We’re in the dog days of summer. The Casey Anthony case has cooled down, the tropics are relatively quiet, and other than the python-killing mania sweeping the state, there’s not much going on.
That’s why the folks in the Orlando Sentinel’s marketing department decided to shake up the summer a bit. They’ve produced an online contest to pick the most popular broadcasters in Orlando TV and radio. Called the Orlando Celebrity Smackdown, the summer sizzler is already pulling in thousands of online votes from Central Floridians. The contest is structured like a tournament, with matchups of broadcasters in each round. Winners from each week’s voting advance to the next round to face a new "challenger."
So far, the results on the TV side pretty much mirror what you would find in the Nielsen book — with one major exception. The No. 1- and No. 2-rated evening anchor teams are facing each other in the opening round: WFTV’s Bob Opsahl and Martie Salt against WESH’s Jim Payne and Martha Sugalski. Checking on the vote totals Thursday night, the WESH pair has more votes than the WFTV duo. I guess this would be akin to a No. 1 seed being knocked out in the first round of the NCAA Tournament, if the voting pattern holds.
The deadline for the first round of voting is midnight on Sunday. Round 2 will begin at 9 a.m. Tuesday. You can play and follow along here.
(Full disclosure: Yeah, it’s a silly, unscientific contest, but I do love the traffic this is generating for OrlandoSentinel.com.)