• Organizers announced that attendance at the 2022 National Western Stock Show was down 18% as the Omicron variant weighed on people’s decision whether to attend the 16-day event.
• The Children’s Museum of Denver has closed temporarily after visitors opposed to its mask requirement were abusive to staff members.
• The transition away from burning coal as a power source is inevitable, and Patty Nieberg of the Associated Press reported on how that transition is impacting places like Craig, Colo.
• Legendary musician Neil Young took a principled stand against Spotify and podcaster Joe Rogan, demanding that the streaming service remove his music if it continues to allow Rogan to share misinformation about COVID-19. As for other musicians following his lead … it has been crickets. Despite that, Spotify’s stock is down 10% since Young’s announcement.
• Facing challenges with human rights issues, timezone challenges and COVID-19, Olympics broadcaster NBC is frantically lowering TV ratings estimates with advertisers to avoid having to offer make-good ads.
• Neither Roger Clemens nor Barry Bonds, two of the most famous and successful players in MLB history whose careers were clouded by steroid controversies, were selected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in their final year of regular eligibility.

So, who won the week?

• The Denver Broncos selected Green Bay Packers Offensive Coordinator Nathaniel Hackett as its new head coach, leading to optimistic speculation that the team might also land MVP Aaron Rodgers as its new quarterback.
• Twenty-three Coloradans will compete in the 2022 Winter Olympics that start next week, including Golden’s Stacy Gaskill whom I coached on my daughter’s soccer teams when they were ages six to eight. Go Rainbows!
• Denver restaurant group Bonanno Concepts has hired a full-time wellness director to support employees at its 10 restaurants.
• Denver law/lobbying firm Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck set a national record for federal lobbying dollars in a single quarter when it posted $15.96 million in Q4 2021. That was a 29% increase over Q4 2020.
• While the Colorado Rockies’ Todd Helton was not selected to the Baseball Hall of Fame this week, his candidacy continues to make progress. He will remain on the ballot for the next seven years, and experts say his trend line means he eventually will make it.
• The new, reasonably sized Ford Maverick pick-up truck has been such an unexpected hit that Ford has had to cut off orders until summer to meet demand.

COHN will lead the neurorehabilitation and research hospital’s branding, advertising, digital, social media and public relations efforts.

Claire Atkinson at BusinessInsider: “NBCUniversal is slashing its TV ratings expectations for the Winter Olympics by as much as half, according to three senior marketing sources familiar with the numbers. The media giant, which paid $7.75 billion for TV and digital rights to the Olympic Games through 2032, retooled its estimates after pushback from marketing partners disappointed with the ratings of the Tokyo summer Olympics. “

“Ad agencies are being told to expect a six rating at Beijing — half what the audience guarantees were for the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, according to one media agency executive. … One ad executive said NBCUniversal was under pressure to reduce its ratings expectations rather than face the possibility of having to give advertisers make-good ads, as NBCU reportedly had to do after Tokyo, when it had its lowest Summer Olympics ratings ever.”

If social media posts about long lift lines are giving you a public relations headache, you have a couple of options. You can try to improve how long it takes to get people up the mountain, or you can try to limit photos and videos of the long lift lines. Vail’s strategy appears to focus on both.

