Reaction was mixed over Hazel
Will the people at NESN please change the dead format of their morning show ?
Will the Marketing folks at the Red Sox please stop selling advertising on every highly visible place within Fenway ?
Let us go forth and pepper NESN headquarters with old produce. Let us storm the Green Monster from Landsdowne Street & rip the Sports Authority bill board off it’s hideous perch. This is America. I am confident that our right to set torches and march to protect what is right, is, well, somehow protected within the Bill of Rights, or the Constitution, or maybe possibly it’s just something that Bill Lee once alluded to after a few drinks.
I was watching Sox. v. Mariner’s last night and began to lament the commercial overkill at Fenway Park. The Gulf Oil logo on the wall adjacent to the Monster made me uneasy. Everywhere I looked, the Sox were busy SELLING me.
The Hartford Courant’s Dom Amore (damore@courant.com) asks readers what they would do if they were Commissioner For a Day. I know what I would do as NESN CEO For a Day — I’d get rid of the endless guitar riffs NESN plays under every highlight video to create excitement. NESN, like the Sox, is busy SELLING, SELLING, SELLING me.
Perky Hazel Mae, energetic and gleeful, superficially informs me every morning on NESN. She recaps what I already know about the prior game, and shows me the clips. Almost never does she enhance what I got from watching the game or reading about it on boston.com or courant.com. The format is stale.
Yet, my affection for the Sox is chronic and I cannot look away.
Now we have learned that Hazel Mae is leaving NESN because NESN (and thus, the Sox) will not increase her compensation as she wishes. Bon Voyage, Hazel. Most of the Soxaholics I know are disturbed about your departure. Their bond with you was made in the 2004 Impossible Comeback Year. And, guys being guys, they also think you are “the complete package”. Although I wish you well I am less attached to you than they are. One Happy Talking Sports Babe with Kickin Curves is easily replaced by another. Unless they bring something unique to the table. Imagine the looks and composure of Heidi Watney combined with the eloquent perspective of Peter Gammons. The NESN folks would open the vault for that mythical creature, I tell you.
Or is such a person a myth ? Is there a Heidi Gammons out there ? I’ll bet there are a few. BUT I DON’T EXPECT NESN AND THE SOX TO SEEK HER.
To the Sox and NESN I say, please stop selling me so hard. I’m already in the fold. Time to think about increasing program content quality — and limiting the signage within Fenway.
-Karl Cicitto 6-7-08
At home at fenway 