For our Christmas wish from a business perspective, more than anything, we'd love see a whole slew of you stop this holiday season at our Downtown HQ/shop, 224 Fifth Avenue. It's the best of all worlds for us to be able to meet our company's readers, viewers and listeners, on top of offering Dali's unrivaled selection of Pittsburgh sports/city gifts to meet your needs.
That said, we appreciate that almost half our regular readership lives well outside Western Pennsylvania, so we've also got this: Order online!
We can't ship our most of the merch at the HQ/shop because of time/cost considerations, but we do have a state-of-the-art e-shop where we stock all sizes, all colors, all options for everything that's related to either DK Pittsburgh Sports or The Ramon Foster Show, the interactive video the big man and I do each weekday at 4 p.m. Eastern. That means T-shirts, hoodies, mugs, tumblers, stickers and more, a few of which are shown in the image above.
Word of advice: Don't delay when it comes to anything involving shipping. There's no specific Christmas cutoff from our Shopify vendor, but the sooner the safer.
We also have gift cards available, in denominations from $30-$100, and they're good for absolutely anything related to the business, meaning the shop, the online options, even a subscription to the app/site:
Lastly but definitely not least, as we've done from the beginning almost a decade ago, we've got gift subscriptions to the app/site. The content's open to all now, but this is the only way to get the 100% ad-free experience, the commenting access, the Live Qs, the access to meetups with our reporters and a ton more.
Bottom line: Don't let Mom or Dad have to toil through all those ads and auto-play videos featuring HOT LADIES FROM KYRGYZSTAN or whatever. Once anyone goes ad-free, they'll never go back.
Any questions at all, I'll be in comments.
INSIDE THE WORKS
• At some point this week, we'll be temporarily dropping our package of statistics, standings, schedules and scores. The reason: They've been very, very sparingly used, with no more than a couple hundred visits weekly to each page. Once the package gets upgraded, which is in the planning stage, we'll add them back.
• In turn, the appearance of our Feed pages will become simpler and sleeker, with all options plain to even a novice user. There'll only be four options: FEED (the whole feed for that team), ARTICLES (full-length artices), EVENTS (live game coverage files) and FORUM (our wide-open commenting section on that team).
• We continue to meet and/or speak with potential candidates to be added as reporters. There's no timetable, no deadline, no rush.
• The weekly Drive to the Net hockey analysis will be back next week. Taylor Haase will do some. I'll do some, too, though my involvement will have to wait until after football.
• Speaking of the weekly category, Alex Stumpf brought Friday Insider back in a big way, with a bundle of original goodies from Major League Baseball's Winter Meetings, which he covered all week in Nashville, Tenn. This exemplifies the thinking behind taking Insider in this direction. We'll try to match our Insider schedule with access points for the reporter, rather than forcing stuff out. Next Friday, Taylor will have Insider from her trip to Canada. The Friday after that, it'll be Corey Crisan on Steelers.
• Everyone still loving being ad-free? If you're not there yet, it's only for subscribers. If you aren't subscribed yet or if your subscription's expired: this is our new subscribe page. Make sure you're logged in, tap on the link, and thumb down to the bottom for the SUBSCRIBE button to buy/renew at the monthly or annual level. We also have our new pages completed for student subscriptions and senior subscriptions.
BACK TO BUSINESS
• Our page-view numbers for the past week were 1,039,876, with 38,074 unique users over the most recent full seven-day span, Dec. 1-7. Our five most-read original pieces:
1. My column on Steelers' loss to Cardinals: 25,748
2. My column on Penguins' loss in Philadelphia: 19,880
3. Taylor's coverage of Penguins loss in Tampa: 7,890
3. Corey's coverage of Steelers' loss to Cardinals: 7,821
5. Alex's In-Depth feature on Jim Leyland: 7,159
Also, as a fun aside, the Site Stuff from last week, which I never count in these lists, was at 10,231, which is nuts. This was the one revealing that Alex will be back on the baseball beat in 2024, but forever and ever, it's been among our most-read regular material.
• On the multimedia front, our podcast downloads for the past week were 120,410, and our YouTube video views for the past week were 148,639.
• Our company social media accounts are at 51,691 followers on X, 40,263 on Facebook, 26,778 on YouTube, 14,933 on Instagram ... and already 3,196 on the new Threads!
• We make mistakes. If you see one, email: Typos@DKPittsburghSports.com
• We're often asked about our HQ/shop merch being available online, and yes, it's right here.
• Anything you need, email: Help@DKPittsburghSports.com
• No, seriously, come see us! This is the cool part! Dali and I will be at the HQ/shop today and most everyday through Christmas!
