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ANNOYING PEOPLE
Someone once said to me that no matter how nice you are, half the people who know you won't like you.I'm thinking that maybe that's the average--like for every Joel Daly who's liked by maybe 95% of people he meets, there's a Jay Mariotti, liked by at most 5% of people who meet him maximum. Anyway. Over the past few weeks, I've heard about a couple of personalities that some people find quite annoying. One is Channel 9 reporter Juan Carlos Fanjul. One reader asks: "Who the hell is this Juan Maria Fahoohoo guy?" Recently, Juan Carlos has been doing some fill-in anchoring at Channel 9 (insert usual disclosure here: I work for Channel 9's corporate parent, Tribune Broadcasting) and some readers seem to be venomously turned off by him. Yow. I mean REALLY turned off. I can understand being annoyed by a TV News personality but I'm a bit shocked at the polarized comments I've gotten. So, Who is Juan Carlos Fanjul? He's been at Channel 9 since August 2002, came from flash & trash WSVN Miami and way before that began his career in Rock Island, Illinois. He's a Latino with Cuban and Nicaraguan heritage was born in South Africa and lived in South America for several years. He earned his bachelor's degree from Boston College, where he double-majored in political science and communication. Okay, so you look at his background and a few things stick out:
The only problem I see is that he's new and still a bit raw for Chicago. He also seems a bit over-anxious and energetic at the anchor desk too often reading upbeat for downbeat stories. It takes a LOOOONG time for Chicagoans to accept new journalists, so give him some more time and it'll work itself out. Oh, and before you accuse me of being a company guy here, note that I felt the same way for former-Channel 2 anchor/reporter Cynthia Santana--even after she mispronounced Kup's name several times on the air. Another person some people tell me is increasingly annoying is Chip Caray. Overshadowed in annoyingness by Joe Carter the past couple years, I'm hearing some people are just tired of Skip's son. No one can give me any examples of things that bug them except for his current home run call. All together now: "Swing-and-a-drive! Belted! Deep to Left Field!..." yeah, Chip seems to have fallen back on some clichés but at least it's an improvement from the home run calls he made before he joined the Cubs broadcasting team, which included the pseudo-word "Ka-pie-a!". Damn, that still makes me cringe. At least Chip's not screaming about putting it on the board--YES!!!! Now THAT gets annoying after a while. I think maybe the Cubs should do a contest to help Chip find a new home run call. I have two entries: "There's a fly ball to deep left field...way back there...DINGER ACTION! Home Run Sammy Sosa!" My other is: "There's a fly ball to deep left field! The park might not hold it! It's gone! His jersey says Sosa but you can call him JACK!" I'm not finding Chip to be annoying, though he's definitely giving his opinion a lot more than he did before Steve Stone left him a few years ago. Maybe that's the annoying part to some people. Nah, who would find someone's opinion annoying??? (* No it didn't, I made that up) |
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HELP THE CHICAGO RED FACE
Do you enjoy the CME's sister publication, the Chicago Red Face? If so, we need your help. Readership has been fairly consistent in the 10 months since it debuted, and while that's nice, we are a little discouraged that we can't seem to get more than 200-300 people to check it out every week. Maybe the humor is a little over-the-top? Maybe too offensive to some (wait until you see this week...)? We don't get much feedback about the Red Face and are starting to wonder if anyone outside our friends and family care about it. We are starting to wonder if we should bother continuing the site. Should we? Unless people opt-in, I refuse to just add people to my Red Face email list for the same reason I don't do it with the CME email list. I don't really appreciate unsolicited email, and I refuse to send my emails to anyone unless they ask me. This policy is rare, for sure. I'm amazed at the unsolicited email that I get just from people who grab my email from this site. Seriously, what the hell am I going to do with a press release? I'm amazed at the knot-heads who look at this web site and think I'm going to report non-media news. Anyway, if you enjoy the Red Face, we would be very grateful if you would leave a note on the guest book there, or send me an email, and spread the word--tell your friends, family & co-workers. We need more readers! |
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ASK THE CME
No questions this week.
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