• The 2021-2022 ski season could be a tough one for Colorado resorts, according to data released by Vail Resorts that show an 18.3% drop in skier visits to its resorts this year compared to the same period in 2019-2020.
• The Colorado State Patrol says at least 672 people died in traffic crashes on Colorado roads in 2021, the most in nearly two decades. Officials blamed impaired driving, excessive speeds and distractions behind the wheel as the leading causes of accidents, and noted that approximately one-third of those who died were not wearing seatbelts.
• Denver attorney Frank “the Strong Arm” Azar found himself in need of his own lawyer when he sued both a CPA who he says screwed up his tax return and the CPA he then hired to fix the first CPA’s work.
• King Soopers and organizers of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Marade awkwardly faced off over the grocery store’s sponsorship of the event during a union strike that would no doubt have been supported by the civil rights leader.
• Speaking of Dr. King, the FBI saw him as a communist threat and surveilled him with phone taps and bugged hotel rooms, among other activities, which is why its tweet commemorating MLK Day this week felt pretty self-serving and hollow.
• After trying and failing to participate in the Australian Open, Novak Djokovic learned that the upcoming French Open also has banned non-vaccinated tennis players. He currently is tied with Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer with 20 major tournament wins, and desperately wants to own the record alone.
• Historians have decided that notary Arnold van den Bergh is the likely culprit who ratted out Anne Frank.
• It’s been a rough week for the University of Michigan. Its president, Mark Schlissel, was fired for having a relationship with a subordinate and the university agreed to pay $490 million to settle allegations that a doctor who worked with football players and other students sexually abused them.
• The NBA’s Golden State Warriors distanced itself from minority owner Chamath Palihapitiya’s statement that “nobody cares about what’s happening to the Uyghurs,” the largely Muslim minority community that has faced widespread human rights violations in China’s western Xinjiang region. He added, “You bring it up because you really care, and I think it’s nice that you care — the rest of us don’t care.” That will not play well in the Warrior’s hometown of San Francisco.

So, who won the week?

• Denver-area animal shelters raised tens of thousands of unexpected dollars on Jan. 17 thanks to the “Betty White Challenge,” a campaign to support humane societies in honor of what would have been the beloved actress’ 100th birthday.
• The Denver Post’s Mike Singer was named Colorado Sportswriter of the Year and AT&T SportsNet’s Jenny Cavnar was named Colorado Sportscaster of the Year by the National Sports Media Association.
• The Boston Bruins retired Willie O’Rees’ hockey jersey 64 years after he broke the color barrier in the NHL.

Candy manufacturer Mars announced that the iconic M&M’s characters are getting personality makeovers – and the results demonstrate the lengths that agency marketing teams will go to spend every dime of the client’s budget. The efforts are described as “a modern makeover for a more dynamic, progressive world,” which is code for making them more millennial-friendly. Among the changes:

• The green M&M has ditched her go-go boots in favor of “cool, laid-back sneakers to reflect her effortless confidence.” Also, the green and brown M&Ms may be lesbians now.
• The brown M&M’s heels have been “lowered to a professional heel height.”
• The orange M&M will now lean into his anxiety and the red M&M will no longer bully his peers.

If you are looking for some consistency among all these changes, fear not – the yellow M&M is still an idiot.

Kyle Harris at Denverite: “Few businesses have grown with Denver like Tattered Cover. The independent book chain has dominated the city’s literary scene for more than half a century. Over the past 20 years, it has kept its doors open — barely — as online retail has battered brick-and-mortar shops. Three new owners, who took over Tattered Cover in December 2020 under the name Bended Page LLC, have been betting on their ability to not just save the iconic independent book chain from bankruptcy, but to turn it into a lucrative, 21st century business.” …

“Yet some staff members — new and old alike — are raising concerns about the new direction and how they’re being managed. They say the store is growing too fast and becoming too corporate, old-timers are being pushed out, staff are overworked, wages are too low and they criticize new CEO Kwame Spearman’s management style.”

It was bad enough to lose a playoff game to the San Francisco 49ers, but Dallas Cowboys QB Dak Prescott compounded the disaster by praising Cowboys fans who threw bottles and other trash at the officials as they left the field. Prescott has built a reputation for being a classy player, which made his comments even more surprising.

We all knew an apology was coming, but given the state of the world I expected it to be the “I apologize if anyone was offended” variety. Instead, Prescott owned it and even used the all-too-rare phrase “I’m sorry:”

“I deeply regret the comments I made regarding the officials after the game on Sunday” Prescott said. “I was caught up in the emotion of a disappointing loss and my words were uncalled for and unfair. I hold the NFL Officials in the highest regard and have always respected their professionalism and the difficulty of their jobs. The safety of everyone who attends a game or participates on the field of a sporting event is a very serious matter. That was a mistake on my behalf, and I am sorry.”

