Throughout this week, fledgling OKC sports talk station 107.7 The Franchise has held a “Celebrity Call-in” contest where the listener who gets the "biggest" celebrity (as determined by a panel of judges) to call the station wins $500. So far, they've received calls from celebrities like Russell Westbrook, Jesse Jane and Joe Carter. Impressive, huh?
If the contest sounds kind of sad and gimmicky, it probably is. I wish the Franchise all the best in their uphill effort to dethrone The Sports Animal, but it reeks of desperation. It would be like Braum's having a $500 contest to get a famous person to eat at their restaurant. That being said, I can't really blame them for the stunt. They need listeners and callers about as bad as John Rohde needs a personality. Plus, it's radio. It's the medium where gimmicks are born and mastered. As a response, expect the Sports Animals to drop turkeys on the city so Jim Traber can make a big batch of soup.
Anyway, I guess some Franchise listener took things too far yesterday and started harassing THE William Shatner. The person tweeted, emailed and even called the pop culture icon's office. The captain of the Starship USS Enterprise was not pleased...
The Franchise wasn't all that apologetic...
Shatner wasn't having it. He reported them to the FCC:
I have no clue if using your radio station to encourage people to harass celebrities violates any sort of rule, regulation of Capitol Medical Center zoning code, but at that point the Franchise quickly deleted their tweet. Shatner then grew angry like a Klingon Warlord:
At this point, I decided to get in on the action and make fun of the whole situation:
Apparently, Shatner didn't get our Oklahoma City inside joke. When I hopped on Twitter this morning to grab screenshots of his Tweets, I saw this:
Yep, we've been blocked by William Shatner on Twitter. That's almost as sad as that "Sh!t My Dad Says" sitcom... or having a contest where you pay $500 to get a celebrity to call your radio station. Rescue 911 re-runs are never going to be the same for me.
Anyway, if you can, will you please tweet Mr. Shatner and have him unblock us? We'll give you $500 in Monopoly money. Could you also send him a link to this post so he'll see we were joking around? We take this shit about as seriously as he takes Rocket Man...
