LA Times Mike Penner/ Christine Daniels Dead; more Tiger coverage; Sunday media pulse

I never knew Mike Penner personally, but I, like many others was shocked/fascinated by the LA Times sportswriter who stunned colleagues and readers in April 2007 with a column announcing that he was a transsexual and would become a woman.

"How do you go about sharing your most important truth, one you spent a lifetime trying to keep deeply buried, to a world that has grown familiar and comfortable with your facade?" Penner wrote.

Penner, a 25-year veteran of the Times staff, was found dead at his Los Angeles home at age 52. The paper said suicide was the suspected cause of death.

**TIGER COVERAGE:

Expect a plethora of "Tiger coverage" as the holiday weekend ends and the cablers run this story ad nauseum until all the facts come out, which they probably will, one way or another.

As of Sunday, Woods has still not said anything public, either to the Florida cops and/or the news media. Lost in all this quagmire is the fact that because the affair was deemed an "accident", Woods is not required to speak to the police.

I'm sure by late Sunday/Monday, Tiger's PR machine will release a statement. That won't stop the stories' traction; CNN's 'Larry King Live', which had planned on having the two notorious White House crashers on its program, has decided to go with Tiger first.

Hannity will probably stick with politics, ditto Maddow, but I've heard from a Van Susteren staffer that the Foxite will go hard and heavy on Tiger. After all, the story has a Florida dateline. That's Greta's key demo area.

**Black Friday/'Cyber Monday: Call me naive, but I am still dumbfounded/nauseated and perpetually fed up with the electronic media's saturation/infatuation coverage of the idiotic holiday madness called Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

If you're a Macy's or Target or any other retail outlet for that matter, you have to be orgasmic over the never-ending publicity machine the TV/radio morons have provided. It's essentially 24/7. It never stops. I was only a bit thrilled, in a peculiar way, when the Tiger story broke, if only to get away from the blah-blah-blah nonstop blather of frantic shoppers schlepping at every known gizmo at a Dallas Target.

How sad. Wonder what would happen if the media mavens scaled back the endless coverage? Uh, the retailers would pull their ads. Oh, so now we know why we get Black Friday/Cyber Monday overblown; yes, it's all about the Benjamin's. How silly, I.

**SUNDAY MEDIA NOTES: Word out of CNN is a major shakedown, (another?--shocking!) is about to hit the Atlanta cabler; seems that Anderson Cooper is bullet-proof, no matter how many diminishing viewers he gets lately...MSNBC is close to overtaking CNN as #2 in many viewer overalls; Fox News is still strongly rated #1 in almost all the prime time nightly shows...LOCAL STOCK UP: KTVU's Rob Roth, Dave Clark and Mike Mibach...NBC Bay Area's Diane Dwyer...KGO/ABC7's Dan Noyes, Alan Wang...KQED's Michael Krasny...KGO Radio's Brian Copeland, Jennifer Hodges, Marty Nemko...Comcast Sports' Bay Area's Dave Benz...ESPN radio's John Kincaid...STOCK DOWN: KRON4's Darrya Folsom...The 'Bone's Steven Seaweed, (107.7 FM)...KSFO's Brian Sussman, Barbara Simpson and syndicated host, Mark Levin...

**Courtesy of my good political friend, Mark Curtis provides a 'Tiger Woods Top 10 list'. Watch out Dave Letterman.

FINALLY: I'm not, repeat, NOT, against charities, particularly involving children, but there's currently two of the most annoying radio ads playing virtually every other 10 minutes and they are both nauseating...the truly god-awful "cars-for-kids" jingle with accompanying nauseating voices, and the equally awful "Sleeptrain" ad with nasal-voiced kid that borders on instant annoyance. The cause for both? admirable. The ad guy/gal who devised these jingles? They should be sent to Gitmo for a day.