wow, unclench.
1. I just added the H, it happened to be in the part I bolded because that sentence was the one that I wanted to respond.
2. YOU said it yourself "No they are not going to be talked about more than the Titans. Neither do the Penguins in PittsburgH over the Steelers." I said that you were mostly right, the Steelers will always be the bigger story, except that the Penguins DO get good coverage on gamedays and especially in the playoffs WITH or sometimes OVER the Steelers. I didn't say we needed to have 24/7 Preds coverage either. I merely pointed out that we don't get even a tenth of the gameday coverage that the Pens get. Would it not be nice to be able to listen to the afternoon shows on gamedays and maybe get a little bit of lockerroom sound from the Preds or maybe a soundbite from the coach or maybe a clue who is starting in goal that night?
3. And yes a lack of media coverage does have something to do with whether this is a crap hockey market or not. Our city is beautiful, it's the "It City", and it is growing day by day. But hockey market wise, it's not what it could be and that is partly to do with the lack of coverage in the media. You talk about building the game in the area. Well guess what, the media is part of that. The Predators have to do their part and for the most part they do an OK job. They are getting the Predator brand out there in more and more places everyday, although they aren't getting the Predators players out there more than just the community service jobs (when was the last time we saw a Predator do a commercial or read an ad on the radio). But they need the media, too. You're right, the size of the media doesn't matter one bit. It's the mindset of the media in this town. The media in this market doesn't give a crap about the Preds until it is convenient for them. They cover the Titans from July to January. Only after football season is over do they begin any real coverage of the Predators. The local sports on the news will go days without a single Preds story but will run the same Titans/UT/Vandy/Lipscomb/Belmont story for 2 days. We get little more than a cursory game wrap up in the paper. Willy Daunic is allowed just a brief update on the Preds during their afternoon show. The Sunday night sports shows give maybe a total of 3 minutes to the Predators. That's 3 minutes combined, from all 3 stations, if you're lucky, and they are jammed in with whatever other sports are going at that time. How hard would it be to have a wrap up of the week that was of the Preds and their upcoming week's schedule? Every channel has 2-3 sports anchors, why can't one go to the Preds practice and one go to the Titans practice and have a story on each team on the news? Every radio crew has 2-3 hosts, same question for those that aren't on the air at the time of teams practices. Whether people want to admit it or not, the media has an effect on the people in this town. For some people, if it's not talked about in the media, they don't know it's happening. They don't even look at the Predators until after football season. Like I said, the Predators have to do their part to help grow the game, but until the media here get out of the one or the other mindset and realize that it is in fact physically possible to cover and report on 2 pro teams at once, the Predators and this market will never grow the way they really could. This market is definitely not crap, but it's not great either.