King Soopers and Martin Luther King, Jr. Day Marade organizers found themselves in a bit of an awkward standoff yesterday. The grocery store chain, which is in the midst of an ongoing union strike, was the corporate sponsor of the parade honoring a man who was solidly pro-union. Something had to give, and the result was a race to claim the moral high ground.

Marade organizers struck first by formally removing King Soopers as a sponsor, although it was done at the last minute which meant it was largely symbolic. Organizers also tried to return the sponsorship money to King Soopers, but grocery store representatives were having none of it. They refused to accept the money, saying that Marade organizers should keep it despite cancelling the sponsorship “because love should always be bigger than hate.”

How far will this very public spat go? Unfortunately, we’ll never know because the Marade has already come and gone.

Rebecca Elliott, Justin Scheck and Drew FitzGerald at The Wall Street Journal: “A partner at law firm Cooley LLP got an unexpected call late last year from a lawyer for one of the firm’s most famous clients, Elon Musk’s Tesla Inc., with an ultimatum. The world’s richest man wanted Cooley, which was representing Tesla in numerous lawsuits, to fire one of its attorneys or it would lose the electric-vehicle company’s business, people familiar with the matter said.”

“The target of Mr. Musk’s ire was a former U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission lawyer whom Cooley had hired for its securities litigation and enforcement practice and who had no involvement in the firm’s work for Tesla. At the SEC, the attorney had interviewed Mr. Musk during the agency’s investigation of the Tesla chief executive’s 2018 tweet claiming, wrongly, to have secured funding to potentially take the electric-vehicle maker private.”

“The probe resulted in a settlement in which Mr. Musk agreed to resign as chairman and pay a $20 million fine. He also agreed to have a Tesla lawyer review in advance tweets about certain topics, including the company’s financial results, sales numbers and proposed business combinations.”

“Cooley has declined to fire the attorney, who remains an associate at the firm, the people said. Since early December, Tesla has begun taking steps in several cases to replace Cooley or add additional counsel, legal documents show. Mr. Musk’s rocket company Space Exploration Technologies Corp., also known as SpaceX, has stopped using Cooley for regulatory work, according to people familiar with the matter.”

• If you are a Colorado Rockies fan, more Monforts involved with the team probably isn’t what you are looking for. Regardless, Sterling Monfort, the son of the Rockies’ owner Dick Monfort, has been named the head of the team’s pro scouting department. An anonymous MLB scout is not impressed.
• The Sierra Club has threatened to suspend its 20,000-member Colorado chapter, citing “years of unresolved conflicts between the Colorado leadership and executive committee and volunteers.”
• Pauletta Tonilas is the best communications leader RTD has had in decades. That is why the agency’s new policy requiring media to seek advance permission and obtain liability insurance in the amount of $10 million prior to shooting in RTD-controlled spaces (including Union Station) was so surprising. Media immediately went nuts, and RTD and Tonilas quickly walked back the policy, describing it as a misunderstanding.
• Approximately 17,000 union employees at King Soopers in Colorado and Wyoming are on strike, and there is no obvious resolution in sight.
• Five days after accepting the position of news editor at Westword, Helen Thorpe resigned, saying that the job “was not the right fit in terms of tempo.”
• Living through a pandemic the past two years has been hard enough. Now imagine your name is “Kovid.”
• He’s out … he’s in … he’s out again. Tennis star Novak Djokovic‘s eligibility to play in next week’s Australian Open remains in question after the latest decision to cancel his visa. No doubt lawyers on both sides will be working overtime this weekend as Djokovic hopes to take the all-time men’s major wins record with a tournament win. If he is ultimately allowed to play, it may require him to tune out boos and derogatory comments that aren’t usually associated with tennis.
• The Golden Globes took place last weekend, and if you didn’t notice, you aren’t alone. The quiet awards season has Hollywood worried about the bigger ramifications.
• The U.S. government has accused 16 nationally respected universities, including Duke, Georgetown, MIT, Notre Dame, CalTech and Yale, of antitrust violations for allegedly working together to determine financial aid awards for students.

