It seems that we have been beating Heartland up for the last month. Everything they do seems to be magnified and no one wins. Heartland is unable to get out of its own way, and that makes for bad situations. Here are some areas where I believe Heartland has set itself up to be looked at with a microscope. First, date coding the release of your schedule is worthless and has no point. Regatta permits are what count. Second, planting an angler to spy on another is ridiculous. You are simply cheating your customers. With these most recent snafus, these choices suggest Heartland might be in need of a major image overhaul. Go back, start fresh, and do one thing well: run a top-notch circuit. This is what Central has done, and it seems to be working. People are talking about Central again. Prior to the new ownership, that was not the case.
Tournament organizations should remember the anglers are the customers, and sometimes that can be taken for granted. What is happening with Heartland takes the fun out of fishing. I thought that was impossible.
TFR has made several changes over the last two years. Basically, we have grown up a lot. That goes to the hard work that is put in to produce an on-air show about tournament bass fishing that excels any other. As with any industry, sometimes in the outdoor industry quality and innovation are not promoted or encouraged. Some consider those who work in and support the outdoor industries to be simple, lacking in current technologies. However, we at TFR have several outlets for you, the listener, to contact us, to interact with us, and to participate with the show. Ask Mike Mills, listener #17. He has filled in as a guest host from time-to-time. In addition, Alex the Intern has been instrumental in getting our Facebook page up (Become a Fan! Search “Tournament Fishing Radio”…), and he has us set up to be available on Podcasts on iTunes the first week of July. Our listeners make all this happen. To date our Facebook page has 55 friends. That number might be higher than the number of people who listen to our show.
Highlights for this week’s show: Continued fallout from the BASS Elite Tour Event on the Mississippi River and the FLW Tour Event on Kentucky Lake.
This is my first blog, and it coincides with the 2-year anniversary of TFR. It is sad that is had taken 2 years to do a blog for the show and everyone has blogs including babies, pets and even anglers. We are thankful that we have made it on the air this long, and I would like to take the time to thank you, the listener, for making it possible. This show was built on the 2005 trip to the Central Pro-Am Championship to Milford and in next weeks show we are going to blast one of the most powerful men in fishing Irwin Jacobs. That is quite a jump. In the future we hope to be add humor to fishing but also bring the facts to the table. Maybe even figure out a way to pick up a sponsor that will give discounts to its listeners.
In most cases, when I write the blog it will go a little more in depth about a topic from the Weekly Weigh-In, so this entry will be an exception. The blog topic could be about anything from a tournament to a current issue. It may even do a little foreshadowing about a topic for the upcoming week. I will say this now so it does not have to be asked in the future: we have been reminded by the radio station that if we can’t say something on the air, we can’t say it here (on the blog). We will see how far we can push that.
