Sunday, April 5, 2009

NUMBERS GAME

Ratings have always been important to Mike and Chris. So Friday I called into Chris Russo's show. Mike Francesa's show wasn't quite doing it for me. I don't have YES, so a visual tour of Citi Field with my ears fell short. On Mad Dog Unleashed, Doggie decided to mix it up. Over the past week, he had molded Jay Cutler into a 'baby'. Any caller who defended Cutler got 'Do you want a crybaby on your team?' Chris kept on saying that he didn't want Cutler on his team. That was the inspiration for me calling in, because we all know that while Chris loves his baseball Giants and Roger Federer, he doesn't have a football team. And then he called Orlando Pace a 'good not great offensive lineman'. I'm no connoisseur of Left Tackles but I thought Pace to be at least somewhere in between those two adjectives. So I had the crybaby scenario, Orlando Pace's honor and FTLT had suggested that we get a plug in for the blog. Fair enough.

This post is actually not about retelling the story of my call. You can read about that somewhat accurately in the comments of the previous post(speaking of defending honor. Brian did an admirable job for the gman). This is more about how far the mighty have fallen. And that is evident through this call.

I got through on Russo's line within 4 rings. After that, I was on the air in 20 minutes. I don't think that will happen on the Fan. More importantly, is what happened after my Mike and the Mad Blog plug on the air. Granted, I botched the delivery slightly, but it was enough for anyone curious to find this blog.

We use this site called StatCounter which monitors the numbers of people that visit the site. After FTLT got his plug on with Russo on the FAN last summer, the traffic on our site spiked dramatically. We did our biggest numbers ever. How did the numbers fare after my plug on Sirius XM? A collective yawn. Fridays are usually slow and we did better than usual, but there was no spike, no dramatic increase in traffic.

Point of the story, we have heard about various claims of 'we're not in competition' and I think there is some truth to it. Purely on anecdotal(the phone call) and some statistical(Statcounter) evidence, Russo's satellite show is not in the same league as Francesa's. Obviously it's early on for Chris. But he does have the advantage of being national, to Francesa's partially national(YES is on DirecTV and the Fan streaming website). Anyway, the point of the story is that although Francesa is a ticking timebomb and his show sucks, not all is peaches and cream with the Angry Puppy. How do people see it out there? Just like Francesa is a Calhoun apologist, I'm sure the Russo faction will come to Chrissy's defense.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

What I would like to know is how exactly you plugged your site. What is the phrase or the name that you used? Then, go to googletrends and enter the same term.

Brian said...

I've called Dog a few times since he made the switch. I have never gotten a busy signal ever except for when he was doing the Marquis contest.

Back in September/October I got on the air in less than 5 minutes. The past couple of times I've been on hold at least 20 minutes so I think his audience is growing. But it still does not compare to Mike's show where you're lucky just to get past the busy signal.

Ryan T. said...

That's a ridiculous claim you're making. When you originally plugged this blog "Mike and the Mad Blog", you did it on a show called "Mike and the Mad Dog". Fans of that show, including myself easily made the connection and became familiar with this site.

So one of two things happened last week when you made your latest plug:
1) His largely NY audience (again including myself) already has heard of this site and didn't need to rush over to check what it was all about
2) The remainder of his national audience has no connection to the play on words used in the blog name you plugged. Mad Dog's name technically isn't even in the name of the blog! So they probably just thought you were plugging something completely unrelated.

As far as the calls, I'm sure his audience isn't what it was on the Fan. But one of the benefits of Sirius is you can record the show and listen on your own time. Its hard to call into a show when you're not listening to it live.

His show is still far better than the alternatives at that time slot. By the way, kudos on getting a Russo post on here. Been waiting months for that to happen. Tired of all the Mike bashing... we all get it, he stinks!

Anonymous said...

GMan...During their time together I always preferred Dog. Saturday AM was my favorite show of the week. Now that I have to go out of my way to hear him, however, it's not that important to me. In fact, I have listened to exactly no minutes of his show since its inception. We have the luxury of 2 24 hour sports stations in addition to 770, 710, 880 etc. I like the ease and the comfort of my old stand-bys. To me, it's not a price issue, it's an "ease" issue. I doubt I am alone in this regard.

jason said...

ryan t makes some good points.