It's Thursday night on the Hermosa Beach Pier, and Fat Face Fenner's Fishack is packed with Red Sox fans.
And in walks . . . Ed Goren?
“Everybody there wears Red Sox hats and jerseys and they look at me like I just arrived from Mars,” the Fox Sports president said yesterday, a few hours before heading to the haunt.
Close. Goren's from Brooklyn.
“I've had people come up to me there and say, 'Where are you from?' ” Goren said. “I say, 'New York,' and they say, 'Then what are you doing here?' ”
To hear the chatter on TV and read newspapers and blogs, nothing short of the survival of the Fox Television Network depends on the Red Sox overcoming the Tampa Bay Rays and advancing to the World Series. So of course Goren would be at a Red Sox bar.
Gotta support the team, right?
“I have friends on the Red Sox,” he said.
And that's it? Pretty much, Goren said.
Of course Fox would have preferred a Dodgers-Red Sox matchup, or even Phillies-Red Sox, which, incredibly, remains a possibility after last night's Game 5 miracle. But Fox paid its money to Major League Baseball and the rest is out of its hands.
“That's why you do a seven-year deal,” Goren said. Fox “came out ahead” last year, even with a four-game World Series, he said, and “if we give some of it back this year,” that's how it goes.
“It's a 'now' business and we have to respond to 'now' questions, and that's fine,” Goren said. “But we can't lose the perspective of a seven-year package.”
The question I had – and which Goren really couldn't answer – is why people won't watch a Phillies-Rays World Series, if it comes to that. As a baseball fan, I would look forward to a highly entertaining series between two exciting teams. So it's not two “glamour teams?” Who cares?
Tampa Bay is a fun team to watch and a great underdog story, the kind fans seem to love. Philadelphia has the last two MVPs in the NL, plus arguably the game's best second baseman, one of its best young pitchers and a perfect closer. So why wouldn't fans watch?
“I don't understand that,” Goren said. “Well, I understand it on a certain level. But are you a baseball fan? If you're a baseball fan, how can you not watch the World Series? If you're not watching the World Series, you're not a baseball fan. There are people who watch the Super Bowl and their teams aren't in it, because they're football fans.”
The Super Bowl also is only one game and it's become a de facto national holiday. But I know what Goren's saying.
“They're wonderful stories,” he said of the Phillies and Rays.
The funny thing is that I always hear from fans who say they're tired of the Yankees and Red Sox always being on national TV. But when the networks put other teams on, fewer people watch. So, if Tampa Bay doesn't fall apart at home this weekend, this could be your chance America: Show Fox (and ESPN and TBS) that you do care about other teams. If you don't, I don't want to hear from you next spring.
Flipping channels
The local Nielsen rating for Chargers-Pats last Sunday on NBC was 31.3, the highest for a Chargers regular-season game since the Christmas Eve (day) game against Seattle in 2006 (32.3).
Greg Gumbel and
Dan Dierdorf call Sunday's 10 a.m. game at Buffalo on CBS.
For the first time in several years, John Madden will take a night off while the rest of his “team” works. Madden is skipping NBC's Sunday night Bucs-Seahawks snoozer in Tampa, Fla., which would have forced him to make three cross-country bus trip in two weeks. He was in Jacksonville, Fla., on Oct. 5 and in San Diego last week, and he would have then returned to his Northern California home next week (when NBC doesn't have a game). Cris Collinsworth will fill in Sunday.
Jeff Van Gundy has agreed to a new deal as co-lead NBA game analyst for ESPN/ABC, while Magic Johnson and Avery Johnson have been added as studio analysts.
The PBA Tour kicks off its 50th anniversary season with, of all things, a celebrity event hosted by Hornets guard Chris Paul and including NBA players LeBron James and Dwyane Wade. It's on at 10 a.m. Sunday on ESPN.
XTRA Sports 1360 finally appeared in a quarterly Arbitron ratings book – barely. The station earned a 0.4 percent share of the local radio audience in the Summer ratings period, the lowest among the 35 stations listed (including some based in Los Angeles). Meanwhile, XX Sports Radio recorded a 1.7 average share, down significantly from a 2.7 share last summer. Thanks, Padres.
Not a good week anyway for XTRA 1360. First, Craig Elsten, whose solo midmorning show is the most reasonable and thoughtful on the station, was on vacation for three days. Then, midday host Chris Ello “teased” the death of ex-Charger Chris Mims twice during Wednesday's show, saying only that a player from the Chargers' Super Bowl team had died. Come on, it's not a trade; it's someone's life. What if one of the players from that team had a relative listening? Did they deserve that?
Jay Posner: (619) 293-1834; jay.posner@uniontrib.com
