Cleveland Sports Forum

loufla wrote:TFISC- Please send someone in your family to Progressive Field!

Ladies and Gentlemen, we have a winner.

IronPigs to debut 'urinal gaming'

Updated: March 26, 2013, 3:58 PM ET

Associated Press


Minor League Park To Have Urinal Gaming


ALLENTOWN, Pa. -- Talk about streaming media: The Philadelphia Phillies' top minor league affiliate is set to debut what it calls a "urinal gaming system" at its ballpark in Allentown.

The Lehigh Valley IronPigs tapped a British company to install the system in men's restrooms at Coca-Cola Park.

It consists of a video display mounted above each urinal. When a fan approaches, the video console will sense his presence and switch into gaming mode. The guy aims left or right to control the play on the screen.

The team said Tuesday that Coca-Cola Park will be the first sports venue in the world to feature the gaming system. It'll be ready by opening day next week.

IronPigs general manager Kurt Landes says he didn't want to flush away a golden opportunity to entertain fans. He says the games are -- wait for it -- "sure to make a huge splash."


Copyright 2013 by The Associated Press

Darkstar wrote:

loufla wrote:TFISC- Please send someone in your family to Progressive Field!

Ladies and Gentlemen, we have a winner.

I personally have been to the stadium now known as "Progressive Field." Albeit only three games. It was "The Jake" in those days.

I was in personal and up close attendance as we went 2-1 in my attendance and we booted The Yankees from the playoff picture in 1997.

The NY Fans were really miffed about that.


I'm going to the gym at present 4 to 5 days a week and wear San Francisco Giants garb. I used to live in the Bay Area, of course. San Francisco had the same legacy of losing for five decades before two World Series Championships, while The Cleveland Indians continue to wander in the desert looking for a World Series Championship for way longer than San Francisco fans waited.

No way would a San Francisco team still have a useless Mark Shapiro around after his two plus decades of non positive contribution.

Donald Trump would not have even cast Mark Shapiro or Chris Antonetti as someone he might fire, as they have no credentials or worth. They are not believable baseball organizational guys.

Again, Dolan is dumber than he was once purportedly cheap.

Heck, I think we could have canned Shapiro and and kept Ezequiel Carrera. Technically no, but it should have been an allowed move.

We ended up catching the end of yet another rendition of "Midnight in Paris" on one of the Encore channels.

Next up was a movie I found captivating though I did not know the title as it began.

Now, I do.

It's "happythankyoumoreplease."


It's a recent cerebral work that makes me feel a bit better about our future.

One of the best parts is when one of the guys has a prescient moment noting that many realize while going through life they were "an asshole, five years ago."

Perhaps some here should shorten the time frame, and just add "forever" to make the phrase personally appropriate.

When do you plan on doing that ?

Plain Dealer to remain daily, but 7-day home-delivery will end


April 04, 2013 at 4:50 PM, updated April 04, 2013 at 8:07 PM



CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Ohio's largest newspaper will seek to compete in the digital age as a daily, published seven days a week, but subscribers no longer will enjoy seven-day home delivery.

In a break from longstanding tradition, The Plain Dealer will be delivered to homes only three days a week beginning later this summer.

The long-awaited changes, announced to employees Thursday, will coincide with the emergence of a new company, the Northeast Ohio Media Group, which will partner with The Plain Dealer Publishing Co. to produce news and information in both print and electronic formats.

The launch of the new company and the new delivery schedule will occur later this summer. The company has said that The Plain Dealer will be home-delivered on Sunday and on two days yet to be named.

Newsroom leaders said the industry is changing rapidly, as readers and advertisers migrate to online news sources, and The Plain Dealer must adapt to survive.

"We'll still have the largest news-gathering organization in the region," Plain Dealer Editor Debra Adams Simmons told newsroom staff. "I think we're still positioned to do quality work. I think we're in a good place."

A new business model is designed to leverage the newspaper's resources in Northeast Ohio and to put more focus on digital products, according to company officials.

The Plain Dealer is owned by New York-based Advance Publications, which owns two other separate news organizations in the region: cleveland.com and The Sun News.

According to plans, the weekly Sun newspapers will continue to publish each Thursday and be home-delivered in their respective communities. But the chain will become part of the new digitally focused media company, the Northeast Ohio Media Group, which will also oversee the operations of cleveland.com. as well as all ad sales and marketing for The Plain Dealer.

Andrea Hogben, currently the senior vice president of sales and marketing at The Plain Dealer, will serve as president of the new company.

The Northeast Ohio Media Group, according to the plan, will work in concert with The Plain Dealer to provide content for all print and digital platforms, which includes the daily paper, cleveland.com and the Sun News.

