussions about news, politics and anything else that tickled their fancy. Or so I have read. (In a shocking revelation, I know nothing about Sven's life as a social media butterfly.)

Outrage ensued when Sven was dismissed, allegedly, much like the outrage over that asshole Brian Oake. 

I was not outraged. As the kids liked to say a few years ago, "Stay in your lane, bro!" 

You're the second-string meteorologist on a top 15 market's roster. If you want be Lavender's poster child for the gay community, go for it. But don't assume that your station wants you to be the moral compass for liberal/conservative/progressive America, unless you're prepared to live off the crumbs Bring Me the News is willing to throw your way. 

It's funny, once upon a time KARE wanted its "personalities" to shine via station blogs. (Perhaps there's still a space on the KARE website for such nonsense. I can't kare enough to look.) They had a lame ditty and commercial telling you to race to the KARE blogs, featuring "Lady Di," the dork at play and the long-gone "curmudgeon" Allen Costantini. 

KARE loves when viewers engage with their ridiculous Breaking the News crapfest through social media channels. 

And KARE has no problem promoting the personal life of Rena Sarigianopoulos. 

But when you start shooting your mouth off and telling people how you think, sashay out the door, girlfriend! 

The irony, of course, is that KARE soon found itself without its third-stringer, the dude with the creepy beard. And it lost Pat Evans shortly thereafter, a guy who would at least read a forecast occasionally, but managed to find a way to do almost anything else during a forgettable 25-year tenure at the station. 

I'm not sure how Sven will satisfy his lust for a captive audience, but I am confident Bring Me the News won't be his final act in this market. He does nothing for me, but he seemed to excite a lot of female viewers in this town. 

I don't feel the least bit sorry for gay icon Sven Sundgaard. As the kids liked to say, "Know your role, bro!" 

KARE is a disaster these days. Terrible, terrible station. In the long run, Sven might be better off for KARE jerking him off. 

The air. 

Jerking him off the air.

PAPER, OR PLASTIC?

In what seems like a lifetime ago, Jeff Dubay was bounced from 1500 AM simply because they weren't making money. 

I would have bet $100 three years ago that the station would abandon any pretense of being a sports station by now. Instead they scaled back the ESPN marketing, called the station SKOR North, capitalized SKOR for no reason and overhauled the weekday schedule. They dumped the old geezers and created all sorts of new niche programs during the afternoon in an attempt to breathe new life into the station. 

Worked out well, didn't it? 

As best I can tell, there's not much going on until mid-afternoon, when the last two shepherds of ESPN 1500 take to the airwaves and chat away. It beats unemployment, I suppose, but damn, things are grim at Hubbard's AM signal. 

The brain trust at Hubbard axed just about everyone not named Judd or Phil. And that included Ramie Makhlouf. 

What I never understood was why 1500 deemed it necessary to add a third banana to their most prominent on-air duo. A guy who talks sports, tells knock-knock jokes on the side and doesn't root for the local teams was an important addition to an established duo at your station? Seemed like a bizarre move. 

As for Makhlouf, he left Milwaukee for a gig on the vastly inferior (so say the ratings) sports station in Minneapolis, as I recall. And less than 18 months later he began a long career sabbatical that is still going on as of late September. 

Bad career moves for $1,000, Alex. 

Best advice I can give Makhlouf: Don't call Jeff Dubay for career advice. 

Phil Mackey, by the way, blamed the massive salary dump on the COVID. Like the aforementioned Wessel, COVID took the blame for the end of this broadcasting career, too. In Makhlouf's case, he and his "teammates" got the ax less than two months into the pandemic. That tells me that 1500 had one foot in the grave before the pandemic began. 

The house of Hubbard also cut a couple of producers at the chick talk station it runs on the FM dial. One of them was a guy billing himself as "Donny Love." 

If that's the name you're selling on chick talk radio, you deserve your fate. 

Who knows what the future of broadcasting holds for those who have lost jobs this year, whatever the excuse for cutting the positions. But the industry wasn't exactly robust to begin with, and I'm guessing that when the COVID is all over, we won't see a lot of these jobs added back to the payroll. Companies will continue to get by with what they have left. After all, it's working right now, isn't it?

And there's always some young, optimistic, foolish youngster who thinks they'll persevere in an industry that can easily, and happily, live without Eric Malmberg on its payroll. 

You're a valuable asset to the company, until somebody comes along who can do your job reasonably well, and for less money. 

I have a feeling there are a lot of broadcasting professionals whose careers are ending thanks to the COVID. 

For what it's worth, (probably nothing,) there was a guy who worked at KFAN for 11 years, disappeared, probably due to a bad economy circa 2008, and re-emerged a little over a year later at 1500. That tenure lasted five years or so. I seem to recall he was axed at 1500, as well, through no fault of his own.

Does the name Cory Roufs ring a bell? 

He continued to work in radio, evidently, for a while after 1500, thanks to the world of satellite broadcasting. And what is he doing today after nearly two decades of radio experience? He's the front end manager for Kowalski's Markets, whatever that means. This after working for a year for a bus company. 

My point is not to job shame the guy. He may have been planning a career change for the last five years of his sports radio career. He may have run out of local options and was not in a position to move to another major market. I have no idea, but anyone willing to work for a living, in a country where so many would rather look for a handout or meal ticket anywhere they can get one, deserves tons of respect.

I have a feeling a lot of broadcasting professionals will be hoping or praying a bus company or grocery store is willing to put food on their table in the months and years to come. 

FUN FACTS

Time to wrap this up. I put a few hours into this, over several nights. I started it weeks ago, but didn't have the fire in the belly. Eric Malmberg changed that. Thanks dude!

I'm glad I put thoughts into words, but I remain committed to not doing so on a regular basis. Although all bets are off when Chris Hawkey's "damn festival" returns next summer. I was really looking forward to reading about how the morons who ran the inaugural #TCSummerJam screwed over a new set of suckers in 2020.

As for the fun facts, here's one: Jana Shorthair has thin skin. Don't joke, not in the slightest, about her killing network air time by interviewing Santa Claus during Breaking the News. She'll block you in less time than it takes to comb her hair. (What's less than zero seconds?)

Here's one more: Jeff Dubay has started a new podcast. Yes, again. For about the 50th time, it seems. I don't listen, but I say good luck to Jeff. May he find peace and satisfaction in his golden years.

Don't forget, Brian Oake is an asshole, and Keith Levanthal needs a job, again. 

Buy Jason DeRusha a glass of wine, and Liz Collin a clue

I don't have a lot to say about DeRusha. He noshes and he has a lot of forehead. And if he graces you with his presence at your fundraising event, buy the guy a glass of wine, dammit. He doubled down on that in 2019, if I recall correctly.

I'm fascinated, and bored, with the Liz Collin outrage. WCCO has all the reasons in the world to say it's time to go, and if they don't kick her to the curb, it will fan the Twitter flames when they finally trot her out in front of a camera. That will die down, but Twitter reminders that she's married to a member of the Village People, who most people are less than fond of, will never go away. Maybe they'll die down to one or two instances per month, if Bob Kroll keeps his mouth shut, or goes away.

I will have one more dispatch from the bunker this summer, some time after the holiday weekend. The blog is not back. I just don't have time to eat so much low-hanging fruit.

Why is Kim Johnson more offensive than Liz Collin at WCCO-TV?

It's well known by anybody who pays attention to the Twin Cities talking heads that WCCO-TV's second-stringer Liz Collin is a problem for the station right now.

Comments via Twitter show how there's little love for the weekend anchorette who is married to a guy widely regarded as a white supremacist. Don't kid yourself, most people don't really care one way or another. They have no interest in any form of news reporting. We all know it's biased, so it's impossible to learn anything from it. And what is there to learn?

We form our own opinions, regardless of facts, then refer to that opinion as "our truth." It's not "the truth," it's "our truth." And it's better than anything those nasty media jackals will tell you, without question.

So we know that WCCO morning anchorette Kim Johnson was kicked to the curb because the station wants to go in a "different direction," or something lame like that. Kim doesn't dazzle the masses the way Jamie Yuccas did, inexplicably. (I don't get that one, at all.) But Kim wasn't nearly as offensive as Liz Collin, as far as I know. Maybe she is despicable, what do I know? Not much, as I have said over and over.

But Kim had to go, leaving the morning duties to the rest of the pre-dawn team, I presume. (I haven't watched in a while. I can only assume they haven't added payroll in the absence of Kim.)

Liz, however, remains immortalized on WCCO's website, a crown jewel in the station's tiara, unquestionably.

So how big of a problem is Liz for WCCO? Not big enough. Yet.

If you're reading this you probably know that Liz, in her late 30s, has daddy issues, and is on her second marriage. She married sexy Minneapolis cop Bob Kroll, who might be 55 years old at this point, and is most definitely despised by many average Joes and Janes in the Twin Cities. He's  not afraid to talk the talk, when it suits his agenda, and somehow he is beloved enough by Minneapolis cops that he has been elected president of the PD's union.

Like any good Minneapolis cop, he has run afoul of standards and practices more than a few times. And he is generally regarded as a racist for his willingness to refer to non-white people and organizations as terrorists. I think he also gets dinged for not being too kind to the gay community, although I'm not sure what the basis of that is. We do know he loves Donald Trump, and happily took the stage during a Trump rally in Minneapolis to bask in the orange glow of our mentally challenged president. I'm not sure if Kroll went so far as to suckle at Trump's teat. I didn't attend that redneck rodeo.

What makes Liz so fascinating is that milfy anchorette with a dye job to die for isn't that proud of marrying a guy 15+ years her senior. Conversely, Kroll should be quite proud of his trophy, and show it off any chance he gets. Everything about his character suggests he'd be the type to gloat that he has married a news babe. And yet he doesn't want anyone to know that Liz is his little lady.