So, who won the week?

• Pat Bowlen’s children won a legal victory that paves the way for them to sell the Denver Broncos in a deal that is expected to net them approximately $400 million each.
• Estes Park is included on The New York Times’ list of 52 places to go in 2022.
• Colorado’s own Mikaela Shiffrin won her 47th women’s World Cup slalom this week, the most of any skier ever in a single World Cup event.
• Poet and activist Maya Angelou became the first Black woman to have her image on the U.S. quarter. Civil rights activists note that the flip side still has a slave-owner on it.

“Sterling (Monfort) has earned a reputation as a diligent, hard worker, but I think he’s out over his skis. I mean, Dick Monfort owns the club so he can promote his son if he wants to. But Sterling’s only been doing this for eight years and if his dad wasn’t the owner, I don’t know if he would be hired in the industry. For me, this is another example of the Rockies only looking inside their own organization.”

A veteran MLB scout on the Colorado Rockies’ decision to name owner Dick Monfort’s son as the leader of the team’s pro scouting department.

When I was 23, I got my first public relations job in Denver at a firm named Darcy Communications. One of the big bosses was Rendall “Rendy” Ayers, and I liked him immediately. He was funny, good-natured and thoughtful, and he always had time to answer questions from someone who was still learning the nuances of the job. His world was big, and he would regale everyone with tales about his beloved kids Sydney and Reed, “old” Denver, tennis, his Porsche and CU Buffs sports, among many, many other things. I struggle to remember a time when he wasn’t smiling and laughing – at one of his own jokes or stories or at someone else’s. Rendy was one of the good ones. He passed away this weekend at the age of 84.

Arby’s claims that its new spicy sandwich (the “Diablo Dare” that comes in chicken or brisket) is so hot that it will only sell it served with a fire retardant – a free vanilla milkshake. The sandwich gets its heat from ghost pepper jack cheese, hot seasoning, fire-roasted jalapenos, a hot BBQ sauce and a chipotle bun.

• Officials have not said it explicitly, but it appears that members of Twelve Tribes, a curious Christian sect with a compound in Boulder, are suspected of starting the most destructive wildfire in Colorado history.
• The Denver Broncos‘ loss last weekend means that they are officially eliminated from the playoffs and will have their fifth straight losing season.
• The annual stock show parade through the streets of downtown Denver was cancelled this week due to the threat of snow, high winds and dangerously low temperatures. Meanwhile, the Denver public health director had to have a conversation with organizers after they said the city’s mask mandate would be “lightly’ enforced at stock show venues.
• Fourteen months after Denver voters overturned a pit bull ban, data from the Denver Animal Protection department shows the breed leads all others for number of moderate and severe bites on people. Pit bulls were responsible for 117 bites, outpacing runners-up German shepherds (61 bites) and Labrador retrievers (54 bites).
• Tennis star Novak Djokovic became the least popular person down under when the Australian Open granted him a vaccine exemption to participate in the tournament. Aussies ranging from politicians to sports stars to average citizens expressed outrage at the decision. Djokovic, however, filed the wrong type of visa, and the government appears to be using that as a pretext for preventing him from actually entering the country. A hearing is scheduled for Monday. It may be a no-win situation for Djokovic, though. He’ll either miss the tournament, or try to set the all-time men’s wins record for majors in an arena of people booing him.
• David Bateman, the founder and chairman of tech firm Entrata, resigned after sending a blast email claiming the COVID-19 vaccine is part of a plot by “the Jews” to exterminate people. Confronted with the email, Bateman denied being anti-Semitic, noting that,  “Some of my closest friends are Jews.”
• Tesla is being condemned by human rights activists around the world for opening a showroom in China’s Xinjiang region, home to Uyghurs, a mostly Muslim ethnic minority group that has been subject to genocidal tactics by the Chinese government.
• Washington Wizards broadcaster Glenn Consor is either a world-class a**hole or one of the unluckiest people alive.
• “Who is Amy Schneider?” is the answer to the clue, “This reigning ‘Jeopardy’ champion was robbed at gunpoint in her hometown of Oakland, California.”