"The whole idea is to build a sustainable business model for the long term," Hogben said. "The alignment of our three very strong brands is incredibly powerful, and will give us the best opportunity to accelerate digital revenue growth, audience growth and engagement on all platforms.

"Ultimately, that will support our core commitment to quality journalism which is absolutely essential to what we do every day," she said.

The Plain Dealer Publishing Co. will continue to publish The Plain Dealer from editorial offices at East 18th Street and Superior Avenue in downtown Cleveland and from the printing plant off I-480 in Brooklyn. It will be led by a general manager, Virginia Wang, who is currently senior vice president and chief financial officer of The Plain Dealer.

Meanwhile, Terrance C.Z. Egger, Plain Dealer president, publisher and CEO, will become chairman of The Plain Dealer Publishing Co. before retiring at the end of the year.

Many newsroom staff, while lamenting the end of a home-delivery era, expressed relief the changes were not more dramatic. Advance, a privately held company run by the heirs of S.I. Newhouse, has been drastically curtailing the print schedules at many of its newspapers across the land.

Egger said he and other Plain Dealer executives, who were part of an Advance task force planning the restructuring, recommended a seven-day-a-week paper to Advance executives.

"We think that's a must in this marketplace, and we were listened to on this point," Egger told the newsroom.

Leaders of the Newspaper Guild, which represents reporters, photographers, artists and other newsroom staff, think they also helped to mitigate losses to the print tradition. The Guild had launched a Save The Plain Dealer campaign that alerted area residents to the coming changes and asked them to urge Advance to continue to support quality journalism in Cleveland.

"I think we should take some solace that our voices were listened to," said John Mangels, a reporter for The Plain Dealer and a campaign leader.

Mangels said the campaign will continue, as there are more and grimmer changes to come. The Plain Dealer still plans to lay off about one-third of the newsroom staff. Those layoffs, scheduled for May, will now be delayed until later this summer, Simmons told the staff.

"That can't help but have a negative effect on news coverage," Mangels said.

Cutbacks, layoffs and reductions in print schedules have become common in the newspaper industry. Advertising revenues have been falling steadily and substantially year to year, robbing newspapers of their primary revenue source.

Online readership and advertising, while not as lucrative as print, has at least been growing. Most newspaper companies are investing in those areas and The Plain Dealer and its new affiliate plans to join them assertively, Egger said.

"We have to make sure our eye is on where the puck is going," he told the staff.

As part of the changes, readers can expect an enhanced "E Edition" of The Plain Dealer, an electronic version that replicates the daily paper in digital format. Through it, readers who lose daily home delivery can at least access the paper in a familiar format.

The "E Edition" will be given to three-day home delivery subscribers and will be available for purchase by anyone else. This electronic version is different from cleveland.com, the website that will remain available to anyone with Internet access at no charge.

"These are major changes," Wang acknowledged. "It's all for meeting the needs of readers. The readers have more ways of getting information. I think this is our chance to make it right."

I don't understand why they would publish every day, but only deliver to homes on 3 of them! I would think that a lot fewer people will go to the bother of going to a store to buy a newspaper, when they can go online, watch TV, or listen to the radio.

J.R. wrote:I don't understand why they would publish every day, but only deliver to homes on 3 of them! I would think that a lot fewer people will go to the bother of going to a store to buy a newspaper, when they can go online, watch TV, or listen to the radio.

Advertising pays for the paper. If the sales people can sell the online version ads, the model might work.

When I was 11, 12 and 13 I might have thought differently as I delivered the morning Cleveland Plain Dealer on my fat tire Schwinn bicycle with a basket on the front to my average of 65 customers in the northern suburban Akron area with a promise of a paper on the door step by 7AM, through snow and ice.

My afternoon route of the Akron Beacon Journal was usually about 127 customers, with a promise of 6:30PM delivery, through snow and ice.

It was easy to stay lean and in shape in those days.

Newspapers in their late heyday raped advertisers for money, and they have been paying the price for well over a decade as advertisers were happy to flee to other venues.

Tribe Fan in SC/Cali wrote:

J.R. wrote:I don't understand why they would publish every day, but only deliver to homes on 3 of them! I would think that a lot fewer people will go to the bother of going to a store to buy a newspaper, when they can go online, watch TV, or listen to the radio.

Advertising pays for the paper. If the sales people can sell the online version ads, the model might work.

I have 10+ years experience in digital media/publishing. Online ad rates are a mere pittance when compared to their cousins in print. Even when you do fancy "online-only" stuff like video ads, re-marketing, and enhanced analytics - the printed ad still fetches top-dollar. And it's not even close.