There were leaks that Liz and Bob were more than friendly with each other, but I hadn't heard anything about it until a Star Tribune interview last year, where Bob famously threatened to never speak to the newspaper again if it mentioned that he was married to a blonde TV babe who happens to read the news on the weekend.

Why would Bob be so ashamed of Liz? Well, he's not, of course. Every little boy grows up dreaming of marrying a TV babe 15+ years his junior when he hits his 50s, and Bob is one of the few boys who realized that dream. But Bob, having positioned himself as a mouthpiece for the Minneapolis PD -- with racist tendencies, it seems -- is smart enough to know that it's considered a conflict of interest if his wife reports on local news for a major market TV station and is married to a prominent member of the big city police department. Bob didn't want his trophy to be tarnished, so he and Liz seemed to downplay their nuptials publicly.

I, of course, don't care who is married, divorced or flamboyantly gay when it comes to our sacred TV people, but we tend to find out, one way or another, because they want us to know they're just like us.

So why is Liz suddenly a pain in the ass for WCCO? It could be for several reasons. Here are a bunch of possible reasons. Some are good bets. Others are more speculative.

We know that Liz use to report on police issues, but doesn't do so any more. We also know she has been married to the White Knight for a while. There's no way anybody at WCCO, from the top brass down to the interns, didn't know she was married to sexy Bob Kroll. And yet, only recently, after the death of George Floyd at the hands of former Minneapolis cops, has WCCO referenced the fact that Lizzy is married to her hunka hunka burning love by reading a disclaimer that she hasn't reported on Minneapolis PD matters in more than 2.5 years.

I have seen no evidence that WCCO made that disclaimer prior to Floyd's Memorial Day death. So why now? Why wasn't that important to note in January, or last year after the Strib outed Kroll as her life partner? That's an E4, and I'm not talking about an error on the second baseman.

WCCO loses a lot of credibility either way, but it's a really bad look when you disregarded Liz's happy homemaking with Bobby for so long, and now suddenly fess up to it. People would still criticize the station for having her on staff had they disclaimed Liz after the first date to the drive-in movie, but to remain silent for so long, only to feel obligated to fess up now, raises questions about the ethics and credibility of the station since the first moment Liz caught a twinkle in Bob's eye.

Liz went silent on Twitter after Memorial Day. Last I looked, she took a Twitter sabbatical prior to the holiday weekend. As best as I know, she conveniently hasn't turned up on WCCO's newscasts since Floyd's death. Coincidence? I don't think so.

WCCO is clearly troubled by the fact that Liz loves cuddly Bob. Otherwise they would have trotted her out like nothing happened on Memorial Day at 38th Street and Chicago Avenue.

Beyond the hesitancy of the station's honchos, you have to wonder how Liz will be able to do her job at the station.

It's no secret that being the face of the newscast is the gig most TV people covet. You're not out there in the trenches, doing live shots outside an empty city hall at 10 p.m., and you don't have to ask the unwashed masses for their mindless opinions. You sit in the comfy chair and read. And people think you're really important. And if you fool enough people, you get paid big money to read. You're trustworhty!

Liz seemed to be doing a little of both: Reading the news when called upon to do so, and filing a report when they needed her to. At this point, do you really want to send Liz out in the community to file a story? And if so, about what?

As I noted before, most people don't care about the news, so they won't know who Liz is or why the Twitter masses want her served with walking papers by WCCO, yesterday. But asking Liz to cover a story about the black community is asking for trouble if anyone associated with the story knows who she is. Send Liz to interview participants at a Black Lives Matter rally and prove me wrong. Please!

And even if it's not a story about the black community, do you really want to run the risk of sending Liz out to cover a food truck festival where she might run into angry viewers of any color who think she's as racist as her husband is believed to be?

It's unlikely, but what does WCCO do if they send any other reporter to cover a story, and somebody snubs the reporter because WCCO employs Liz? You can't rule it out. The anger over Floyd's death runs far, far deeper than any other death involving a Minnesota police department in recent years.

Does WCCO want to weather the storm of negative comments that comes every time Bob spouts his hatred toward a self-appointed terrorist group? The anger over George Floyd isn't going away any time soon, and WCCO, and its employees, will be reminded of it every time Bob speaks, so long as Liz is on the payroll. That's a tough row to hoe.

And how does Liz's marriage affect morale around WCCO these days? The station's Twitter account and, presumably, Facebook account are getting hammered for her continued employment. Social justice warriors are tweeting responses to other reporters about the fact that the station continues to employ Liz. Liz may be the least racist person in the world, but that doesn't matter if you're Frank or Amelia, and you tweet a link to a story about unemployment, only to get a response telling you that Liz is a racist by association.

I won't suggest there's a correlation between Liz's news judgment and her taste in men. But you're welcome to connect those dots.

I have no problem believing, like one diehard Twins fan on Twitter who must be Liz's father, (based upon how breathlessly he defends her,) that Liz doesn't have to be racist just because her husband is believed to be by most of the free world. Let's assume she's not. It does beg the question: What about his seemingly racist tendencies does she find so appealing?

I digress.

Here we are, mid June, and harmless Kim Johnson is searching for a PR job with an organization that would love to have her well known face as its spokesperson. And Liz is hiding with Bob, waiting for people to forget she's married so that she is safe to do her job at WCCO.

If Kim is out, and Liz is still on the payroll, you really have to question WCCO's news judgment, don't you?

I still can't get over the fact that Liz married ol' Bob. I already explained why Bob was seemingly more than happy to exchange rings with a TV babe. But I can't say I know definitively. I guess I should be open-minded enough to consider other scenarios.

What might one of those scenarios be? Glad you asked.

We know that the hunky man's man belongs to a motorcycle club and rages Republican.

Does that mean he likes wearing leather, and claims that he despises the thought of Adam and Steve, the evil counterparts to the bible's Adam and Eve?

Come to think of it, I noticed that Liz had a 5 o'clock shadow the last time I saw her on TV.

It would explain Bob's lack of pride in his marriage to Liz, wouldn't it?

I had a premonition Kim Johnson was fired by WCCO

I'm not making this up, I swear.

I haven't been watching as much morning news, lately, thanks to the fact I am not working these days. It's temporary, and I'm not too worried about it. 

Turns out I could have morning coffee with Kim Johnson these days. 

I have no idea why, but this past weekend I wondered about Kim. As I watched local news coverage of the "peaceful" protests, and saw a cavalcade of WCCO reporters chipping in to the coverage, I wondered about Kim. I have no idea why, but I realized I haven't seen her lately, and I wondered, for no reason, if she was still working at WCCO.

Why did I have a premonition about Kim, and not Ali Lucia, Alix Kendall or Chris Egert? I don't know. (I saw Alix not too long ago, but I haven't turned the TV on much in the morning, do Ali and Chris still have a job?)

Then I read this morning that the morning anchorette, who never seemed to work a night or weekend, who never seemed to be called upon to do anything extra, was out of a job. 

Turns out she's one of us, I learned today. I never knew that. I did know, for no particular reason, that she's married and spends a lot of time frolicking around Lake Minnetonka. The story I stumbled upon somewhere suggested that she lives on the lake. 

I don't know what's more puzzling, why she had the job as a morning anchorette, seemingly for years, or why WCCO was compelled to kick her to the curb.

I have to wonder if she was shitcanned simply because WCCO is desperate to trim salary from the books. I gotta believe ad revenue is way down at this point in the pandemic. They've gotta be cutting deals on local commercial time, don't they? 

Great theory, but I can't imagine she was a financial burden. I have a few other theories that are even more of a stretch than that.

I suspect the end result of her unceremonious dismissal, whatever the motivation, is that we won't see a new hire. Instead her seat in the early morning will be filled by somebody on staff. I can imagine several ways this might work. 

Whatever the end result, I'll miss her, for no good reason. There's a reason, but it's not a good one. 

Now if WCCO really wanted to unload dead weight, it would have dumped Liz Collin. 

Tawnja Zahradka begs a lot of questions as she runs for Congress

It seems almost silly to offer any sort of commentary on the political fortunes of a made-for-TV spokesmodel when it's such an ugly time to live in Minnesota.

I won't offer commentary on the future of police/community relations, who is at fault for where we are today or why things that have happened in the last 24+ hours are confusing. It's not as black and white as many people want to see it. I'll leave it at that.

That aside, I did a little further examining of Tawnja Zahradka's campaign after posting my initial thoughts of the cable access sexpot. All that did was muddy the waters of Forest Lake.

As I noted in my previous post, Tawnja touts that she is a victim of sexual harassment. I have no reason to doubt the claim. And I don't.

As I scoured her campaign website, and eventually her campaign's Facebook page, I was a bit surprised. She has made plenty of videos, it's what she does best, after all, and she makes it clear more than once in videos that she's a victim of sexual harassment and discrimination. At least once she claims that she lost everything she spent two decades building as a result, and lost her career as a spokesperson because of it. She also claims that this loss inspired her to pick herself up and dust herself off, to start anew.

And that new start is winning elected office. At the federal level. After two decades of pimping German restaurants and any other business that paid her to do so.

As I noted previously, I've found nothing about this failed lawsuit, a lawsuit that failed because of, she claims, "sexual harassment laws that are designed to protect the harassers-which they did."

I can only assume that this harassment occurred when she was an "executive producer" of MCN6. Tawnja has a ton of her videos posted on YouTube, and in 2015 she posted an MCN6 interview where she is touted as the cable access station's executive producer. The most recent videos are form three years ago, and the last several videos don't seem to feature Tawnja, but they're segments much like Tawnja peddled for two decades, and they appear to be segments produced for the benefit of the vast MCN6 viewership.

It appears that, if she started a legal battle in late 2017, as she claims, that she must be referring to her work at MCN6 as the source of harassment, as all indications are that's where she was working three to five years ago.

