By David Scott
Boston Sports Media Watch

Of the many aspects of Saturday’s Patriots game we are looking forward to (most of them residing in the Foxboro Terminals lot beginning at about 3 p.m. on Sunday), there is a Sweet (or Sour) 16 list of media-related things that we are not particularly anxious to see as the final four weeks of the NFL season unfold. They are, in no particular order:

1. The flocking of clueless news-side TV people to Foxboro, local Boston sports bars and press conferences they don’t belong at. The embarrassment of all the front-running, colors-wearing Biancas, Jacks, Randys, Marias and Dougs fawning over a local jock assemblage is still too raw from the 2007 World Series Run. It’s now, by far, the best time of year to switch over to PBS and NPR for a month’s respite.

2. Any and every show on WEEI 850 AM. This includes the usually semi-tolerable offerings like Planet Mikey. The main reason for this form of pain and siffering: Idiot Callers. No sports city gets dumber or shows its overt dumbness more than Boston during a title run-up.

3. Babbling Bob Lobel.

4. Hackneyed story lines that will only be repeated locally and nationally with each round of survival in The Tournament. In order: Spygate; Perfection; Brady is Luckiest Man in World

5. Unhealthy doses of the Meat Men (Fred Smerlas, Seteve DeOssie, Pete Sheppard).

6. Another column by Dan Shaughnessy with an Animal House inclusion (see below).

7. WBCN 104.1 FM’s (and the Krafts’ Rock Radio Network’s) Gino Cappelletti trying to stammer out some non-descript color commentary.

8. The potential for another two week run-up to the Super Bowl.

9. Drunk, oval-shaped (mostly male) tailgaters being interviewed by the news-side people (in print and on-air), immediately making all Pats’ fans look like uneducated, drunk belligerents.

10. The potential for more incoherent thoughts from Don Shula and Mercury Morris-types.

11. Too-loud, too-polished Adam Schefter of the NFL Network.

12. The annual trotting out of marginal (and some substantial) ex-Patriots for “expert analysis.” CSN, for instance, is promising Christian Fauria. We half-expect to see groveling Bronson Arroyo pop up as well.

13. Gisele bundled-up in sweaters, scarfs and coats photos. We only want photos like these when discussing Brady’s boo.

14. Babbling Bob Lobel. (Yeah, we know. He’s already on the list. But a painful memory of a past “5th Quarter” just flashed before our eyes. Scarring and jarring.)

15. The resulting insufferableness if a guy like Jon Meterparel actually gets his upset prediction correct.

16. The inevitable parade of piss poor Pats paraphernalia like this . Can’t anyone do a proper classic Bird-like caricature t-shirt with Brady, Moss and Belichick?

• It’s been very enlightening to see the Sporting News on-line evolution continue as it has in loud murmurs during the course of this week.

Just some backstory on my own familiarity with TSN, should you care (history lesson time, boys and girls!):

In 1998 I went aboard the sinking SPORT magazine dinghy as a senior editor and writer. It was in the hands of its ninth (of ten) different owners when I joined on. Under editor Norb Garrett, SPORT was getting one last chance to re-start the once-proud title that launched more than a few enviable careers. Despite an ugly ending (are there any other kind in publishing?), I would never trade those couple of years at SPORT for any of my career (mis)steps.

At the time, ESPN the Magazine was just beginning and SPORT (under the Petersen Publishing banner) had just taken over Inside Sports to leave the major market sports titles of merit at four: Sports Illustrated, SPORT, The Sporting News and fledgling ESPN The Mag.

As an aside – but certainly not without import – the laddie mag decade was in its infancy (aided, in fact by the final owner of SPORT, EMAP, which brought FHM over to the U.S. to compete with Maxim).

The Sporting News and SPORT were transitioning at similar, slow and deliberate speeds. At SPORT, we looked at them as kindred ( no pun intended) spirits. ESPN and SI were hurtling forward and dictating the future instead of fearing it the way the Money Men at SPORT and TSN were.

TSN – maybe more than most sports titles – was knocked on its ass. TSN’s bread and butter had been its expanded box scores and numbers-freaks-friendly format.

The Internet came along and made those numbers radioactive and interactive. TSN looked doomed. SPORT, in retrospect didn’t look much better, and hadn’t for the better part of two decades.

Both hung on, scraped and clawed and remained in the “big leagues” against all odds for far longer than they deserved. But TSN did it better (or with more guidance, better funding or all three) and SPORT died a quiet death in 2000. It was buried without even having attempted a web presence, which could have included its phenomenal archives (now overseen by a Canadian group).

TSN forged on, despite frequent rumors that it was expiring. Former TSN owner (currently toying with the Seahawks and Trailblazers) Paul Allen built out TSN’s radio network, propped the title up a bit and found a willing buyer in 2006. It appears that buyer, American City Business Journals, is willing to invest in the web (and other platforms) and now – despite some peculiar lay out, linkage and a dearth of visitors thus far at “The Sporting Blog” – ACBJ appears to be embracing some of the just-off-main street bloggers who have already built loyal audiences and convinced skeptical advertisers.

It’s not a new trend by any means (see: ESPN with the Henry Abbotts of the world), but it is very new for the dinosaurian TSN. TSN now appears to be finding its life support from the strangest of places: Sports Blogger Land. Shanoff, Leitch (for the Super Bowl anyway), and Awful Announcing are only a few of the names TSN is luring with regular paying gigs. Yahoo!, you’ll recall, started down a similar path with Jamie Mottram and will likely continue that type of expansion.

