Tag: Chuck Woolery

Who Came Here In 2004

Last year, on December 31, I posted a little summary of what happened on this website in the previous year. I just looked back and was amazed how things have changed. The number of people and unattended, researching, web crawling computers, has increased greatly.

The content hasn’t changed. It’s the same drivel I’ve posted here since day one. This blog is nothing but inconsequential, random, musings about what’s important to me. That’s why whenever anyone else buys into reading it, I am both astonished and flattered.

In 2003&#185 approximately 17,000 separate viewers came calling to this site. Collectively you visited 30,000 times, downloading 872,000 files. My page counter now sits just north of 60,000.

That was then, this is now. The page counter has moved from 60,000 to 355,554. This year you visited 256,409 times downloading about 5,000,000 files (each image within the blog, plus other insertions in a single page, counts as a file). My server, located in Chicago and maintained by hostforweb.com has spit out 51.7 gb of data.

Though there was a huge spike after I wrote about Ashlee Simpson’s Saturday Night Live debacle a day before it hit the bigger websites, a smoothed traffic line shows my audience steadily building. I am averaging over 1,000 visits a day.

There are three ways I look at my traffic and all tell slightly different stories. On each web page is a counter which increments once any time someone reads a page. I don’t think it is triggered by web crawlers that sites like Google and Yahoo use, though I can’t be sure. There is also a control panel counter I can see in the web site’s “back office.” Finally there’s the counter from the company that I allow to place ads on the site.

They’re always different. Always.

Speaking of ads, since I added them as an unobtrusive experiment, they have paid for my web hosting. The aggregate total in $198.44, of which I’ve already received about $144. This site makes on average 89&#162 per day. As I write this, I have made 7&#162 today. Some days are better than others.

Before you poo poo that number, multiply it by 365. I was going to publish a blog anyway, why not put these few ads off in a corner?

The number one search term was “John Mayer,” though that’s misleading. Ashlee Simpson probably drew more traffic, but there were multiple search terms (and spellings) used. As with last year, I’m surprised that traffic has come here after searching for things like, “hot water pipe is frozen south korea” or “chuck woolery wives&#178” or the always popular “carrot top shirtless&#179.”

Google also sent a lot of traffic my way because of an entry I had which debunked a popular picture of a tanker sailing into a hurricane. If you search Google for “hurricane photo” my enticing picture is on the bottom right. This one link was clicked 55,599 times by Google’s users.

I have tried to write something every day. Sometimes that meant scraping the bottom of the barrel. My apologies. Other times my life was centered around things I couldn’t or wouldn’t write about publicly. Those days were the most difficult for blog writing.

There are now over 900 individual entries in this blog. There are also thousands of photos in my photo gallery. If you ask Google what they have archived on this site, the response is 11,400 pages!

Thanks for stopping by. Thanks for reading. Thanks for commenting and sending grammatical and spelling corrections. It’s all really appreciated.

My daughter says whenever I put something in a text box, that’s an immediate sign that’s it’s really boring.

Happy New Year Steffie

And Happy New Year to you too.

&#185 – This blog began in early July 2003, so last year’s numbers represent approximately half a year.

&#178 – After Jo Anne Pflug I am lost.

&#179 – This particular term was searched for 399 times. Some people need to get a life.

Quizzzzzzz-master

I was speaking to someone tonight about game show hosts. I’ll let you in on a poorly kept secret – I’ve always wanted to be a game show host.

I remember the classic Mary Tyler Moore Show episode when Ted is asked to host a game show. Lou, trying to stop him from making the move says, “Ted… is that what you want to be… a quizzzzzz-master?” The “z” in quiz prolonged, to make the point.

That night I yelled at my TV – “YES! I do.”

I’m not sure when or why the job started to appeal to me. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that as host you always knew the answer to questions, even when the contestants didn’t. Maybe it’s because, as a kid growing up in New York City, most of my local TV heroes also hosted game shows.

Back, sometime in the early sixties, I actually went to a live broadcast at 30 Rock. I don’t remember the show, or who the host was. I remember Wayne Howell, the announcer.

Wayne warmed up the audience. Considering my age at the time, it was probably my first experience seeing standup. He was very funny. The jokes were very corny. There is one joke Wayne did that day that I have stolen as my own.

The floor director counted down the time to air, saying “one minute,” “30 seconds,” and finally “10 seconds to go.” At which time without missing a beat, Wayne Howell said, “If you have to.”

The audience screamed, and we were on our way. Forty years later that cheap, little joke still has significance to me. He pulled it off so well.

There have been some excellent hosts. Looking back at the old tapes on Game Show Network, I can see why I loved Match Game’s Gene Rayburn. He was so fast on his feet and always listening, making him topically funny.

Even when he used a contestant’s flub as the butt of his joke, he never came off as anything but nice. It’s easy to make a joke at someone else’s expense and look mean. He was masterful in avoiding that trap.

Bill Cullen was another great host, but in a different way. He was more of a bright everyman. I don’t remember him throwing one liners, but as with Rayburn, he was always listening and responding.

The most important on-air quality for a host to possess is his/her ability to make the audience believe he’s rooting for the contestant. Watch Pat Sajack spin the wheel in the final round – always finding big money. It’s no accident. I think viewers sense Pat is consciously doing that, and subconsciously they like it and him.

Bert Convey was that way too. Though he did a number of shows, I think his best work was on Tattletales. Tattletales was a show where celebrity husbands and their (now divorced or deceased) wives would be quizzed on what they knew about each other. It was similar to, but less low brow, smarmy or sexual than the Newlywed Game. Convery was everyone’s friend, always helping.

I’d like to throw Chuck Barris into this mix for his work on the Gong Show, but I suspect I was watching one very stoned individual who would be incapable to duplicating his performance while straight. I really don’t know that, but it’s my assumption.

And there’s Chuck Woolery, Allen Ludden, Bob Barker, Tom Bergeron, Ken Ober, Regis, and a host of others who’d be offended if they ever came across this site and saw I left out their name. That’s life – get over it.

Without game shows I wouldn’t know about the Michael C. Fina Company or Spiegel – Chicago 60601 or that it was McCormick in the east and Schilling in the west (or was it the other way around) or remember Kathy Lee Gifford as Kathy Lee Johnson, when she was adorable and sang 5 seconds at a time on Name That Tune..

As is often the case in the performing arts, it’s not just the game ,or just the host, but a plethora of interlocking imponderables that make for a success or failure. Chuck Woolery never had the success with Wheel that Pat Sajack does. A number of different hosts tried doing syndicated, nighttime versions of the Price is Right – without success.

I’ve seen Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, from Singapore, hosted by The Flying Dutchman (a morning disk jockey there). Same set, same music, same game. It needed Regis.

Who knows if I’ll ever get the chance? I’d move heaven and Earth. It’s a crap shoot, I suppose. Whether I’m talented or not, being the weatherman in New Haven is probably not a huge selling point. Though I’m immature for my age, it might be said that I’m too old.

I hope I’d be good at it. It would be fun to find out. I think I already know how to play the game.