So, while publications are seeing reduced revenue streams as their audience moves more and more digital, the cost of news creation has not reduced considerably.

Such is the problem, I think, with the breakup of all monopolies. And newspapers/magazines certainly constituted, at one time, monopolies - be it geographic in nature, or subject-oriented.

'Mickey Mouse Club' star Annette Funicello dies at 70


By Dennis McLellan
April 8, 2013, 10:11 a.m.


Annette Funicello, the dark-haired darling of TV's “The Mickey Mouse Club” in the 1950s who further cemented her status as a pop-culture icon in the '60s by teaming with Frankie Avalon in a popular series of “beach” movies, died Monday. She was 70.

Funicello, who was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1987 and became a spokeswoman for treatment of the chronic, often-debilitating disease of the central nervous system, died at Mercy Southwest Hospital in Bakersfield, Walt Disney Co. spokesman Howard Green said.

Funicello and her husband, Glen Holt, had moved from the Los Angeles area after a 2011 fire gutted their home in Encino.

Bob Iger, Disney’s chairman and chief executive, said: “Annette was and always will be a cherished member of the Disney family, synonymous with the word 'Mousketeer,' and a true Disney legend. She will forever hold a place in our hearts as one of Walt Disney’s brightest stars, delighting an entire generation of baby boomers with her jubilant personality and endless talent. Annette was well known for being as beautiful inside as she was on the outside, and she faced her physical challenges with dignity, bravery and grace. All of us at Disney join with family, friends, and fans around the world in celebrating her extraordinary life.”

Funicello was a 12-year-old dance-school student when Walt Disney saw her performing the lead role in “Swan Lake” at her dance-school's year-end recital at the Starlight Bowl in Burbank in the spring of 1955.

She joined a group of other talented young performers hired to become Mousketeers on “The Mickey Mouse Club,” the children's variety show that debuted on ABC in October 1955 and quickly became a daily late-afternoon ritual for millions of young Americans.


Like her fellow female Mousketeers, Funicello wore a mouse-eared beanie, a blue pleated skirt, and a white, short-sleeved turtleneck sweater with her name emblazoned in block letters across her chest.

But there was something special about the Mouseketeer with the curly black hair that unexpectedly turned her into the ensemble cast's biggest star.

Funicello made her acting debut on “The Mickey Mouse Club” serial “Adventure in Dairyland.” She also appeared in two of the popular “Spin and Marty” serials about a Western dude ranch for boys, with Tim Considine and David Stollery in the title roles. And in 1958, Disney showcased his prized Mousketeer in her own “Annette” serial.

Mr. Disney, as Funicello always called her boss, also licensed Annette lunch boxes, Colorforms dolls, coloring books, comic books and even mystery novels featuring her in fictionalized adventures.


After “The Mickey Mouse Club” ended production in 1958 and wet into reruns, the 15-year-old Funicello was the only Mouseketeer to remain under exclusive contract to the Disney studio.

She made her feature-film debut in “The Shaggy Dog,” a 1959 comedy starring Fred MacMurray. It was the first of four Disney feature films she appeared in over the next six years, including “Babes in Toyland,” “The Misadventures of Merlin Jones” and “The Monkey's Uncle.”

Funicello received a big career boost when Disney agreed to loan her out to American International Pictures to make “Beach Party,” the song-filled, low-budget 1963 comedy in which she was first teamed on the big screen with Avalon.

In the wake of the success of “Beach Party,” Funicello and Avalon co-starred in “Muscle Beach Party,” “Bikini Beach,” and “Beach Blanket Bingo.”

A complete obituary will follow at http://latimes.com/obits.

I have 10+ years experience in digital media/publishing. Online ad rates are a mere pittance when compared to their cousins in print. Even when you do fancy "online-only" stuff like video ads, re-marketing, and enhanced analytics - the printed ad still fetches top-dollar. And it's not even close.


The printed ads are doing best in very local local "grin and shake" newspapers, I believe. I'm not in the business, but it's a guess.


Oh wait......gotta go....

Hanson is on Leno.

I bet they never have performed near Larry Flynt's club in San Francisco...

J.R. wrote:'Mickey Mouse Club' star Annette Funicello dies at 70


By Dennis McLellan
April 8, 2013, 10:11 a.m.

I remember people having remembrances of Annette when I was about age 12, which might confirm the old adage that "old" is 10 years older than one is.

Tribe Fan in SC/Cali wrote:
Hanson is on Leno.

I bet they never have performed near Larry Flynt's club in San Francisco...

Of that, I think you are guaranteed. Last check - Applejack/Blues Power still playing at the Saloon on Sundays.

Happy Birthday, TAMPA STEVE!

JR--

Were you able to hook up with Steve this spring?