The hot topic on sports-fan message boards up in the Meadowlands is the steep prices that the New York Giants will be charging their fans for Personal Seat Licenses (PSLs). The Giants, you see, are building a new $1.6 billion stadium with a heated field, to open in 2011.

And to pay the price, the franchise is fleecing the fans. If you want to see the 2007-2008 World Champions live, you’ll have to not only pay the season ticket cost, but first, you’ll have to pony up for the PSL, a one-time charge that’ll run you up to $20,000. No PSL, no season tickets.

The Star-Ledger’s Steve Politi called PSLs one of the “great rip-offs in sports, a one-time fee for the privilege to cough up more cash to buy tickets.”

I say they’re not one of the great rip-offs in sports. Full disclosure here: I am not an expert in professional sports rip-offs, though I have been suckered by them now and again. I just refuse to believe that any revenue-producing gimmick that’s not authored by Redskins owner Daniel Snyder is among the great rip-offs in sports. Only schemes that originate with Snyder can claim such bona fides.

If Dan Snyder’s expansion of Triple X Radio wasn’t intended just to silence his critics, well, what’s the point?

Snyder has now bought six radio stations in this market that will bring him the same audience he’d have gotten if he’d just paid for one of those, WTEM-Sportstalk 980. 

But, Snyder now has Andy Pollin and Steve Czaban, hosts of “The Sports Reporters” and the biggest Snyder bashers in local broadcasting over the last couple years, in his afternoon drive slot. And, more to the point, he now has Pollin and Czaban on his payroll. 

Snyder’s network debuted its new schedule today. “The Sports Reporters” are in “Best Of” mode.

Speaking of Best Ofs: Snyder axed City Paper’s Best Radio Show, “Baseball Roundup,”, and its host, Phil Wood, shortly after acquiring WTEM.

There is no baseball show on Snyder’s roster. 

On the plus side: It look as if somebody convinced Snyder to move away from giving his stations those bizarre, quasi-pornographic XXX names: WTEM is referred to as “ESPN 980″ in Snyder’s new press releases.

Dan Snyder’s anti-solvent theme park chain, Six Flags, should be out of its misery very soon.

Stock in Snyder’s company, which sold for nearly $12 a share around the time he took over its board of directors, was selling for a quarter during today’s trading.

A quarter.

Twenty five cents.

That means it would cost you 140 shares of Snyder’s stock to park at Snyder’s football stadium.

A quarter!

Is this the story of the year or what?

Keep the dial right here for all the breaking news — what’s left of it, anyway! — in Snyder’s Six Flags soap opera. 

Dan Snyder’s post-viable theme park chain, Six Flags, remains headed toward Chapter 11 at a pace that reminds me of my nephew the morning after he got Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

A pace so fast, in fact, that there’s no time now to talk about all the dis-leggings, decapitations and other deaths and viruses that have plagued Snyder’s parks of late.

No, with Six Flags stock (SIX) hitting — stop me if you’ve heard this one lately! — ANOTHER RECORD LOW during today’s trading, at just 72 cents a share*, let’s go right to the big board!

To recap: Snyder controlled 10,921,300 shares of SIX, mostly owned by him and staffers of the Washington Redskins, when he took over Six Flags in 2005.

The stock at one point shortly after his ascension hit $11.93 per share. That means Snyder was atop a green mountain totaling $130,291,109.

Today, that cabbage patch is worth just $7,863,336.

Snyder and his followers have lost $122,427,773.

Snyder went into this venture hailed as a marketing genius. But, let’s be serious, the Six Flags numbers during Snyder’s reign couldn’t be worse if Charles Barkley was handling the books.

Six Flags is scheduled to release its financials for the second quarter of 2008 soon. And God only knows what this report will bring.

Oh, wait a sec! Make that: God AND Dwight Schar might know!

Schar is one of Snyder’s Redskins partners and a member of Snyder’s Six Flags board.

He just dumped two million shares of Six Flags stock.

Way to stay with the ship, Capt. Stubing!

Keep the dial right here for all the breaking news in Snyder’s Six Flags soap opera.

*SIX dipped to 71 cents a share before I could hit “post.” Like I said: Snyder’s a quick one! I’m not re-crunching numbers.

Dan Snyder’s pre-defunct theme park chain, Six Flags, is zipping toward Chapter 11 quicker than a guy who’s taken an Evelyn Wood course.

On Wednesday, Six Flags stock (SIX) was going for $.98, its first-ever dive below a buck a share. Then it sunk to just 90 cents during Thursday’s trading.

$1 is a sort of Mendoza Line for SIX on Wall Street: Six Flags stock could be delisted from the New York Stock Exchange if it stays below or even just hangs around that tragic number for a while.

The company’s more than $2 billion in debt and doesn’t ever turn a profit.

Snyder’s going to release an earnings report for the second quarter of 2008 in a few weeks, and if those numbers aren’t good, well….let’s hurry and take another look at the Big Board while we still can!

