Sports on the Air: Bills fans continue to tune out
Published: November 27, 2009, 10:50 pm
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Leftovers after Thanksgiving:
• Many Bills fans may have gotten what they wanted when coach Dick Jauron was fired, but it didn't translate to big viewership in the first game in the post-Jauron era.
The Bills' 18-15 loss to Jacksonville had a 26.9 rating on WIVB-TV, making it the season's lowest-rated Bills game. The previous low was a 27.3 for a loss to Tennessee after the bye week.
Fans seemed to disappear after the home loss to Houston on Nov. 1, which had a 32.3 rating.
Despite the viewer decline, the Bills-Jaguars game drew 26.9 percent of area households and was by far the week's highest-rated television program here.
By the way, Steve Tasker is the analyst alongside Gus Johnson for Sunday's home game against Miami.
• Wonder who Jim Kelly voted for when NBC's Andrea Kremer asked Hall of Fame quarterbacks if they would pick New England's Tom Brady or the Colts' Peyton Manning to quarterback their team? Manning won, 13.5 votes to 2.5., with four abstentions. Joe Montana split his vote, saying he would start Brady in the first half and Manning in the second. Since games are won in the second half, isn't that saying he would take Manning?
Kremer wrote that Kelly was going to split his vote, too, but "when pressed" he chose Manning "by the slimmest of margins."
During the pregame show two weeks ago, Manning talked about great quarterbacks who have not won a Super Bowl: "I still defend [Dan] Marino. I still defend [Fran] Tarkenton. I still defend Jim Kelly. All I know is what great quarterbacks they were."
• Here is former San Francisco 49ers coach Steve Mariucci's take on Miami's deactivation of linebacker Joey Porter for the Tampa Bay game two weeks ago. "I had to suspend Terrell Owens one week, and then, all of a sudden, for the next three years we just butted heads."
• Ray Romano, who played his share of fictional golf on "Everybody Loves Raymond," will try to improve his game on The Golf Channel's "The Haney Project." Let's hope he's funnier than Charles Barkley.
• Sorry to hear that former Channel 2 sports reporter Josh Mora will be losing his job at Comcast in Chicago. A newspaper columnist in the Windy City speculated that the highly respected Mora is being let go because he was too honest in covering the Chicago Blackhawks. Wrote Carol Slezak: "Given that the Hawks own a stake in Comcast, well, you can connect the dots. If true, that would be shameful. Not only because Mora merely was doing his job but because it would mean Comcast had allowed the Hawks to interfere with its news operation."
• Everybody seemed to have an opinion last week about whether former Denver coach Mike Shanahan really would be interested in the Bills job. But at least CBS' Shannon Sharpe talked with his ex-coach and confirmed on Sunday that he was going to interview with the Bills, which he did. Added Sharpe: "Having played for Mike Shanahan for seven years, if there is not a total commitment from the organization to win Super Bowls — it is not about winning division titles or beating a particular team in that division — if it is not about winning Super Bowls from players' standpoints and the coaches around them standpoint, you are wasting your time with Mike Shanahan because that is the only thing that matters to him — winning championships."
To which Sharpe's CBS teammate, Boomer Esiason, added: "He's not going to Buffalo."
• In another installment of "they actually get paid to say these things," here's what CBS' Marino said about Cleveland coach Eric Mangini before Brady Quinn threw four touchdown passes in a 38-37 loss to Detroit. "If you are going to make changes, you don't want to lose your locker room. He needs to change the quarterback position. In my opinion, Derek Anderson gives them a much better chance of winning than Brady Quinn. If you are Eric Mangini, you want to win them back as a locker room, you have to have Derek Anderson."
• Things are looking up for St. Bonaventure men's basketball, but the Bonnies' games aren't on a Buffalo radio station this year after they were dropped by 1300 AM. To get Bona broadcasts away from Olean, you have to go to the Web.
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