So what's the point?

I'd say, first, that if she was a victim of sexual harassment, it's none of our business. Maybe it becomes our business if she sues a cable access TV station. Maybe it's our business only if she wins the lawsuit and the quasi-public entity is held accountable.

But it's definitely our business if she's going to tout her being a victim, time and again, and claim that the system is protecting the guilty, and that she was a victim, of both harassers and the law. If fighting for women like her is an important issue of her campaign, and a major reason for her campaign -- as she claims -- then you've got to give us more, Tawnja.

You can't just say you were a victim, the system is rigged against victims and then ask us to support the change you seek without giving us some explanation as to how the system failed you. I haven't found that, at least not yet, and I doubt that explanation exists.

If you claim that you're going to improve public safety, you had better offer a plan, or at least ideas of how to begin to improve it. If you're going to promise lower taxes, it rings hollow if you never explain how. If you're going to claim you are fighting for victims of sexual harassment, and hold up yourself as an example, why are we supposed to simply accept that the laws are stacked against victim's like you? I'm not a lawyer, I have no idea how harassment laws work. Prove it to us, Tawnja, and give us details that show you know what you're talking about.

There's something else that bothers me. Tawnja claims she lost her two-decade career due to this harassment. First off, shilling for local businesses on cable access TV for two decades is hardly a career. If you made money doing 30 minutes of commercials on cable access TV, that's damn impressive. But it's not much of a career.

Second, if your skill set is so great, why haven't you parlayed that two decades of pitching local restaurants on cable access TV into a commercial voice over career? Or video production for local businesses that want to run commercials on their websites and social media channels?

It's unfortunate that Tawnja's long association with MCN6 seemingly ended due to harassment, but without details as to why that chapter of her life is such an important part of her campaign, her candidacy seems rather manufactured, much like that smile she has flashed for more than two decades.

Tawnja Zahradka was sexually harassed, and wants your vote

I retired from blogging a long time ago.

I'm still retired.

I can't afford the time. Life is short, and criticizing what passes for broadcasting in this day and age is too easy, and akin to shooting fish in the barrel.

I never intended to set the world on fire with this blog. I never tried, either. Yes, I set up a Twitter account, mostly to observe what others are saying and doing. Sure, I tweet now and then, to the few people who follow, knowing most of them won't see the tweets.

But this blog generated plenty of interest through simple Google searches of the media darlings that we all love.

I'd do things different if I was to do them again, but I'm not starting down that road.

Except that once a year, I get an itch.

And I have that itch. And Tawnja Zahradka gave it to me.

Who is Tawnja? I wrote about her once upon a time.

I'm sure she's a decent human being, and I'm sure she works hard at being pretty.

I find her fascinating.

Why? First off, I am amazed/amused by the people who turn up on local cable access TV, working so hard to create something notable. I couldn't do better, I guarantee that. But that doesn't stop me from cringing at the sight of their local programs. I was very disappointed to see that Carla Beaurline has returned to Twin Cities public access TV, after trying to sell her crap as a Facebook program. Nothing has changed, Carla is still as minor league as ever, and seems to be shilling for the same lame businesses that she has always shilled for. It's awful. Pure and simple.

I have long been mildly fascinated with Tawnja Zahradka. From what I could tell, she wanted to work in front of a camera, and seems to have the looks and the skill set to do it.

Her online bios suggest she has been in movies and other important stuff, although I don't recall her actually doing anything meaningful other than being an extra. Perhaps I'm wrong. Too tired to care.

Model, actress, spokesperson...She'd do any of it it made her a local celebrity, or better.

I noticed that her local TV show, which she seemed to produce for decades, disappeared at some point after she marked 20 years of shilling. She showed up on the Twin Cities public access channel, MCN6, as a co-host of some local girl chat program for a while, which seemed to exist as a way to shill for local businesses....what she does best. I swear she was credited as some sort of honcho at MCN6. But at some point she disappeared, and I was left wondering what happened to her.

Then I saw a list of the DFL's endorsed candidates for U.S. Congress. I fell out of my chair.

Tawnja Zahradka, who seemed to be going by her husband's name, Tawnja Peterson, a few years ago, is the DFL's answer to Tom Emmer, a Republican who has made a living off of the voters, and replaced none other than plastic, fantastic Michele Bachmann in Congress.

Stunned doesn't come close to describing this revelation earlier today.

I see no evidence that Tawnja, Zahradka or Peterson, has ever held a public office. But that doesn't matter in this country. Not any more. If you want to hold a federal office, go for it!

I still can't get over it.

So I examined Tawnja's website and Twitter account. And damn, can of worms be opened.

Her online bio starts with the usual shit that means nothing. Her father was in the military. Thank him for that, but that doesn't say one thing about you or your qualifications. Even if Tawnja had went to boot camp once upon a time, it wouldn't mean much when it comes to her ability to navigate the complexity of Washington, D.C.

Her personal bio notes that she supports a few causes, is a stepparent and is married to a drummer that once toured with Badfinger. What difference does that make? (He wasn't important enough to note in Badfinger's Wikipedia article, although I learned that Badfinger is a really old band that has been bastardized with varying incarnations.)

She also notes that she was a Mrs. Minnesota once upon a time. She doesn't mention it was 1995, and she doesn't mention that the Mrs. Minnesota title is a big joke. Married women who want to either capture the glory of their youth, or chase glory they never attained, compete in a meaningless pageant for a state title and the right to chase a meaningless national title. It's manufactured and it's embarrassing. Nobody outside of the participants, and their families, cares. I don't have 20 minutes to detail why.

This is the most interesting excerpt from her bio: "Tawnja spent over two decades on television in the Minneapolis market only to have her career ended due to sexual harassment in the workplace. After a two year legal battle beginning in late 2017 to restore her television career, justice was denied to her due to sexual harassment laws that are designed to protect the harassers-which they did."

So her disappearance from TV was a result of sexual harassment? And she is no longer on TV because she couldn't win a legal battle to prove it? That's one hell of a bombshell, and I'd pay a lot of money to read that story. I tried finding anything that speaks to this case, but a simple Google search turned up nothing.

So she disappeared from local TV through some fantastic sequence of events, and now she reemerges in my life as a candidate for a federal office, having done nothing noteworthy that I can see. Yet she's loved by the DFL. How the hell did a woman who spent two decades or more trying to be a pretty face on camera end up deciding she wants to get down and dirty in Washington, D.C.?

I have a theory, and it's absurd, but I'll save it for after the election, win or lose.

One final thought: She has a Twitter account for her campaign, an account she doesn't seem to use much. She hasn't touched it in three months, that I can tell. But this nugget from early February is outstanding, even if I have no idea what she is referring to, specifically. "This is why Tom Emmer is a disgrace. I can’t wait to debate this sad excuse for a congressman."

Look out D.C., this kitten has claws!

Learn all about Tawnja's campaign at https://www.tawnjaforcongress.com/

Is Belinda Jensen excited about Twin Cities Summer Jam 2020? #TCSummerJam

I've gotta say, I'm somewhat impressed.

I didn't expect Chris Hawkey's "damn festival," also known as Twin Cities Summer Jam, to return with an ambitious lineup, if at all, but it seems like the money behind the outdoor music debacle is willing to double down on the initial investment. Despite the shit show the 2019 Jam was, there must have been a modest return on the investment, which is ironic given the festival didn't sell enough of those VIP ticket packages that were crucial to paying the talent. 

It was announced not so long ago that 2020 tickets would go on sale in December, which made me laugh. Then it was announced that the Zac Brown Band, which is a big draw somehow, would be on the bill next summer. All I know is that the band sings some dopey song called "Chicken Fried," and the lowest common denominator goes nuts for that song at Target Field. But hey, Zac Brown seems to be a big deal, so that's a solid booking for the Jam.  

Now we know how the damn festival is going to play out, for the most part, after several additional acts were announced. 

Carrie Underwood seems to be able to fill an arena every couple of years, and she's the final night's headliner, so that seems like another solid booking. 

I'm a bit puzzled as to why Pitbull is coming back, and drawing top billing on Thursday, the opening night of the late July festival. I get it, Thursday isn't likely to be as strong of a draw, regardless of the headliner, but it still seems goofy to make him the focal point of the first night. Perhaps he converted 10,000 new fans who saw him open for Tim McGraw in July, and now those fans can't get enough Pitbull, so they'll race back to Canterbury Park next summer to see him do it all again. If you say so, Hawkey.

The pairings from night to night seem to be a bit more sensible. If that's better or worse, I don't know.

Whatever the reason, Nelly seems to maintain interest in his career 20 years after his big splash. I don't get how a guy with a few pop/rap hits in the early 2000s has sustained his career when so many rappers seem to be quickly forgotten, but if you're going to book Nelly, it makes more sense for him to open for Pitbull than Underwood. 

I don't know what Blanco Brown is, but somehow he is a country artist that has produced for Pitbull, and he goes on first Thursday night. If you're going to mash up genres, this trio on Thursday seems about as logical as you can expect. Take a look at a picture of Blanco. When you see him, you're not going to expect him to croon "The Gambler."

Friday and Saturday are banking on country music to put asses on the lawn with Zac Brown Band and Underwood as the headliners. 

There's a nod to rock both nights, I think. I have no idea what kind of rock the local band Fabulous Armadillos plays, but it doesn't matter. They appear to be the first band out of the gate on Friday, when the crowd will be tepid, at best. Later that night Third Eye Blind opens for Zac Brown. Once again, that's one of those things you'll never see anywhere else. Third Eye Blind had a few hits, but they go back 20 years or so, like Nelly. They're not a legendary rock band, and I doubt they'd draw a big crowd on their own in Minneapolis. Their inclusion as the opener for Brown's chicken buffet seems like little more than a time killer by a wimpy alt-rock band. 