When Snyder took over Six Flags through an ugly shareholders coup in 2005, he and his investment outfit, Red Zone LLC, a clique made up mostly of Redskins officials, claimed control of 10,921,300 shares of SIX.

As Snyder was anointing himself the Man in Charge, the stock went up to $11.93 per share, meaning the Red Zone investment was worth $130,291,109.

On Thursday, that wad was blown down to just $9,829,170.

Boy, is there a lotta red in Red Zebra: The Redskins Park pot is light by…. $120,461,939!

But, here’s the good news: There’s not much more to lose!

Keep the dial right here for all the breaking news in Snyder’s Six Flags soap opera.

Dan Snyder’s cheerless theme park chain, Six Flags, will debut a cheerleading squad, the Thrilleaders, at its New Jersey outpost on July 4.

Six Flags boasts that the Thrilleaders are the first official cheerleading squad ever put together by an amusement park company.

Snyder’s operation hasn’t had much to wave pom-poms about lately.

Not with the company’s stock crashing to a buck a share during Tuesday’s trading.

And word getting out that Dwight Schar, one of Snyder’s Redskins partners and a member of Six Flags’ board, began dumping two million of his Six Flags shares last week.

And, um, Saturday’s decapitation of a teenage visitor to Six Flags Over Georgia by the Batman rollercoaster.

But, long before the Thrilleaders came about, Six Flags already had an unofficial cheerleader: Some guy named Rick Munarriz of the stock tout site Motley Fool.

Yesterday, as Six Flags stock (SIX) was continuing its descent toward double figures, Munarriz had the stones to write that “the chain is clawing its way back” and made yet another pitch for Six Flags stock.

Wha?

Munarriz’ previous Six Flags writings have been just as full of bullishness. For whatever reason, he’s been touting the company since shortly after Snyder took over, when SIX was trading at more than $10 a share.

He’s never let the near-total collapse of SIX get in the way of his cheering.

Last June, in a post headlined “Six Flags Rocks Around the Clock,” Munarriz hailed several moves Snyder’s management team had made, and was particularly taken with the partial purchase of Dick Clark Productions from Red Zone LLC — a bizarre transaction that essentially amounted to one of Snyder’s private equity outfits (Red Zone) making a $40 million sale to one of Snyder’s public equity outfits (Six Flags).

In any case, Munarriz called Six Flags’ acquisition “brilliant.”

On November 2, 2007, Munarriz posted a column headlined “Four Stocks That Should Quadruple Soon,” and included Six Flags in the mix. As of yesterday, Six Flags stock had lost more than two-thirds of its value since that post.

Brilliant.

Keep the dial right here for all the breaking news in Snyder’s Six Flags soap opera.

Dan Snyder’s toxiferous theme park chain, Six Flags, appears to have Mapquested directions to oblivion.

Stock in Snyder’s company (SIX) hit a tragic number – $1 a share – during Tuesday’s trading.

I’m no Suze Orman, but I believe the proper term to describe what this development means for Six Flags backers is: Ouchie wouchie.

As if investors didn’t already have incentive to jump ship– Snyder’s chain is more than $2 billion in debt and buries itself deeper with every non-earnings statement – the last week has brought them scads of reasons to give up hope.

Just as news was spreading about the decapitation of a teenage visitor to Six Flags Over Georgia, management was filing paperwork with the SEC confessing that Redskins administrator and Snyder’s Six Flags partner Dwight Schar had jettisoned two million shares of stock.

When the big boys with all the inside info are running away from the company, it’s time for the recreational traders and everybody else to, as they said on Wall Street in the 1980s, “Bust a move!”*

Schar was a big cog in the original investment machine, made up of mostly Redskins officials including Vinny Cerrato and Karl Swanson, that Snyder used to power his way to the top of Six Flags in 2005.

At the time, Snyder’s clique controlled 10,921,300 shares of SIX.

Not long after Snyder put himself in charge of the Six Flags board of directors, the stock was trading at $11.93 per share, meaning the Redskins Park clique was sitting on $130,291,109.

Boy, has Snyder scrambled that nest egg.

With today’s dollar store pricing, I don’t even need a calculator to figure out how shallow things have gotten in Snyder’s original office pool: $10,921,300.

Snyder et al’s nut had shriveled off about $120 million.

Yet again: Ouchie wouchie.

Keep the dial right here for breaking news in Snyder’s Six Flags soap opera.

*The phrase “Bust a move!” was probably not really part of  the Wall Street lexicon in the 1980s. Or ever.

Dan Snyder’s piteous theme park chain, Six Flags, is imploding as we speak.

The company announced this evening that Dwight Schar, Snyder’s partner in the Washington Redskins and in the investment group that took over the Six Flags board in 2005, has just dumped TWO MILLION of his Six Flags (SIX) shares.

“I very much believe in the Company, the management team and the extraordinary progress they are making in the turnaround,” Schar said in a press release announcing his huge Six Flags selloff.

We believe everything you say, Dwight!

Oh, wait! No we don’t!

Keep the dial right here for all the breaking news in Snyder’s Six Flags soap opera.

