Off Limits

Sugar high: Denver Post owner Dean "Sweetie" Singleton might have once described a newspaper as being "like a candy bar" that needs attractive packaging (Off Limits, March 18), but Sunday's two-page ad in the Rocky Mountain News overdosed on self-promotion. The ad heralded recent figures compiled by the Audit Bureau of Circulation, showing that the News circulation had gained an average of 33,748 copies daily and 26,152 on Sundays. Those numbers, according to the ad, show that the paper "has the recipe for success." The spread featured cutting-edge graphics such as a rolling pin ("Rolling out a better paper"), a picture of eggs and a whisk in a mixing bowl ("The News is really cooking") and a list of "ingredients" such as Dilbert and TV listings. "Our latest circulation numbers are the icing on the cake," the paper proclaimed.

By comparison, Tuesday's full-page ad in the Post looked like a concession. The paper boasted higher overall circulation--537,048 on Sundays and 383,360 daily, compared to the News's 461,103 Sunday and 359,068 daily--and claimed that readers actually "pay for" the Post. But the ad's tone remained gloomy: Above the silhouette of a solitary man looking at a rolled-up copy of the paper, its stark headline read, simply, "You're looking at the best paper in Colorado history."

The News might take issue with that claim, though, since it continues to remind readers, as it did in a Sunday article on the circulation figures, that the News "dominated" the Colorado Press Association awards "for the fourth year in a row." However, even that bit was sugarcoated, since the News had no competition for those awards: The Post hadn't entered the CPA contest.

What's really driving up the News circulation? Maybe the secret ingredient is its syrupy coverage of Ulaq and Berit, the cuddly-wuddly baby polar bears at the Denver Zoo who have earned themselves a weekly diary called "Bear Facts" that treats readers to such details as when the cubs began eating solid food and how they learned to swim.

The cubs make such good copy that their names have appeared in the News seventeen times since January 1, according to Westword's calculations. By comparison, Mayor Wellington Webb's two main challengers in the upcoming election, Gill Ford and Stephannie Huey, have appeared sixteen times each.

Still talking: Loquacious talk-show host Sebastian Metz may be unemployed, but he still has his sense of humor.

"I'm not a bitter and twisted ex-talk-radio alcoholic," says Metz, who was fired from his 7 to 9 p.m. shift at KHOW-AM (630) on April 8. "The story is the ratings, of course, which is the only reason they make any move in radio. If you don't get the numbers, you don't get the ad revenues. It was a very difficult time slot to get people to listen. People want to get home and have lives and eat, and who wants to listen to some jerk from New York? You tune in to talk about people's dysfunction, and you have to be dysfunctional yourself to be listening at that time. If you had a blow-up doll, even, you wouldn't be listening."

Metz is a Guardian Angel who moved to Denver in 1996 and took the job with KHOW in early 1998. He moved up through the radio ranks from KLTK to KOA and eventually landed the weekday evening shift on KHOW.

"I had no idea why they were paying me to do this. I'm just a guy talking here, but I worked at it, and as I got better, I was disappointed that the numbers didn't show. Maybe it's because of the politics and that I'm a liberal. Maybe people who are listening to talk radio want tax tips and to bash Bill Clinton and make penis jokes, and I don't do any of those three. Maybe if I talked more about alien abductions, I'd still have a job."

Metz doesn't know who will replace him, (KHOW has promised to make an announcement soon), but he wishes whoever it is good luck. "I'm not under any real crunch; I won't be starving out in front of 7-Eleven. People still love me in Denver, and Denver is a wonderful place. I'll stay here," he says. "I have public-speaking skills and hockey playing skills, so maybe I could be Patrick Roy's stunt double."

Off Limits is compiled by Jonathan Shikes. If you have a tip, call him at 303-293-3555, send a fax to 303-296-5416, or e-mail denver-editorial@westword.com.