Saturday's schedule has slots to fill, so that will be interesting to see how it rounds out. But naturally Hawkey needs to dazzle the masses, so he'll go on before Underwood. Arguably he's rock, unless he feels like selling country that night. Either way, I'm sure the crowd will hang on his every lyric.  

Other than the headliners on Friday and Saturday, there's only one country act booked so far for Friday or Saturday, depending upon how you want to classify Hawkey.

As it stands, the festival is attempting to live up to its reputation of uniting pop, rock and country, yet seems to be a little less eclectic in going about how it slots its acts. I'm not sure if that sells more single-day tickets or if it hurts three-day pass purchases. Perhaps it won't matter at the end of the damn festival. 

So at this point I'm impressed that there's a major financial commitment behind a second year of the festival, and it seems like the festival is trying to find synergy among the artists it is booking for each day. Not too shabby for the shit show that was the first damn festival this past summer. 

Not everyone is dazzled by the lineup, although that's to be expected.

The early comments I read on Twitter announcing Pitbull and Underwood are joining Brown as headliners questioned why there's not a major rock act. Last year Aerosmith was a headliner, and we learned that Steve Tyler is an asshole, at least according to Hawkey. I'm not sure what major rock acts might have been available next summer, but when your two big weekend nights have major country acts, you're not trying real hard to entice the rock and roll crowd. Country sells, so I can't blame Hawkey and his fellow hucksters from banking on the farm crowd to pay the freight next summer.

For the rockers, however, there's zero incentive to attend one night of the festival unless you really love hearing Underwood sing about a guy who will hop in the sack with more than one woman. Perhaps fans of Third Eye Blind's "Jumper" really groove to that "Chicken Fried" song. What do I know?

Again, boot scootin' boogie music sells in Minnesota, so it might be a wise marketing strategy on the part of the damn festival to emphasize it in 2020. Whether coincidental or by design, there's no We Fest in northern Minnesota this year. The big country festival in the northwoods is taking a year off. I doubt that crowd is going to migrate to Shakopee to get their fix, but the lack of a major annual country music festival at the same time of the year can only help the Summer Jam.

More accidental brilliance by the Hawkey brain trust: His damn festival isn't on the same weekend as Moondance Jam, or Rock Fest in Wisconsin. If they think the rock crowd wants to rock out to Underwood, you might as well host your festival on a weekend when you don't have competition from festivals three hours away.

So it looks like Summer Jam made smart decisions for 2020, doesn't it? Time will tell. Given the countless ways they botched their inaugural festival this past summer, they can't afford to make as many boneheaded decisions again, I'd argue.

Nonetheless, I've got to believe that they'll screw it up again somehow in 2020.

How? Glad you asked.

Once again they're selling a variety of VIP tickets and upgrades. There's a portion of the market that will pay for that, and you have to know that the brain trust that botched the VIP area so thoroughly last year will takes steps to ensure they don't screw the folks who are willing to trust Hawkey and company with their money in 2020. Plenty of morons will pay VIP prices to sniff Underwood's underwear from 20 feet away, I'm sure, and probably have no clue that the 2019 VIPs were shat upon.

But given how clueless and fraudulent Hawkey and company were in 2019, I expect they'll find a way to bungle VIP ticket access in 2020.

These geniuses did figure out that they're overpricing their crappy general admission access. Not hard to figure that out after the 2019 shit show. So the one-day, crappy access tickets are just $79! (Plus fees, I'm sure.) I think that's a little cheaper than the cut-rate tickets they were trying to hustle during the final week of the 2019 festival.

But now they're going to charge people $20 to park at the damn festival.

I get it, parking fees encourage car pooling. But Summer Jam isn't in downtown Minneapolis. It's at a facility with tons of parking, just like every suburban shopping mall. People aren't going to boycott the damn festival over a parking fee, and you can argue that the fee is offset by the reduced one-day ticket price, but it still looks shitty to charge it, and charge more than $20 for "VIP" parking access. Just shitty.

And you just have to know that charging a fee for parking is going to turn into a debacle. The horse track parking lot isn't designed for paid parking. When you have to collect admission to a parking lot, you'd better be able to handle a lot of cars at once. There's more than one access point to the lot, and you can sell parking passes online to expedite entry, but I've got to believe that parking access is going to be a daily fiasco.

I'm sure they've figured out a plan, but how do you accommodate for the free parking poker players will require during the damn festival? There's a 24-hour poker room at the race track, as well as off-track betting. Live horse racing may take a weekend off, but the other revenue generators won't.

This parking fee is going to bite the festival in the ass somehow, I'm certain.

I'm speculating, of course, but given how poorly the 2019 Summer Jam was set up and run, from start to finish, you're a fool if you think the 2020 festival will be flawless.

The funniest, and most insulting, thing about the 2020 Jam is that they're selling tickets now. It has become a common practice in the live entertainment industry to book acts as far in advance as possible, bank as much money as possible, many months in advance of the event. There are a variety of summer concerts and events that are selling tickets now, and in recent years the Minnesota State Fair has jumped on that bandwagon, selling as many grandstand concerts as possible prior to Christmas. Perfect for gift giving!

Given how poorly run the 2019 Jam was, and the fact I have yet to read one report of any sort of refund given to the 2019 VIP ticket holders they screwed over royally, asking people to commit hundreds of dollars to an event that has such a bad reputation eight months in advance is laughable. And highly insulting, given there's no indication that any effort has been made to rectify the shitty treatment VIP ticket holders were subjected to this past summer.

But I'm sure a few fools will hand their money over in time for the holidays. Hawkey is a modern day P.T. Barnum.

Will Hawkey be making excuses for his damn festival again in 2020?

Will local shills like Belinda Jensen embarrass themselves by proclaiming the damn festival to be a rousing success again in 2020?

Will Jon Bream lob backhanded insults at the damn festival again in 2020?

If the answers are yes, I'll be back next summer. 

Was Twin Cities Summer Jam a cash cow? #TCSummerJam

I don't know three things about running a music festival, but I know that Twin Cities Summer Jam was a major production, and not cheap.

I've pointed it out before, Aerosmith makes huge money performing live after all these decades, and they didn't come to Minnesota as an act of charity. Pretty boy Chris Hawkey said as much when he noted that "the damn festival," which he is an owner of, had to sell VIP tickets/access just to afford Aerosmith. Clearly they didn't sell enough of those VIP tickets... that's well documented.

So if VIP ticket sales were vital to the damn festival, we have to assume that Steve Tyler and the added cost of Buckcherry on Friday night didn't leave a lot of profit for Hawkey and the other owners. Sure, Canterbury Downs/Park made money off its beer sales, but it couldn't have been a profitable night for the festival's ownership, unless they sold a lot of those shitty T-shirts and other trinkets. The price of those T-shirts, hats and other bullshit, by the way, was reduced before the end of the festival on Saturday. People are idiots, but even the idiots weren't buying that crap, it seems.

It's a general rule of business, you don't expect to make big money in your first year. You may do huge business, but you have a lot of startup costs. Aerosmith sells itself, but I have to believe that all the costs associated with running the Summer Jam didn't leave a lot of room for profit, and we know that the ticket sales didn't surpass expectations.... otherwise the damn festival's brain trust wouldn't have slashed tickets in the final days, when hype should have been through the roof.

The question is, did the brain trust make a dime off of its efforts. Did it come up short? You can't tell me that Pitbull/Armando and Tim McGraw came cheap on Saturday night.

Was the brain trust prepared to weather a financial loss in its first year in order to build something that the masses would flock to, and drop hundreds of dollars on VIP tickets, annually? Time will tell.

Strib music critic Jon Bream doesn't run music festivals, either. But after decades of covering the industry and reviewing concerts, you've gotta think he knows a thing or 10 about the economics of the concerts and tours that take place in the Twin Cities.

His festival review/wrap up included a telling paragraph. The damn festival "merited solid grades in just about every aspect except ticket pricing (too high) and efficiency (computer and box office glitches). Here’s hoping the fest promoters can come up with the capital to bring TC Summer Jam back in 2020."

Gee, why did Bream throw that last comment in his review? Do you think he's just speculating? Do you think he's clueless about what the damn festival cost, and what the crowd size meant in terms of covering the costs of the performers, security, marketing and general labor associated with running a multi-day festival?

I don't know if there's a future for Summer Jam, and clearly neither does Bream. But I have no reason to believe he's shitting on the future of the damn festival simply to be an asshole.

Can Hawkey and company afford another ego stroke next summer? If they decide yes, it will be interesting to see what the damn festival looks like in 2020.

If the brain trust tries this stunt again, here's a nickel's worth of free advice: Don't buy the VIP tickets, no matter how hard P.T. Barnum tries to sell them to you.

Winners and losers at Twin Cities Summer Jam #TCSummerJam

Like any event old or new, there's room for review and scrutiny. Were there winners or losers during the first Twin Cities Summer Jam? Let's find out.

I knew of the event, and didn't think much of it. It wasn't clear to me how or why it was happening, and I had no interest in attending. I have no doubt the performers put on a good show. Jon Bream, the weathered music critic from the Star Tribune, gave a thumbs up to most performances. Some of those were more enthusiastic than others. The only one he didn't appreciate was Buckcherry. No big deal, there's always a dud in every festival lineup.

Bream made mention of issues in his festival review, but let Summer Jam off easy. He noted the tickets were priced too high, and that the festival's technology was inefficient. A previous article he wrote about the festival noted there were a few other flaws, such as the configuration of the sections and video screens, but he really didn't flesh out details of any of the Jam's issues.

In the last day or two I reviewed a Summer Jam article that seemed slightly more critical of the event and its flaws. I'm not sure when Bream wrote it, but it continued to downplay the flaws.

Bream's reporting didn't seem to provide fodder for the prosecution or the defense.

