Posted by chicagomedia.org on October 30, 2009 at 17:13:26:
October 30, 2009
'Monsters' smashed: Comcast SportsNet to drop North-Jiggetts program
On the day before Halloween, Comcast SportsNet Chicago announced the demise of its "Monsters."
"Nothing lives forever," Jim Corno, president of Comcast SportsNet, said Friday. "Even 'Gunsmoke' couldn't live forever."
And some things only last a year.
CSN said that it and Mike North's Licorice Ltd. "have mutually agreed not to renew" North's "Monsters in the Morning," the live weekday program that launched in January on both Comcast SportsNet and the ill-fated Chicago Sports Webio site.
The final show for North, Dan Jiggetts and Jen Patterson is set for Dec. 31. It will be replaced weekday mornings by "Sports Rise," Corno said. Jiggetts will continue to work for CSN independently.
"Comcast SportsNet thanks Mike, Dan and Jen and the 'Monsters' crew for putting on a quality show and remains open to exploring other programming projects with Mike and his staff in the future," the cable channel said in a statement.
Corno said the decision to end "Monsters" actually was made in August as "we realized the economic conditions were such that we were probably better off" letting the show conclude at the end of the year. In addition to a live three hours from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. Monday through Friday, a taped program of that morning's highlights ran most weeknights at 11.
"It's strictly an economic decision," Corno said. "The show is expensive to produce. There was success in advertising. If you watch the show, you can see that. But the show was expensive to produce. We did the one year we mutually agreed to. Now let's free Mike up so he can find another home for the show next year."
"Monsters in the Morning" anchored the ambitious sports-talk Internet radio site Chicago Sports Webio, which collapsed this summer amid allegations that its chief backer, David Hernandez, now facing federal fraud charges, was running a Ponzi scheme.
Hernandez's NextStep Medical Staffing, which also went away with the financial scandal, was the program's title sponsor for until the summer.
"This is a very amicable thing," Corno said. "It's not yelling and screaming or hiding and pulling (North) off the air, that kind of stuff. It's a business decision."
Posted at 03:06:13 PM by Phil Rosenthal, Chicago Tribune