Writing a Web log is sort of like becoming the creator, producer, director and star of your own little television show.
Some episodes are pretty good, and people tune in. Other stories don’t catch on, and people tune out. The “television shows” are always trying to attract new viewers.

Here at The Gazette, blog-popularity numbers are posted every week. It gives writers the chance to see how the public is responding to our short and long efforts.
After four months as creator, producer, director and star of “Type A to Z,” I’m wondering if the suits at the newspaper are thinking about moving me off the schedule. The numbers are trailing other blogs written by newspaper staffers.
Here’s how I see it, keeping the television show analogy in mind:

Sara Foss and her “Foss Forward” just started in April, and it has become a runaway hit! I compare Sara’s mix of movies, music and sports to “Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In,” an immediate ratings champ when it premiered on NBC in January 1968. But it’s kind of like “Hullabaloo” and “Shindig,” too, with a verve and a vibe.

Ken Schott and Phil Janack have been bullish on sports, as their blogs have attracted fans of horse-racing, hockey and sports media. I’m going to couple their “Parting Schotts” and “Phil-ing in the Blanks” as a single entry and a single show — “Sports Night.” This solid, two-year performer about a sports-based television show played ABC in 1998-2000.
Carl Strock is the Gazette reporter politicians least want to see ringing their doorbells, kind of like Mike Wallace and those hard-news cats at “60 Minutes,” which has been running forever on CBS. When Carl posts a blog about anything, people read and learn.

Online editor Mark Robarge, who lives in Schoharie County, has been winning fans in the country with “Off the Beaten Path.” I can almost hear “The Andy Griffith Show’s” whistling theme music, and see Mark strolling to the local creek with fishing pole in hand. Andy did fine for CBS during the 1960s.

Elysia Nest is another new blog program, and has been attracting fans with her posts in “Food Forum.” She will be renewed for sure, just like NBC kept renewing “Bonanza” from 1959 through the ill-fated last season in 1972-73. The food connection here is Hop Sing — my all-time favorite television chef. I can still see Hop Sing making all those pancakes!

“Greenpoint,” our green-thinking blog, is also picking up steam. Because environmentalists like this one, I’m linking it to “The Rat Patrol,” the old WWII favorite on ABC in 1968. These guys were in the North African desert, so they had to conserve water.

Then we come to “Type A to Z.” The numbers have never been top shelf or bottom shelf, but I’m sure if TV execs Fred Silverman or Michael Eisner were running this place, the blog would be lost in Cyberspace by now.
“You know that stupid ‘Time Tunnel’ show you mention so much?” Fred would say, signing the cancellation papers. “Well, we’re shipping your blog to that giant prehistoric beehive where Robert Duvall got stung to death during the ‘Chase Through Time’ episode. ”
Even though I’ve tried to pull out all the stops — posting my prom pictures, writing about potato salad, teaching cool slang, understanding “Iron Man” and marvelling at creative names for hot sauces, I’m somewhere around “Supertrain” and McLean Stevenson’s “Hello, Larry,” two NBC shows from the late 1970s that never quite caught on. “Supertrain,” about a luxury locomotive, was so expensive to produce that it nearly bankrupted NBC in 1980!

I’m working with a smaller budget, and may have to consider guest stars, a co-host — people like Julie Chapman or Lydia Kulbida — and maybe edgier topics. I’d hate to have to go back to that nudist resort I wrote about several years ago, but anything for ratings. I may have to write about water-skiing — and “jump the shark” — to boost the show one of these days.
It may already be too late. A new managing editor may decide to put “Hello, Larry” — I mean yours truly — on permanent hiatus. Or bring it back in September with a new creative team, maybe starring Albany reporter Jill Bryce or fish writer Morgan Lyle.
Planned episodes like the best summer music list of all time and funny and disturbing advertisements from 1908 may go into the syndication package. And I haven’t even started reports on The Gazette’s softball team yet!

Hang in there fans and sponsors ... we won’t go out without a fight. Or, at least, a farewell episode.