Media Notes

In St. Louis, Dan Caesar reported KFNS-AM management "plans to enforce a 'non-compete' clause in Kevin Slaten's contract, thus trying to keep the host it fired last week off a competing station." Slaten's attorney Chet Pleban said that he plans to "file a wrongful termination suit soon and calls the attempt to keep Slaten from working elsewhere an affront." Slaten last week was fired eight days after "conducting an interview with Cardinals pitching coach Dave Duncan, who thought he was having a private discussion with Slaten but was on the air" (ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH, 4/12).

OPEN MIKE: In N.Y., Phil Mushnick wrote "most ESPN endeavors exist to promote other ESPN endeavors." For example, the net's "Mike & Mike in the Morning" show "loads up on ESPN guests and the sale of Disney goods and destinations." That "eventually makes for transparent, that's-enough radio." Instead of having ESPN's Tim Kurkjian discuss the Tigers, why not "hook up with a Tigers beat reporter?" Instead of "trying to produce indispensable sports talk radio ... 'Mike & Mike' plays more like an ESPN vending machine" (N.Y. POST, 4/13)

TRES BIEN: French language net RDS had an average audience of 1.48 million viewers for Thursday night's opening game of the Bruins-Canadiens NHL Stanley Cup playoffs series, marking the net's second largest audience in its history, behind the 1.531 million average viewers for Maple Leafs-Canadiens in April '07 (TSN). 

WEB CRAWLING: In Toronto, William Houston reported the Canadian Davis Cup and The Masters webcasts in Canada Friday "ran into all kinds of problems." The Canada-Chile Davis Cup match on tenniscanada.com was "marred by poor picture quality and weak audio." The Mastersgolf.ca live streaming feed, which crashed on Thursday, was "consistently interrupted and, for the most part, unavailable" (Toronto GLOBE & MAIL, 4/12).