So, who won the week?

• Murdoch the basset hound was elected honorary mayor of Littleton. He won by shaking hands and licking babies.
• Motor Trend named the electric Rivian R1T pick-up truck as its 2022 “Truck of the Year.” Nine years ago, the magazine named the Tesla Model S as its 2013 “Car of the Year,” an honor that helped launch the then-emerging car company. We’ll see if Rivian enjoys the same success.

The Australian Open’s decision to grant superstar Novak Djokovic a COVID-19 vaccine exemption to play in this month’s tournament has divided Australians and resulted in calls for a boycott from local officials and fans.

CNN reports, “One of Melbourne’s most famous former Australian Football League (AFL) stars, Kevin Bartlett, tweeted that Australians had been ‘taken for fools.’ While one of the city’s prominent emergency physicians and former president of the Australian Medical Association (AMA) Stephen Parnis, said the decision sent ‘an appalling message’ to the public.”

Djokovic is tied with Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal for most all-time grand slam wins with 20, but getting number 21 in Australia may be incredibly difficult if Aussies in the stands turn on him. It would not be surprising to see him withdraw rather than face relentless boos from the crowd.

An attempt to thank Steelers QB Ben Roethlisberger in what is expected to be his last home game goes awry.

It’s tradition that a winning football coach gets doused in Gatorade after a big win, but Duke’s Mayo took it a step further when University of South Carolina head coach Shane Beamer was doused in mayonnaise after winning the Duke’s Mayo Bowl.

• CBS4 reported that the top attorney representing Denver International Airport, Scott McCoy, resigned after being accused of “slapping one of his subordinates multiple times during a holiday party Dec. 16. The incident was apparently witnessed by DIA’s CEO Phil Washington and numerous other of DIA’s top level executives, according to sources familiar with the incident.”
• Denver only made it a couple of hours into 2022 before it experienced its first homicides of the year.
• The BBC is under fire for interviewing lawyer Alan M. Dershowitz about the guilty verdict in the case against Ghislaine Maxwell without disclosing – or seemingly even knowing – that Dershowitz represented the man at the heart of the Maxwell trial – Jeffrey Epstein.
• English soccer start Daniel Sturridge was ordered to honor a $30,000 reward he publicly offered for the safe return of his missing Pomeranian, Lucci. When a local security guard found and returned the dog, Sturridge thanked him but claimed there was no reward. A court ruled otherwise.
• Green Bay Packers QB Aaron Rodgers hasn’t exactly been a role model for responsible COVID-19 behavior, and the theatrics continued this week when he and FOX sideline reporter Erin Andrews conducted a socially distant post-game interview and subsequently shared a maskless hug as soon as the camera turned off.
• A Florida man, River Rosenquist, thought it might be fun to pet one of the tigers at the Naples, Fla., zoo. It went exactly like you thought it would.

So, who won the week?

• First responders and local journalists demonstrated excellence under the pressure of the Superior and Louisville fires.
• Public safety won when Lakewood Police officer Ashley Ferris shot and killed the assailant in the Denver-Lakewood shooting spree this week. Ferris herself was shot by the assailant, but managed to return fire, killing the man and ending his deadly rampage.
• Audi stepped in and gifted a new Q3 to a “Wheel of Fortune” contestant who was denied the prize due to a technicality that infuriated fans of the show.
• If you thought what LoDo was missing was a little more “bro” culture, you are in luck – Dierks Bentley’s new restaurant and music venue opened on New Year’s Eve.