. . . Looks like Darren Rovell and Shots are thinking along the same lines. It is a fairly remarkable turn around (on the surface) for TSN.

• Not to beat a dead horse, but another sign of just how irrelevant the UMass basketball program has become in the Pioneer Valley is depicted by the mid-season switch of the Travis Ford coach’s show from one Springfield affiliate (ABC40) to another ( CBS3 WSHM). The weekly, 30-minute show had been airing on Channel 40 WGGB in Springfield, but was dropped hastily in December (despite remaining on the station’s website). The show also had been (and will soon again) re-air nationally on CSTV and regionally on NESN.

According to a late December report by the Daily Hampshire Gazette’s Matt Vautour, long-time carrier and producer of the show ABC40, demanded production costs be paid by UMass. Vautour quoted UMass AD John McCutcheon as saying, at the time, “They (ABC40) came to us about two weeks ago and said that they needed to be compensated for producing the show, which was different than what we had agreed to going into the year,” UMass athletic director “We had an exchange of benefits with advertising and recognition that they were producing the show. They felt they needed additional compensation and obviously we hadn’t budgeted for that and we weren’t able to do it. That’s what led to the discontinuation.”

The show had aired on Ch. 40 until the end of December and is scheduled to return at CBS3 in the coming weeks.

You’d think a show from a coach whose team was (until this week’s home loss to St. Joseph’s) hovering near the Top 25, would be able to secure enough advertisers for a full season to make the venture worthwhile for both sides. Cost-cutting ABC40 thought differently.

CBS3 obviously believes they can make hay with Ford. But the switch is another indication of how far the program has fallen and how fickle the support – from partners and fans alike – has become.

. . . The Don Brown coach’s football show was also dumped by ABC40 – we’re assuming CBS3 will pick that up as well in, but no mention was made in the release.

. . . Shots spoke with one UMass official this week who attributed some of the problems in generating and sustaining interest in the Minutemen to the notion that many fence-sitting UMass supporters believe Ford may “have one foot out the door” to his next job opportunity. They refuse, the thinking goes, to lose another young and upcoming coach to another, better, place.

• As a public service, here are the Google search results for the words “Dan Shaughnessy (and) Animal House,” in light of Shaughnessy’s Wednesday column where he once again referenced the movie that clearly has a special place in Danny Boy’s heart.

May we suggest a new movie to view and weave into your prose, Dan? We particularly enjoyed Juno and its soon-to-surge star Ellen Page.

There’s no Otter or Boone, but you get a Bleeker and a Mac to borrow lines from.

• It’s a month old, but it’s worth seeing again. One of the few (Kenny) Mayne Events that hit it out of the park:

• As Shots indicated last week, NESN and Joel Feld’s “baby,” ONE, is beginning production of a sports-themed comedy show, to be hosted by Peabody’s own Gary Gulman.

We’re skeptical about filling 10 episodes with quality material and the mention of “skits” scares us too. But Feld has earned the benefit of the doubt for the body of ONE’s work and the diversity it has brought to the Network. The guy seems to know what he’s doing and positively affecting the bottom line - The Sox dating show wasn’t as unbearable as we had feared.

• Although there’s been no formal announcement and very little movement (if any) on the hiring front, Comcast SportsNet is starting to show signs of beginning that “news gathering operation” that has been promised since the Fall. Wednesday’s premiere of a regular “Road to Perfection” Patriots’ special and the announcement that CSN will offer a post game special immediately following the Patriots-Jaguars game on Saturday is noteworthy mostly because it’s not the usual “sponsored by” special that much of CSN’s extra programming relies upon.

CSN will continue its coverage as long as the Patriots remain in the playoffs, according to this week’s release from the Burlington office. “Should the Patriots advance to the AFC Championship, Comcast will maintain the same (Wednesday through Friday) schedule and also add a “Road to Perfection” special on Saturday, January 19 and pre and post-game AFC Championship coverage on Sunday, January 20.”

It’s all hands on deck for the expanded programming and CSN is also tapping its sister outfits in Philly and Jacksonville.

• How about another of the Herald’s versatile scribes pinch-hitting on some college hoops coverage in Michael Silverman? Between Silvo and his “Rawhide Twin” Jeff Horrigan, the baseball boys are quickly becoming solid college basketball pinch-hitters.

• This will be the final week with a regular Friday posting for the foreseeable future. We’ll be (mostly) off serious Shots duty until after the Final Four. Real life work and real life projects are taking precedence for the first time in a long time. That’s a good thing for the conglomeration that is Scott’s Shots, but it might be potentially sad news for all our loyalists who turn to us regularly on Fridays. We’ll do our best to check in periodically and as merited, but you can always find us hovering near the CSTV.com men’s basketball page (and places listed below).

Thanks for your patience and support.

David Scott writes from a seaside shanty on the shores of Hull, Mass. and can be reached at shotsATbostonsportsmediaDOTcom.
His work – and weekly college hoops report card – for CSTV.com can be found at the Hang Time blog on Mondays and The Glass Sneaker throughout the week. You can also listen for the weekly Professor’s Podcast, also at CSTV.com in iTunes at The Daily Buzz.