As I said, I wasn't particularly interested in the festival. Aerosmith would have been interesting to see, but I had no interest in seeing any other act performing during the weekend, unless you paid me to be there and treated me like Belinda Jensen. (She raved about the Jam via Facebook, and I'm going to guess she neither paid for a ticket nor had to watch the show while rubbing shoulders with the unwashed masses. If so, her raves are hollow.)

I find it odd to invite Pitbull to open for Tim McGraw on the final night of your festival, but if it works, go for it. Opening acts usually draw tepid interest from the audience, but I suppose it's different at a festival where people want, and expect, to stand around for hours. So I'm sure Pitbull had a nice crowd. And if you're the kind of guy or gal that likes boot scootin', why wouldn't you want to watch Armando rap his way through a bunch of dance tunes, or watch his dancing babes shake their money makers? No, I don't get it either. That was probably the first and last time Pitbull opens for McGraw.

The mash up of artists seemed to work, as best I can tell. Score one for Summer Jam.

So who comes out of Summer Jam a winner? Lots of people who paid for crappy general admission access, and then found out they could flood the VIP section, for reasons we'll probably never definitively know.

If you paid for general admission tickets, you got pretty crappy views of the action due to the distance and limited view of the stage, as well as the lackluster video screen technology, by many accounts. Double win for those who waited until the final days to buy their admission ticket, and paid less than those who bought early. Pre-sales are typically crucial to events, but those who were on the fence were rewarded for being lukewarm to the festival. That's one hell of a slap in the face for committing  your dollars weeks or months in advance, eh? But I said it before and I'll say it again, it works both ways, and you make a value judgment when you buy your ticket when you do.

Clearly the biggest losers were those who paid hundreds of dollars per head for VIP access, and then were treated like sardines when the cheapskates were rewarded with a comparable experience at a fraction of the price. That's disgusting. I'm not convinced we know who is to blame, but more on that in a moment.

Neither winners nor losers: All the sponsors. There seemed to be plenty of sponsors, from the big casino just down the road to the Clear Channel radio stations, some of which were pimping and promoting the festival via free tickets and upgrades.

Nobody seems to be angry at the sponsors, and understandably so. They may have supported a poorly executed festival, but I suppose they're victims, too. They paid something to get their name in front of the masses. So even if it was a debacle, the show did go on. Even if it was a total disaster, they would be considered victims, too.

And nobody seems to be pointing a finger at Canterbury for hosting the Jam. I have to believe that beyond getting paid for use of their space and infrastructure, they were going to get a cut of concession sales to the captive audience. This wasn't free money, but they had a vested interest in the success of the festival, regardless of how little, if any, participation they had in its execution.

Sometimes you're an innocent bystander. But you should receive some of the blame when you allow a group to come in and miss the mark so spectacularly on their ticket allocation for premium access, especially when  your property has hosted similar events over the years. You don't rent your hotel convention space to hate groups, unless you want public backlash. You shouldn't turn over your seasonal pony track to a group that doesn't have the deep pockets to do it right, especially an untested entity like the Summer Jam brain trust.

Yet nobody seems to be upset with Canterbury. So they're not losers in this deal, but they should be.

Probable losers: Those in the horse industry. The Jam didn't happen overnight. Those who come to Canterbury for live racing each season -- jockeys, owners, shit shovelers -- know up front what they're getting and for how long. I have no idea how an off weekend effects their income or schedule at tracks elsewhere around the country. Perhaps there's always an off weekend during the summer. I really have no clue. But I'm guessing a lot of those season people who are vital to Canterbury's success found themselves with an unwelcome unpaid vacation. Or perhaps I'm wrong, perhaps it was "spring break" week for the horsemen of Canterbury. Seems like shutting down their livelihood during a summer weekend is not doing them any favors.

It's not always clear who owns an event or attraction. Sometimes it's a faceless corporation. Sometimes it's a small, anonymous group. It was only as Summer Jam went off the rails that I got an inkling as to who has some stake in it.

It turns out potential loser Chris Hawkey, the morning radio/evening patriot who loves his country, owns "the damn festival," according to a comment he tweeted to one of his critics. Hawkey took the time to engage the critic, first off, and that's a boneheaded move. Don't be Brian Oake, Chris. That's not a good look for anybody.

I'm not a fan of Hawkey, but it does me no good to root against him. The dude hustles, and people like the music he churns out. I don't find him funny, which is one of many reasons I don't listen to his KFAN morning show, but they don't need me. I've only heard select samples of his music, and it fails to dazzle me. But it doesn't have to. I can easily turn it off, and life goes on.

Hawkey has a long history of busting his ass, and has a couple of pretty good gigs, it seems. I'm not sure how much investment he could possibly have in a major event that had a ton of expenses, but he owns the damn festival, he made that clear. And by owning it, he gets to stroke his ego by booking his love of God/country music jamboree into slots on both Friday and Saturday night. It's good to be Chris Hawkey.

Hawkey has been the mouthpiece for the festival, given his prominence in the music industry and local entertainment market. Depending upon what you read, he has suggested refunds are coming to the VIP ticket buyers who were shat upon at the festival. I've seen it suggested a couple of different ways, including in an article from the bastion of journalism excellence, Bring Me The News. So it must be true.

Will Hawkey end up being a loser in this deal? If those who were royally screwed by the festival don't get a refund, everyone associated with the debacle should be force fed a shit sandwich, with a steaming pile of shit. Piled high. And Hawkey should be served the first and last sandwich, since he owns "the damn festival."

But given the VIPs are a small percentage of the ticket buyers, it's unlikely his blue collar persona is going to take much of a hit, big picture. He can still sing about how America is great again, and the $99 Summer Jam ticket buyers will eat it up. I'm fighting the temptation to make a shit sandwich joke right now.

I doubt he'll end up a loser in this deal, but the biggest asshole, by far, is Aerosmith's Steven Tyler, if you believe Hawkey. Tyler "demanded" that the general admission crowd fill in the vast open space in the VIP area near the stage, and threatened to default upon his contract to perform if that didn't happen, Hawkey is quoted as saying.

It seems hard to believe, but that's the story Hawkey is selling.

So Tyler told the festival that if they didn't screw over his fans who paid hundreds of dollars for premium access, he was going to default on a major payday and screw over every fan at the festival by not performing? Really hard to believe, honestly, but that's what we've been told by Hawkey.

So we'll assume that's exactly what went down. If so, then Tyler is definitely an asshole. And if I paid for VIP access to his show, it would be the last time I gave a dime to the asshole.

And yet, if Hawkey's claims are true, nobody is really going to hold it against Tyler or Aerosmith, because most rubes don't care, as long as they're not the ones getting jail raped by Tyler.

So we know who the winners and losers are, or should be, eh?

While Tyler isn't likely to come out of this a loser, according to Hawkey's story, we can only conclude Tyler is an asshole. If so, this shouldn't surprise us.

After nearly five decades of being catered to, he's making as much as ever doing shows whenever he is in the mood. Not everybody gets rich quick as a live performer, but the value placed on the live performance has increased exponentially during the past 25 years or so, and Aerosmith seems to have no problem drawing huge crowds year after year as the value placed upon live shows continues to grow. Aerosmith ain't worried about hit records any more, they keep banking money off of their live performances, and are clearly a viable draw, as they now have a recurring gig in Vegas, where the big names now set up shop in a major casino and let their fans come to them, rather than the other way around. Worked very well for Celine Dion. After nearly 50 years, and millions of dollars having been showered upon Aerosmith, it'd be hard not to have an ego, and become an asshole. Or perhaps he was born that way.

The internet may be littered with stories about what an asshole Tyler is off stage. I don't know, I'm not looking for them, and I don't care. And perhaps I'd be none the wiser if it wasn't for the arrogance and stupidity of the Summer Jam brain trust.

Hawkey was quoted as saying that in order for his damn festival to be able to book an act as big as Aerosmith in its first year, it would take a lot of cash. A lot. I don't know how much, but Aerosmith isn't on tour. Aerosmith has been playing gigs in Vegas, and came to Minnesota specifically for this gig, according to their 2019 performance schedule. Aerosmith didn't roll into Minnesota for a pair of gigs at Canterbury and Moondance Jam. Tyler and company were here solely for Hawkey's damn festival.

In order to gross that huge stack of greenbacks, Hawkey had to sell VIP tickets, and bunches of them, to pay Aerosmith's fee. He is quoted as saying "we paid an exorbitant amount of money for Aerosmith to be at this festival, we had to sell some VIP seating in order to make enough money to have a festival."

Seems a bit ambitious and foolish for a first-time festival, doesn't it? Seems dangerous and foolish to gamble big on your first go at it, doesn't it? You could afford to gamble if you're a concert production company like Live Nation looking to establish a new annual event. Could Summer Jam's brain trust really afford to gamble big on its damn festival?

It did. And because of that, we know that Tyler is an asshole. But that's not why we know.

The only reason we know is that the Summer Jam brain trust clearly doesn't know how to count. And that's hilarious!

I'll make up numbers for the purpose of the illustration. I have no idea what the actual numbers should be. Let's assume Summer Jam wanted to sell 500 VIP tickets for each night of the show, and dedicated space for those VIP ticket holders in front of the stage. You assume they allocated enough space to allow the VIPs to mill about comfortably in front of the stage, without being packed into their section like sardines.

A reasonable plan, and some people were willing to spend hundreds for, presumably, that sort of privilege.

So what do you do when it's Friday morning, and your computer program (You've got to have some sort of accounting software, don't you?) tells you that you've sold 100 VIP tickets? The easy thing to do is hope 400 people pay big bucks at the gate that day and fill in the space that night. But c'mon, we know that's not going to happen.

Yet it seems like that's exactly what Summer Jam hoped for. Then asshole Tyler comes along and threatens to walk away if 95 percent of the crowd is 500 feet away from the stage during his performance. Suddenly Tyler's VIP fans are being shat upon.

