I Would Have Quiero-ed This Case on Contingency

Remember the campaign with the chihuahua jonesing for Taco Bell? A Grand Rapids agency thought their idea got ripped off and won their trial in Michigan a few years ago. Taco Bell then sued their agency in California, and it ended up on appeal there, and on Monday, Taco Bell lost, yet again.

What was a $30 million verdict, with $12 million in interest, continues to tick-tick-tick up with new interest, the final tab running ever higher. TB should bring back the 99 cent double decker taco, sell a few dozen million and settle this thing.

Great Radio Comes, But Not as Often as Radio Goes

For those Detroiters who bemoan the loss of radio programming they love, like the Fan last week, or WDET a few years ago, pause and ponder the loss of L.A.'s Indie 103, which shuttered a few weeks ago. A truly unique broadcasting voice is gone, and my friend, our own Darren Revell, is one of the voices giving witness to the life and death of a great part of Los Angeles and, thanks to the Internets, beyond.

So, fellows citizens of The D, some persepctive, please.

Non Sequitur of the Day (and Cover of the Week)

"I know just just what you are."

Hi-larious; well-played:

He Would be a Good Sportsman, but Could Gandhi Crash the Boards?

Perhaps you've heard about the Texas girls basketball team that won a game 100-0, and was hooting and hollering while doing it. Well, after thinking it was all good, and with some people agreeing, the coach's been fired after defending the victory.

The winning offending team was from Dallas Covenant, which apparently is a Christian school. Which allows me to share one of my favorite quotes, by Mahatma Gandhi:

“I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”

This Just In: Gary Bettman Continues to Suck

If you aren't lucky enough to catch Hockey Night In Canada every Saturday night, then you clearly didn't catch their coverage of last night's NHL All-Star Game in Montreal, marking le 100e anniversaire de Les Habitants . Even without any Red Wings playing (and getting suspended for it), the game itself is such a joke that I forgot to watch it, instead catching the SAG awards in the background while working. It's just that I know what a horrible hockey game it will be, and it was: an 11-11 tie ending with the league's bastardized overtime and shootout.

Thanks to the miracle of archived video on The Internets, however, we're still able to see HNIC's Ron MacLean's annual attempt to get a straight answer out of NHL commissioner Gary Bettman, which I can't figure out how to embed here, but which you can check out here. I swear, Ron must want to take a shower after talking to Bettman, especially when he gets so smarmy about a billionaire wanting to blow a quarter-billion dollars invest in an NHL franchise so he can move it to the underserved market he happens to live in.

Remember, this is the commissioner who hasn't committed to another Winter Classic, but has investigated putting it in Vegas or the Rose Bowl. Yes, the visuals of breath mist and falling snowflakes, re-connecting the game to its roots, will work so well out west.

Oy.

"Rashomon" Has Nothing to Do With Trying to Sack a Quarterback (An OT post)

A centuries-old saying is that "success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan." Except, apparently, when Monday-morning quarterbacking the demise of a much-loved Detroit radio station. So, in very Rashomon-like fashion, various players, current and former, have taken to dissecting the rise and fall of The Fan -- Detroit's first all-sports station, WDFN-AM -- in the midst of Obama's inaugural speech last Tuesday.

=> Former PD Gregg Henson, now out of the radio business but still aware of what the deal is, has long charted the station's up and downs here;

=> Nice guy former morning drive host Jamie Samuelsen weighs in here;

=> His former partner, Greg Brady, writes a great post -- definitely not in the "60 Second Blog" ethos -- here;

=> Now former-PD Rona Danzinger provides her witnessing of the carnage, and rebuts Brady, here;

Another axiom is that you should always follow the money. The loss of The Fan stemmed directly from Clear Channel's being sold, a deal that it was conceived during a bull market, and then ended up closing during the beginnings of the credit squeeze. You can chart the ever-increasing acrimony in what finally evolved into a shotgun wedding:

=> In November 2006, corporate owner Clear Channel agreed to sell to Mitt Romney's old place here and here; some of CC's past shenanigans, like gluttonous over-consolidation and the rusulting possible anti-trust violations, are mentioned in the second link:

=> Then, after all the governmental vetting, credit started to tighten about a year ago, causing one of the buyers to not have much to say in investors, resulting in apologists going into the "all is well" mode.

