City Paper, on average, receives about a million plugs a day from individuals and organizations hoping to cop a little bit of free press. We’ll get movies and albums to review, flyers informing us about upcoming events, and a near constant stream of press releases hyping up one event or another. The sports-themed of these go straight to me.  In many cases this is great – it gives me a heads up to events that I didn’t know were happening, or a book I might want to review from an author whose work I’ve either written about or requested before.

In other cases it’s bizarre.

Yesterday one of the later arrived in my inbox. After the jump … a press release that will blow your mind, presented in it’s entirety:

BROWN, LANDETA ROCK WITH MGK

The Birds wide receiver will be playing Nintendo Wii with MGK listeners TONIGHT; the former Birds punter will attend a live broadcast on Friday.

Bala Cynwyd, PA (September 8, 2008):  This evening from 7 to 8:30 pm, Birds wide receiver Reggie Brown will be joining the MGK Classic Rock Squad for an evening of Nintendo Wii and MGK prizes at Chickie’s and Pete’s Bordentown, NJ location (183 Route 130 in Bordentown, NJ). He’ll also be meeting fans and signing autographs.  Chickies’ and Pete’s Bordentown was the location of Ray Koob’s Monday Night Football Party.  Brown joined MGK nighttime DJ Ray Koob each Monday (during the regular season) from 7 to 8pm to talk football.  Koob broadcast his show live each week from 7 to Midnight.   

Former Birds punter, Sean Landetta will be joining MGK’s Andre Gardner this Friday as the station broadcasts live from Chickies’ and Pete’s ORIGINAL location on 4010 Robbins Ave in Northeast Philadelphia.  Gardner chose Northeast Philadelphia as his “Hometown of the Week” and chose their Robbins Ave location as the site for his weekly Friday broadcast.  He’ll be getting fans pumped up for Sunday’s game against New York by playing the best classic rock ever made and giving out free MGK prizes from 2 to 7pm.  Landeta will be on-site to meet fans and sign autographs from 5pm to 7pm.  

102.9 WMGK is owned and operated by Greater Philadelphia Radio, INC., a subsidiary of Greater Media, Inc., the parent company of 23 AM and FM radio stations in the Boston, Charlotte, Detroit, New Jersey and Philadelphia markets.  It also owns a group of weekly newspapers in central New Jersey as well as several telecommunications towers located throughout the United States.

We’ll start with the celebrities: first there is fifth string wide receiver Reggie Brown, who caught 18 passes for 252 passes this year. Still, considering that this was presumably slated to be released September 8th (or around the same time we were all slating in Brown for 65 catches and 1000 yards) I think we can give them another pass. Then there is Sean Landetta (!) who I’m sure is a perfectly nice guy but is not a celebrity.  For those of you who don’t know, Sean is a 47 year old former punter from Baltimore.  He had a couple of decidedly mediocre seasons for the Birds from 99-02 then came back for five games in 2005, but was never particularly memorable. It’s no exaggeration to suggest that he was best known for being old (last USFL player to play in the NFL, last Tecmo Bowl player to play in the NFL).  He wasn’t a celebrity when he was playing, and he sure as hell isn’t now. Hyping him up is like advertising that ridiculous NES power glove. Today.

To make matters worse, they spelled his name wrong (one T fellas, one T). What was his public appearance fee for this one? Six bucks? Could they not afford Stanley Pritchett? Was Zeke Bratkowski

busy?

Then, as if this whole thing could get more absurd, check out what Reggie Brown is up to. The Wii! At a bar! What is this, Toyko? If that is how he gets fired up no wonder he sucks.  Dawkins is out there getting hooked up to an IV pregame because he got dehydrated running through walls and this guy is rocking out at Animal Crossing: City Folk.

Finally, this release is dated September 8th, 2008.  As a rule
(aspiring PR people, you might want to focus in here) it is normally a
good idea to get your information out a week or before the event in
question and generally a bad one to release it four full months after – how are we supposed to get pumped with Koob now?

Anyway, no larger point here – just wanted to give you one an look-in at the ol’ day in the life.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 7th, 2009 at 12:55 pm and is filed under Birds, unbridled insanity. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.