So what's the solution? The obvious solution is that you look at your VIP ticket allowance, look at how many you've sold by Friday morning, decide how many you're going to give away to get people excited about your $99 general admission tickets and then adjust the VIP section accordingly. If you have sold 100 VIP tickets, are going to upgrade 100 people somehow that day and think you'll sell 50 VIP tickets that day, you reconfigure your VIP area to allow the general admission slobs to be closer to the stage. And if you're lucky, you'll sell 60 VIP tickets that day, and therefore you'll have slightly less breathing room for everyone, without packing them in like sardines. Then Tyler never has to be the asshole that screws his wealthiest fans.

And don't tell me that the VIP area couldn't have been reduced, while maintaining its integrity, that morning. The concert wasn't being moved to a Somerset, Wisconsin, campground. It doesn't take a Mayo Clinic specialist to reconfigure the VIP seating. It can't be that hard to reduce the VIP area of your damn festival that morning. If just can't.

And, of course, after screwing Aerosmith VIPs on Friday night, that same thing happened on Saturday, I guess. According to Bring Me The News, "with the precedent set on Friday by Aerosmith, the VIP section was opened up to GA for Pitbull and Tim McGraw on Saturday." So those who paid huge money for McGraw on Saturday were shat upon, too?

Precedent? What a bunch of horseshit. Which is appropriate given the venue for Summer Jam.

Tyler was an asshole and VIPs were screwed, all because the Summer Jam brain trust overestimated how many expensive tickets they could sell, and couldn't figure out how to configure their VIP area in front of the stage based upon the number of VIP tickets that they had sold? How embarrassing. Talk about amateur hour.

No, I've never run a damn festival. Of course it's far more complicated than that.

As George Costanza once said, "It's not a lie if you believe it."

Twin Cities Summer Jam may prove, yet again, that we don't like music festivals

You know I have to be intrigued if I dust off my retired blog to write about something happening in the Twin Cities this weekend at our giant horse track, Canterbury Park.

While this blog has been reserved for commentary on the broadcasting geniuses of the Twin Cities market, I'm going to deviate, sort of. More on that another day, I think.

For the record, I have nothing to gain by the success, or failure, of Twin Cities Summer Jam, the latest effort to create a music festival in a major metro area that can't seem to support one.

We've had varied success over the years with festivals. Ozzfest seems to have drawn well in the past when it toured here, but it was a one-day tour. Specialty festivals of one or two days do fine. I don't know how to describe Cities 97 when it comes to its playlist, but their niche seems to draw well for two nights every July at the Basilica Block Party. Some hip hop gig does OK as a one-day festival at our treasured state fairgrounds early each summer. I don't know how successful, but nobody gets shot at it, as best I know, so I'd call that a success.

In the past Canterbury Downs/Park has hosted a variety of concerts. We're reminded occasionally that Lilith Fair came through two centuries ago and dazzled the masses. And our local Clear Channel stations (I'm old school, I still shop at Dayton's) use to do one-day radio station events at Canterbury in the fall for a few years, after the horses went to the glue factory at the end of the racing season. Canterbury has hosted a variety of other musical conclaves over the years, as best I recall, so there's some track record of success, it seems. Lord knows they have plenty of room for it all.

But shutting down their horse racing for a weekend in order to host a summer festival spanning three nights, and multiple genres, seemed like a bold move, at minimum.

This market seems to struggle with multi-day music festivals, and I'm not sure why. Years ago the geniuses behind Live Nation, the concert production company, tried to turn Harriet Island in St. Paul into the scene of a music festival. That lasted one year. Prior to that the geniuses running the Taste of Minnesota essentially killed the event by trying to turn a lame food festival into a nightly music destination. I might have the details of those two items slightly incorrect, but I'm old, my memory isn't the best. And I'm lazy. I don't feel like Googling old Pioneer Press stories.

The Twin Cities just doesn't have the desire for a major music festival. I don't know why, but look at what a major production Milwaukee's Summerfest is each year around the Fourth of July. It features about 10 days built around music, from noon until close. We're better than that here in Minnesota, evidently.

So trying to craft any sort of music festival is a bold move, if not outright foolish.

But let's say it's a safe bet. Did it make sense to host it this weekend?

This very same weekend was also host to a well-established festival in northern Minnesota, Moondance Jam. And there's a major rock festival going on this same weekend a couple of hours east in Wisconsin, Rockfest.

I wouldn't argue that those events are killing Summer Jam, or are competing for Summer Jam's audience. The rock festival in Wisconsin is high-octane hard rock. Summer Jam has relatively safe, geriatric rock, such as Aerosmith and REO Speedwagon. Sure, they booked local alt-rock darlings Soul Asylum and a harder rocking band of a 20-year vintage....yes, 20 years... Buckcherry, but the Summer Jam lineup won't be confused with Wisconsin's Rockfest.

Moondance Jam seems more akin to the market Summer Jam is aiming for. But Moondance is a little more streamlined. There's no major country headliner at Moondance Jam, and nothing that resembles Pitbull, as best I can tell. And Moondance seems to be an event that is based upon camping and making a long weekend out of it. Loud nights, lots of drinking, little sleep. I don't get the appeal, but plenty do, and Moondance is a huge annual success.

So is Summer Jam's weekend of choice brilliant, or brutal? Summer Jam thinks that fans of Buckcherry are fans of Aerosmith, Pitbull, Rascal Flatts, Tim McGraw and REO Speedwagon. Some people probably are. But it seems like a gamble to try to convince people that they want to spend more than one night at your festival when you get Aerosmith, Pitbull and Rascal Flatts during that three-day extravaganza.

And I get it, you can't simply book any band for any weekend  you want. You have to pick a weekend and book whomever is touring in your area and is willing to come to Minnesota if your price is right.

Wisconsin's Rockfest is happening the same weekend as another hard rock fest in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. Rob Zombie, Marilyn Manson and others are playing both fests this weekend. Makes total sense. I have no idea how similar or different the fests are, but they're far enough apart that they can co-exist, evidently, and can take advantage of each other when it comes to getting bookings for this weekend.

Did Summer Jam benefit from any sort of synergy with other festivals happening 3-5 hours away? No. Inexplicably, the one hard rock band on the Summer Jam bill, Buckcherry, is not at either Wisconsin rock festival this weekend.

As for Moondance Jam, how many of its performers is Summer Jam booking? None.

Again, Summer Jam isn't necessarily competing for the same audience, but having major festivals elsewhere this weekend doesn't help. If you think your Pitbull fans love Rascall Flatts, then you have to assume some of your Aerosmith fans are going to choose Rob Zombie at Rockfest or Lynyrd Skynyrd at Moondance.

So Summer Jam chose a weekend when there's major competition, and isn't benefiting from the bands that are coming to the midwest for those festivals. Perhaps this is the only weekend Canterbury was willing to shut down for this festival. (UPDATE: It turns out Tim McGraw was at a festival south of Milwaukee on Friday night, so Summer Jam did find a little synergy to exploit.)

It seems that the brain trust behind Summer Jam would have wanted to pick another weekend. Could they have? I won't know, but the weekend they've chose doesn't seem to be advantageous. At all.

Ultimately Summer Jam isn't likely to be a victim of competition, but having other festivals the same weekend can't possibly be helping draw people to Canterbury Park. I'll give Summer Jam a pass when it comes to choosing a poor weekend, but the organizers didn't take advantage of the regional activity taking place. At all.

So as curious as Summer Jam is, the execution of it has been flawed, to say the least. I'll apologize now, I'm enjoying the angst and vitriol. That sounds wrong, of course, but at least I'll admit it. We accept that NASCAR fans love the unavoidable crashes, so long as nobody is killed, and NHL diehards insist that fighting is a part of the game that shouldn't be eliminated. I'm no worse than those people for enjoying the rants of the Summer Jam disgruntled.

It's well documented on Twitter and Facebook, and you can find a few news articles starting to air Summer Jam's dirty panties. They set the price points too high and/or expected far too many to pay the premium prices for the best seats. As a result they cut prices on tickets days before the festival, claiming new sponsorship money made it possible.

Really? The only reason they lowered prices is because a sponsor kicked in money to have their name associated with the festival in its final days? If it smells like bullshit....

So those who wanted great seats for the festival were penalized for buying early. I have no sympathy for you.

Had you bought those tickets and it turned out that the venue sold out, and the secondary market was selling the tickets at 150% of face value, you'd feel like a genius, and happily sell them for a profit when your Aunt Marilyn died days before the show and you had to skip the festival in order to travel to Michigan for her funeral.

Best analogy I read about the pricing: It's like airline tickets. You book two months in advance, and the price could drop the next day, or rise the next day, and it could go up or down many times in the weeks prior to departure.

I think that's a good comparison.

The difference, of course, is that airline passengers don't usually talk to each other about what they paid, and when, for their tickets...all you can know is how much less, or more, you might have paid had you booked earlier, or waited longer, if you want to track those sorts of things. With Summer Jam, you can't know what the guy in the beer line paid for his ticket, unless you ask, but you know they were trying to get asses through the gates in the final days, at a discount, and that could have been you had you not been so eager to spend hundreds of dollars for a pair of tickets to see Aerosmith on a disgustingly humid night in Minnesota.

Moral of the story: You deemed the tickets were worth the price you agreed to weeks ago, and then they had a sale days before the show. You can't count on that, so you make a value judgment at the price you agreed to pay, and that's the way it goes. If the market value goes up or down, it doesn't matter, as you have already made your choice. End of story.

Except it's not the end of the story, of course. Even with price breaks in the final days, there weren't nearly enough premium ticket buyers to justify the premium seating allocation at the festival, by many accounts. So for the past two nights the people who paid for those premium seats, at whatever price days or weeks ago, found themselves rubbing elbows with tons of people who decided a general admission ticket at the back of the grounds was all they could justify.