=> Finally, after an interminable 19-month due diligence process and lawsuits all around, the deal closed this past May, and a whole bunch of belt-tightening was on the horizon.

Now, everyone I ever met from The Fan ranged from at least cordial to downright awesome, a situation you rarely find at any broadcast outlet. Also, let us not forget that many other off-air people at Clear Channel, including friends, got the ziggy, too.

In the big picture, what Clear Channel has wrought has not been good for the industry beyond a handful of its higher-ups. Closer to home, the various takes range from entertaining to informative, and often both, and contain many of the avoidable mistakes and missed solutions which could've made the whole situation better. We forget, though, that while the soldiers on the front lines do the fighting and dying amidst the fog of war business, it stems from the directives from the generals above, playing their little game of Risk or Monopoly, but with real lives.

In the end, I think some essential truths are born out:

=> Terrestrial radio is an awesome business when you craft a product that reflects where it's broadcasting. Homoginizing stations across markets is ultimately a death wish.

=> It's apparent after the last few months, so it's no news flash, but the private sector will screw over everyone but themselves, if you let them.

=> The FCC should take begin to take a long, hard look at these licensees of the public airwaves, and if they aren't doing anything productive for a local market beyond providing syndicated national programming, those licenses should be in jeopardy, if not pulled.

As someone who adores radio and has had some ideas work in the industry, I have long held out hope that these corporate behemoths would ultimately have to divest the stations for any number of reasons, from anti-trust compliance to wanting the tax write-downs to, perhaps, ultimately suffocating from under their own weight. Then, after prices are re-set to a sane market level, local owners will once again be able to craft unique programming visions which are now being relegated to the wonderful, but limited, Internets.

Bottom line, this is yet another example of the path corporate America is now wrongly pursuing to see better days, what I call "downsizing to greatness."

Because, really, have you ever seen that happen?

And now, let us remember that Elvis Costello had this whole scenario sussed out more than 30 years ago:

Depending On Your Perspective, Obama Gave a Shout Out to Either Frank Sinatra or Peter Tosh

The president's inauguration speech, and some speechwriter critiques navel gazing:



"Pick myself up /

Dust myself off /

Start all over, again."

His source material, perhaps, the coolest amongst many choices:

Read

Pick Myself Up Lyrics

here.

One Last Breakthrough from a President Obama

On this remarkable, historic day of the Inauguration of President Obama, many have pondered and discussed the meaning of having an African-American as our president and, essentially, as (once again) the leader of the free world.

But these pundits miss a bigger, more macro story because they're blinded by the president's skin color -- while they're talking about whether people will continue to be blinded by his skin color.

The bigger, more general breakthrough is this: not since the days of the founders of our country has a president been the child of a parent who was not born on American soil. The last possibility was Mike Dukakis, and we remember how that went.

That this president's father was born in Kenya -- or for our discussion, anywhere not America -- yet sired (and abandoned) a son who has personified the American dream, shows the progress that our culture has made:

* That a child of a single mother -- notwithstanding the ravings of a lunatic -- can do great things in America;

* That anyone's son, molded from our uniquely America melting pot, can become formed into something great.

So, despite the anti-immigrant hoo-ha that tends to be aimed toward our southern border -- that means you, Lou Dobbs -- it seems that America once again lifts its lamp beside the golden door of opportunity.

Inauguration = Cleaner Blog Layout

Woo-hoo!

The Bush countdown clock is toast.

It wasn't fun while it lasted.

The Definitive Political Song: Soundtrack for the Inauguration

Regardless of partisan positions, Pete and the boys remind us to stay wary:

"Meet the new boss /

Same as the old boss."

Because:

"I know that the hypnotized never lie /

Do ya?"