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Lou Pickney's Online Commentary

You Say Goodbye

Sunday
June 26, 2011

"See, the plan is to erase me, just to replace me"
-Spooks "Things I've Seen"

Tonight was the final broadcast on WKRN Channel 2 here in Nashville for Christine Maddela, who is leaving the Music City and heading to Philadelphia. She has been a "Twitter friend" of mine for some time now, someone who has been an acquaintance via Twitter who I've never actually met or even spoken with before. To their credit, WKRN put together a nice package as a send-off for her at the end of tonight's 10 o'clock newscast.

It's great when it happens that way, but it doesn't always work like that. I've been on both sides of it. When I left WEHT (ABC 25) in Evansville for a producing gig at WSAZ (NewsChannel 3) in Huntington/Charleston, WV in 1999, I was given a very nice on-air send off from my friend Eric Burke, one of the station's morning show anchors, at the end of my final newscast there as a producer. On the flip side, when WTSP in Tampa let me go in February 2003 (during Lane the news director's near total producer purge of 2002-2003), not only did I not get any sort of an on-air goodbye mention, I was literally escorted from the building by Lori, the HR manager who wore way too much perfume.

I've never written about that last part before, but it has always stuck in my craw to a degree. What did they think I was going to do, start trashing equipment? To the contrary, that was my ticket out of Shawshank (for details read this), and I couldn't make it out of that building fast enough. I had two months remaining on my contract and they were paying it out, just like they did for the other producers let go before and after me. Why would I pitch a fit and/or do something to jeopardize my pseudo-severance pay?

My brother Matt has been in Las Vegas this weekend with some buddies of his from high school. He has sent me some semi-regular updates from there, and I'll cover some of the high spots of his adventure once I have a chance to fully debrief him. But one thing I can reveal is something he already posted on Facebook earlier this evening: he wagered $100 to win $260 on a WNBA game, taking the Indiana Fever +7.5 at the Minnesota Lynx parlayed with the game going over 151½ points.

Want to care about a WNBA game? Go to Las Vegas and lay your money down... if you dare.

Now at this point I could write about how poor of a decision that was, but I'm the same guy who bet $500 on the Titans to beat the Bengals in a pre-season game in 2003, so I can hardly ride a moral high horse on this one. Note: if you've never read my 2003 Las Vegas mega-column, I urge you to do so. It's probably the most popular piece that I've ever written on here.

For the record, the Fever ended up winning outright, 78-75, so Matt didn't need the points. But the game didn't hit the over until there were less than six seconds remaining, which had to be ultra high drama for Matt and his friends, many of whom also matched Matt's bet. From what he told me it was bedlam in the sports book when a seemingly unimportant free throw pushed the point total from 151 to 152 with 5.6 seconds to go in the game. Unbelieve.

My column on here earlier this month about the end of WRVU on 91.1 FM in Nashville did not go unnoticed, as I was contacted by someone on the inside who helped clarify some things for me. Some of what I was told was done so in confidence, and I'm not going to elaborate about it on here, but suffice to say that what happened with the sale of the 91.1 FM license to Nashville Public Radio was the best possible scenario. Trust me when I write that you should be glad that the other possible scenarios that almost happened didn't take place.

Soon enough, the WRVU brand will be returning to Nashville airwaves, albeit on the HD Radio side of things via 90.3 WPLN-FM-HD3. My criticisms about how iBiquity has handled promoting HD Radio will have to wait for another time, but Vanderbilt will be providing live/original programming on an HD side-channel, making them the first outlet in town to do so. And, no, I don't count 1510 WLAC simulcasting on 105.9 WNRQ-HD3 in that category.

I am worried about the WRVU call letters being snatched up by the next station east of the Mississippi (with some exceptions) to rebrand itself as "The River"; would it have really killed Nashville Public Radio to stash those calls on WHRS, their simulcast station for WPLN-FM in Cookeville? But the bottom line is that what happened is about as good as could have been hoped for, and the long-term value for Vanderbilt ($3.35 million for the license) is significant.


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