This is where I have a lot of sympathy for those who paid for VIP access, at any price. I've read plenty of comments on  Summer Jam's Facebook page about people finding themselves suddenly surrounded by the unwashed masses because the organizers didn't want a pathetic looking festival with tons of empty space in front of a mob of general admission rubes, and therefore opened the VIP floodgates to fill that open space ahead of the rubes.

That's downright shitty. And people have expressed that on Facebook, wondering where there refund is for paying premium dollars and then being disrespected.

They have to be smart enough to know that Summer Jam won't be refunding them any money. You paid your cash, you got screwed and they won't care enough to make it right. Based upon how desperate they were to move tickets in the final days prior to the festival, they'll be lucky if they have enough money to cover all the expenses, even with sponsors.

I have no idea if the festival will be deemed a success of failure financially, only time will tell, and it still won't tell us the whole story. But given what a debacle this has been on multiple levels, I would bet against another Summer Jam next year.

Yeah, I get it, you need to learn from experience and make improvements. But let's be realistic. They didn't invent the wheel. They shouldn't have had to learn so many hard lessons in 2019.

They couldn't figure out how to set up video screens that worked properly during at least some of the performances, or how to configure their grounds so that a huge area of general admission access didn't have an obstructed view of the stage. They couldn't figure out how to price and allocate their sections so that they'd draw a crowd and sell enough tickets without having a fire sale in the final week. They picked a weekend when they gained almost nothing by having other regional festivals going on. What makes anyone think that they'll make any money when this is all over?

If I was to bet $5, I'd bet there's no Summer Jam next year. Yes, it could be improved 1000% and draw a nice crowd, and this weekend hasn't been a total failure, but with all its shortcomings, it's hard to believe that this will become a new tradition in midwest music festivals.

Alix Kendall, Rena Sarigianopoulos and Elizabeth Ries walk into a bar

I want to write about too many things, and I don't want to write 10 blog posts in the next year, so here are thoughts on a variety of topics, rolled into one package.

YOUR LIFE IS NOT THAT FASCINATING

Why is it that TV stations insist on treating their employees like they're part of our family? I'm sure the anchors and reporters are complicit in this.

We all know Rena Sarigianopoulos got married and had a child during the past few years. It's hard to hide the pregnancy when a woman continues to work on camera, but honestly, did KARE-TV need to share pictures of Rena's wedding and pregnancy announcement on its social media channels?

It's one thing to note that an on-air "talent" has had a child. If you watch Rena on that news-fluff program she participates in you noticed the obvious, and were probably reminded of it plenty of times. (I don't watch, so I don't know.) When Rena disappears for weeks, it's understandable that the station will show a picture of the mother and child and note a baby was born.

But TV stations take it to another level these days thanks to social media. I'm not sure which station in the Twin Cities is most guilty, but damn, KARE-TV sure likes to exploit the personal lives of their talent. I have to assume the talent agrees to play along. It's sad, and it is trumped by the fact that people actually care. They will respond to those Facebook posts to congratulate Rena or whomever it is for their incredible accomplishment. Harmless, sure, but a sad indictment of both the stations pumping out the local news and the people watching it.

BRING ME A BARF BAG

I'm not a fan of that lame attempt at news chat that Rena and her pal are doling out at 6:30 p.m., although Rena doesn't seem that interested any more. I don't watch the show, but if I have the TV on at 6:30, I try to see who is hosting on any particular night, and Rena is absent more often than not, it seems.

Perhaps the show is better than it was a couple of years ago when I first watched it, but honestly, these people are not smart.

Did I ever mention Rena once lectured me on Twitter? I made a silly comment about the show, but instead of ignoring it, Rena lectured me for my negativity. Now keep in mind that I had watched the show three times in its opening few months. I was watching on one 2016 night and tweeted that I was going to change the channel because the windbags on #BTN11 were going to praise Chris Kluwe, who should need no introduction to you because he's a media whore. I never said I wouldn't turn the channel back in five minutes to watch the final segment of the show.

So Rena, in response to a snarky comment at the end of the show, "busted" me. And then she lectured me, and tried to flatter her own ego at the same time. How superficial. And so, so wrong. At this point I hadn't tweeted all that much about her show, but she really put me in my place!

I was a social bully for daring to criticize a crappy show and refusing to watch two women babble about Chris Kluwe? OK, honey.

She didn't block me, like she should have if she is so delusional as to think I tweet hate daily.

Ignore those who criticize your crappy show if your skin is so thin. But pretending I'm some social bully who is constantly tweeting about how awful the show is shows how petty she is. Some might suggest it's an indicator of intelligence, or lack thereof.

Rena's not the only person who lives in a fantasy world of self-importance. The show has a producer named Nikki Muehlhausen who once lectured me on Twitter. She's at least smart enough to have deleted her tweets about a day after she did so. But basically darling Nikki told me that I'm allowed to praise her lame show and offer a suggestion, but I'm not allowed to call a spade a spade. I was wrong for calling it like I see it. I can kiss #BTN11 ass, but I can't call out bad TV when I see it. I didn't screen capture it, so I can't share the sentiment exactly as it was expressed, but yes, she was that ridiculous.

There's a dufus named Chad Nelson who points a camera at stuff now and again for Ch. 11. He saw some of my tweets, particularly those simple, dopey ones I sent for a while, noting I wasn't watching #BTN11 daily, despite what Rena thinks. His life is no better than mine, evidently, as he tried to needle me a few times in response. I love dopes who like to fight fire with fire. I'm sure he thinks he's above that.

In its earliest days they had some stiff named Nick Petersen who was their social media genius. They'd turn to him to share with the viewers what they were talking about on social media while watching the show. The guy wasn't smooth. I didn't interact with him much, but I did note his segment was painful to watch. A couple of months later I tweeted something (probably snarky) and made my standard comment about how I hate every segment, every day. He didn't reply. He blocked me, and I'm guessing he did so simply because he wasn't interested in seeing my comments in his social media scouring for #BTN11.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is how it's done. Don't get high and mighty like Rena and Nikki, don't be a fool like Chad. Just ignore and move on. I'll have a lot more respect for you, even if you're not great on camera. (I flip to the show for a moment every once in a great while, and I haven't seen that guy on camera for a long, long time. I'm guessing Nikki saw the same thing I did.)

My favorite interaction came from Chris Hrapsky. He's a KARE reporter who has had to feed from the #BTN11 trough a lot, as far as I can tell. (He has my sympathy.) I'm not sure why he was compelled to engage me, but rather than get all high and mighty, he spent a few minutes to learn a thing or two and ask a question. I was impressed.

Chris could be an egomaniac for all I know. He could have the IQ of a diseased cat. But in comparison to all those from KARE who engaged me regarding #BTN11, he appears to be the only person whose elevator goes to the top floor. I can barely watch KARE's newscasts these days, for a myriad of reasons, but I respect a guy who doesn't need to come off as holier than thou.

IT'S HARD TO KARE

I'm no expert or insider, I've said that before. But Ch. 11 has really gone down the toilet when it comes to overall quality of their news and newscasts, and I don't need to be an expert in order to see that. I don't have the time or patience to list all the ways the station has lost my viewership. I watch on a rare occasion just because I like torturing myself. The single best example of how the once-mighty NBC affiliate has gone in the dumper? Weekend sports kid Ryan Shaver.

CAN I GET A BARF BAG WITH JASON MATHESON'S FACE ON IT?

I have mocked the fact that TV viewers find the opinions of the local talking heads to be entertaining, interesting and/or important. It was enough to have the goofballs at Ch. 9 doing it every weekday at 9 a.m., but it must have been too lucrative, as Ch. 4 decided they needed to get in on the action, too. I won't rehash my previous rants about that.

Of all the talking bobos on local TV, nobody is more nauseating than Jason Matheson.

I use to respect the guy. He worked long hours and did whatever it took to land two seemingly decent jobs in the Twin Cities. And with all that effort, he has become intolerable.

I occasionally watch a few minutes of his TV chat fest on Ch. 9, airing weekdays at 10 a.m. and a dozen other times each week at any odd time the local Fox affiliate has time to fill on either of its stations.

First off, God bless Jason for playing up the gay stereotype of being fascinated with pop culture. I don't know if he gushes over the usual gay icons -- Cher, Barbra Streisand and Rosie O'Donnell -- but he gushes over a few people, I've learned over the years. Katie Couric immediately comes to mind. It sells, buddy, so keep it up, I suppose.

Why are people so fascinated about a gay man who will tell you how interesting a "Real Housewives" episode is? I'll never understand people.

A dude working in Minneapolis, talking about pop culture. Big fucking deal. But Jesus, Jason will try to convince you he has his fingers on the pulse of Hollywood, and connections you just won't get anywhere else. Maybe he does, I don't know, but every time I sample his schtick, he's making fairly obvious observations. He's like a poor woman's Wendy Williams. You want a window into the world of mindless sheep, watch Wendy's audience go nuts for her banal observations. Then get a local version of it by watching Matheson gab on Fox 9.

For whatever reason, his two-bit show has been given two summer tryouts as a national talker. I'm stunned that there's nothing better to consider. There can't be if his show is being given a tryout.

I tried to congratulate him for the opportunity. But I didn't simply kiss his ass, which seems to be the way you have to treat him nowadays.

I noted via Twitter to Matheson that it was a tough road to national stardom he was about to navigate, as proven by bigger names who have had summer tryouts in limited markets, but it was impressive nonetheless that he had been given the opportunity. Princess took that as an insult, of course, and had to self-stimulate his ego in responding to me. You'll have to take my word for it, I'm not in the mood to create Twitter images to illustrate it.

