THEY CALL ME "CAPTAIN EXCITEMENT"

Back in the day when CBC regularly pulled down a couple of million viewers for its shows, yet still trailed the competition, they invented something called the "Entertainment Quotient". (At least that's what I remember it being called). It was this bogus random sampling of their audience which claimed that while only a few people were actively watching their product, they were enormously entertained by it.

Audience share 15% - Entertainment Quotient 98.6%. Or in other words, "If you cut back our funding, these folks vote and will be really pissed with you."

While the EQ was an obvious scam, it kept many CBC producers ensconced in plush offices without forcing them to actually produce anything -- much like our current broadcasters hope the proposed 50 cent levy per formerly free-to-air channels will do in future.

But EQ did make a valid point. If they're excited and entertained, you can depend on them coming back. Which brings me to this week's report on the hockey pool and the need I feel to try to make things more exciting...


Dix raised a good point about the pool in his Monday Report. It's just going to go stagnant for the duration because everybody still in it has almost identical rosters and outside of the few left standing who'll bobble back and forth with the lead, our EQ is dropping like a stone.

We realize that's because neither one of us has the brains to figure out a draft that would be fair to all players, given how far afield everybody is and that there was no way to set a specific time for picks to come in on the usual first come, first served basis.

So I'm looking for any ideas you guys might have on perking this contest up.


Some pools allow trades or a redraft in the final round. But neither Will or I think that's fair to the folks who got on top by following the original rules.

I mean, we could entice them by allowing everybody to replace two or three fallen warriors or even give the top five or six a point bonus as a bribe.

Hey, we're in showbiz, for crying out loud. It's not like we have to have integrity or anything...


So far my best plan is to start some side bets, set a few props or initiate a second pool for the final round. At the very least, it'll give me a reason to drop by my own site on pool days.

This week's standings (zzzz):

1 John Callaghan 140
2 Jeff Martel 137
3 Scotty William 134
4 Will Pascoe 132
4 Laurie Nyveen 132
6 Brian Stockton 127
7 Michael Foster 126
8 Juniper 122
9 Mark Askwith 120
10 Denis McGrath 119
11 Peter Allen Rowley 116
12 Will Dixon 111
13 Wil Zmak 107
14 Larry Raskin 105
15 Mark Farrell 103
16 Robert de Lint 82
17 Jim Henshaw 59