I don't read his tweets regularly, but he once bitched about the cost of an Uber ride from the local airport. I get that you don't make millions of dollars per year in local broadcasting, but it seemed silly to me. Perhaps he was trying to appear relatable to all the housewives who adore their gal pal.

I mocked him for his silly bitching, and of course his response was quite Sarigianopoulos-like, pretending that he's constantly under attack by me, somebody who rarely pays attention to his silliness.

He's a great success story whose ego can no longer be contained by his Buzz Boy frame.

I haven't listened to 10 minutes of his chick talk on morning drive radio, so I can't comment about how brilliant, or brutal, his long-form fawning over Shania Twain is.

And last, but not least: Jason, please convince those cheap bastards at Fox 9 to spend some cash on a theme song for your daily parade. Please don't tell me that the garbage you're using now is original, commissioned music. It sounds like royalty-free crap that would be used as filler during some lame children's show.

DID THEY HAVE A PRENUP? 

It's not nice to laugh at the failures of others, but I'll admit that the implosion of Paul Lambert's fairy tale marriage warms my heart a little.

Lambert, known as "Meatsauce" on 100.3 FM's morning show, is a great rags to riches story. He plays his part well, and as I've said before, he's The Fan's replacement for Jeff Dubay.

The hype and publicity he garnered for losing a few pounds and marrying Falen, a sidekick on the KDWB morning show, was a bit nauseating. Two people working for Clear Channel morning shows start dating, get married and live happily ever after. Congrats. More power to you.

It's inevitable that it's going to come up on the morning shows they work for. I assume it was discussed on KDWB. I rarely listen to morning radio, and when I do, I never listen to Dave Ryan. Ever.

But the nuptials got a lot of steam in the Twin Cities. There was at least one feature story in the local media profiling the love affair of these two "celebrities," and the duo didn't hesitate to market themselves as some sort of "Beauty and the Beast" duo. They'd find ways to use their marriage for promotion of themselves and/or their radio stations. I never watched the videos, but they had cooking videos that were shared on the radio station websites, if I recall correctly.

These clowns were nauseating, but that's what you have to be if you want to make money as a "personality." And of course the fairy tale marriage came crashing to the ground within a couple of years. I've read comments about why, but I've never heard or read a reliable explanation, and I don't care.

I don't revel in the failure of these fools, but it brings a wry smile to my face, knowing that their personal lives have been shown to be as fraudulent as their on-air personas.

QUICK HITS

To close out this Twin Cities roundup, here are random thoughts.

It's great that you get to sit on a WCCO couch once a week and give us your insightful movie reviews, Dennis "Rusty" Gatenby, but it's time to put your name to use as some mediocre communications coordinator for a local company and quit trying to hold onto the local TV limelight you lost so long ago.

It has been more than 18 months since I last published on this blog, and the last time I did, I noted what a waste of flesh Cheryl Johnson is. She's better known by her initials, B.J., and since she got in trouble for her idiocy back in 2016 she has been severely neutered by the Strib, which published the garbage she produced. The only reason they don't shitcan her, I'm guessing, is that she'll sue for discrimination. There ain't no way she's worth whatever they're paying her, and there ain't no way she's getting a better paying gig if she's kicked to the curb by the Strib. But it's nice to see the Strib has stopped publishing the garbage she use to produce, which seemed to lack any sort of editorial scrutiny.

I never, in my wildest dreams, would have guessed we'd still have sports talk on AM 1500. I don't know how that low-rated station survives, but kudos to all of you who looked to be out of a job more than a year ago.

And Kudos to the Pohlad family for proving that underachievement isn't limited to the MLB franchise you own. The inability of the Pohlads, whichever brother(s) run the radio/media conglomerate they built, to succeed in running a radio station is a fitting testament to the business savvy the family has demonstrated during the past 25 years.

Brian Oake is still an asshole. It just needs to be said more often than it is.

Last, and certainly least, is the namesake of this blog. I've predicted before that it's going to end on a very sour note for Dubay. His most recent run-in with the law ended with a plea agreement he made. He claimed that he couldn't risk going to jail for years as a result of the lies of a vindictive housemate he may or may not have been having sex with. Even if Dubay's hands were clean, the circumstances of it all show how hard it is to pick up the pieces after you've flushed your career and reputation down the toilet. And we know Dubay hasn't been able to walk the straight and narrow in the years since it all came crashing down around him. Unless Dubay comes to Jesus and makes peace with what's left of his life -- the dude is 50 years old, it's unlikely his life is ever going to be as cool as it was in his 30s -- it's not a matter of what ugliness will befall his life, it's simply a question of when does the next shoe drop. Good luck, Puffy, you're going to need it far more than most degenerate gamblers.

AND FINALLY

It's easy to throw stones at the local media. When pompous script readers like Jason DeRusha lecture the world on how precious his time is, and how great of a human he is for giving of his time, it's hard to avoid vomiting. Oh yeah, he's a culinary genius who eats and writes. He's multi-faceted!

When local "talent" is asked to fill an hour talking about the news and water cooler topics, you'll end up cringing at some point, assuming you're not lapping it up like a Pavlovian dog. (I'll never forget the excitement the recently departed Kylie Bearse expressed about the fascinating hour of chat they were about to launch at 9 a.m. a couple of years ago.)

It's too easy to throw stones because too many of the folks producing news or inane chat are mediocre at best, not nearly as well compensated as you might think. As I've noted before, plenty of folks get out of the biz for jobs that seem far less prestigious, and I'd bet my last $5 that income is a major factor in why former reporters find their way to communications positions with corporations or governmental agencies. Or, if you're fortunate enough to be a trophy wife, a la Natalie Nyhus, you can afford to stay home with your child. Why pass your paycheck onto a day care provider when you can spend those formative years with your child? Good gig if you can get it.

I have occasionally lavished praise, or simple observations, about developments in the local media. But more often than anything, I've chosen the low hanging fruit: Criticizing the mediocrity and mindlessness of the local media. The Twin Cities may be a top 20 market nationally, but our products are weak, and we're not unique. Media companies don't have the exclusivity and license to print money they once held, and they're not interested in being nonprofit entities.

I am pretty much guaranteed years of fodder, should I chose to accept it. But not so long ago, I listened as a motivational speaker discussed the merits of creating, regardless of the audience for your product. Sure, this blog is a creative outlet, and one that finds an audience. With little promotion these days I've found that plenty of people find their way to the blog. Not hundreds per day, but more than most "mommy" bloggers get, I'd wager.

This blog is a creative endeavor, but it's not the most satisfying creative outlet. A few months ago I finally started a new creative project that has nothing to do with writing, and I'm enjoying it. I'm going to keep at it.

I won't suggest that I'm never going to record another thought at this blog, but it hasn't been a priority for more than a year, and since the start of 2018, I've finally found a replacement for that creative expression this blog has provided, even if it is at Keith Leventhal's expense. (As his biggest fan, I had to work a backhanded compliment in one more time.)

Until something changes, I'm putting the blog on indefinite hiatus. Now, if we could just get Fox 9 to do the same thing with Ian Leonard....

Star Tribune columnist C.J.: an emperor with no clothes

I've been relatively quiet via this blog in recent weeks. That has been by design. But tonight all bets are off.

I don't enjoy "Breaking the News." It's a painful show featuring two smug women who are producing a bunch of fast food, the kind of garbage the public seems to crave when it comes to the news they consume. I've learned via Twitter that Rena Sarigianopoulos, one of the two anchorettes, isn't very sharp. And some of her KARE-TV staff is equally dimwitted when it comes to social media and responding to people like me, who don't find the TV show to be worthwhile.

I scoff at the general wardrobe choices of Jana Shortal, the other anchorette. I'm not a prude, I just think that her wardrobe choices and her style are a distraction when she broadcasts. And I find that to be the case every time I flip past her KARE-TV chatfest. But even if she looked like a million dollars, it wouldn't change my disdain for the content of the program. It's just my personal preference, and I feel that way whether she's talking about terrorism or what little kids think about politics. But i'm just a viewer with a blog. I have no clout in the media.

While I don't care for Shortal's show, I care even less for the arrogant, worthless gossip maven of the Star Tribune: Cheryl Johnson. I like to refer to Johnson by her nickname: B.J.

B.J. decided to rip Shortal for her wardrobe choice while discussing a sad, difficult, 27-year story that affects many in this state. Most are only affected indirectly, yet thousands upon thousands of people have been impacted by the short life and horrific death of Jacob Wetterling.

Of all the times to rip Shortal about her wardrobe choices, B.J. is too fucking stupid to know better than to do it in relation to Shortal's reporting about the details of Wetterling's death. (I don't think I've ever used profanity in this blog.)

B.J. has been a fixture in the local media for more than two decades. That's one hell of an indictment of the Twin Cities right there. And B.J. has proven herself to be an egotistical, arrogant bitch on previous occasions.

And the fact that B.J. chose the details of Wetterling's death as the moment to crucify Shortal for her fashion choices shows just how inflated her ego is, how out of touch she is as a human being and how worthless she is as a gossip maven in the Twin Cities.

I may not be a fan of Shortal, but I was highly impressed by how classy she was in her online response to B.J.

What's more astonishing than B.J.'s idiotic, aloof perspective of Shortal? The fact that the Star Tribune allowed her idiocy to be published on its website. The Strib offered an apology for posting an insensitive column by B.J., but it begs the question, "Are the inmates running the asylum?"

I'm glad the Strib published the column, only to delete it and offer a pathetic apology. B.J.'s shallow, arrogant opinions have unleashed holy hell upon the Strib's social media platforms and is bringing spectacular attention to the worthless trash that is B.J.'s career.

I hope the Strib's error finally awakens more than a few people to the fact that B.J.'s media presence is pathetic and worthless.

I may be petty and idiotic for having an opinion about how lackluster Shortal's wardrobe is, but I'm not as petty and idiotic as B.J., thank God.