Dan Snyder’s can-you-spare-a-buck? theme park chain, Six Flags, is making huge strides toward its inevitable resting place in Chapter 11.

Early in Monday’s trading, a share of SIX was selling for $1.14. In a season of historic lows, this is but another.

When Snyder’s investment group, which included his Redskins staffers Vinny Cerrato and Karl Swanson, took over Six Flags in 2005, they claimed to control 10,921,300 shares of company stock.

By March 2006, Six Flags’ stock was trading for 11.93 per share.

That put the value of the co-workers’ investment at $130,291,109.

With today’s poopy price, the pool’s value had sunk to $12,450,282.

Damn, I’m tired of carrying the one for these guys, so let’s just say the Redskins Park traders are down about $118 million.

This keeps up, and Snyder and his staffers are going to lose some serious money.

And no matter what you read elsewhere: Six Flags stock was already in freefall last week, so the company can’t blame its dire straits on the decapitation of a visitor to its Six Flags Over Georgia park over the weekend.

That is unsettling, however.

Keep the dial right here for breaking news in Snyder’s Six Flags soap opera.

Dan Snyder’s beggarly theme park chain, Six Flags, broke another record yesterday.

Not a good record, alas.

During Thursday’s trading on Wall Street, a share of stock in Six Flags (SIX) was going for $1.42.

That’s the lowest price in the stock’s history.

And this after Six Flags management has thrown all sorts of tricks at potential customers and investors this season — discounted admissions, debt reorganizations, etc… — trying to convince The Street that Captain Dan ain’t steering this ship into an iceberg.

Snyder took over the Six Flags board of directors in late 2005, after writing a letter to stockholders blasting the then-current management of Six Flags. Among other things, Snyder wrote that that investors would be “better off hiding their money under a mattress” than they would buying stock in the company without him leading it.

Stockholders bought Snyder’s pitch and voted out the old regime. Snyder installed himself as chairman of the board.

Snyder filed papers with the SEC in 2005 saying that his investment group, known as Red Zone LLC and made up of Redskins officials, including “Vincent Cerrato” and Karl Swanson, controlled 10,921,300 shares of Six Flags stock.

Shortly after the coup, stock in the company hit $11.93 a share, according to the database of MSN Money.

That would mean that Snyder and his Redskins Park posse had a kitty worth $130,291,109.

As of yesterday afternoon, assuming everybody held onto their shares, the office pool’s value was down to $15,508,246.

So during Snyder’s reign, the co-workers had lost $114,782,863.

Oh lordy.

I’m no Gordon Gekko, but from crunching these numbers, I think that means folks at Redskins Park would have been better off hiding their money under a mattress than investing with the boss.

Keep the dial right here for all the breaking news in Snyder’s Six Flags soap opera.

Dan Snyder’s pauperized theme park chain, Six Flags, announced yesterday that Robbie Knievel will jump a lot of cars on a motorcycle at Six Flags- St. Louis next week.

Robbie, 46, is the offspring of Evel Knievel, the dead jumpsuit wearing loon who broke pretty much every bone in his body twice or so on live TV as America watched during the 1970s. The younger Knievel started his own career in motorcycle jumping at 7. At Six Flags, he will attempt to leap over 25 Dodges, which is being billed as a personal record.

So he knows thrillseeking. But when asked if he would use any money made from his Six Flags jump to invest in Snyder’s company, Knievel, who once jumped the Grand Canyon on a motorcycle, turned ashen and started sweating and peed himself while yelling “Six Flags stock? Are you crazy? That risky!”*

Keep the dial right here for all the breaking news in Snyder’s Six Flags soap opera.

*Question and answer and entire scenario, including the pee pee part, totally made up for chuckles. But Knievel really is jumping at Six Flags next week.

Dan Snyder’s destitutional theme park chain, Six Flags, got a rare boost with the publication of an article in Slate that — get this! — didn’t come right out and say the company was doomed.

It’s about time somebody told that side of the story.

But, alas, in the newspapering business, there’s a fine line between “counter-intuitive” and “O Really?”

And darned if that boundary didn’t get as blurry as breakfast with Amy Winehouse when the Slate piece, in attempting to paint Snyder’s playgrounds as affordable for the common man, alleged: “A typical Six Flags visitor in 2007 spent $36 for the day, including parking, the price of a ticket, and meals.“

The “O Really” factor: The standard adult admission price for most Six Flags parks last year was a lot more than $36. For example, Six Flags America in Largo, our local outpost, had a base charge of $49.99 per person.

To be fair, Slate’s reported average expenditures could be accurate. There are all sorts of online discounts and coupons available to patrons wanting to save some bucks on the general admission.

But for all the entry discounts, this is a chain that bans park-goers from bringing in any sustenance or beverages, and where soft drinks cost $4, and where parking can set you back $15-$30.

And Six Flags also offers premium upgrades where visitors can cut in front of the hoi polloi and hop right on a ride like, say, the Superman Tower of Power — for $249 per person.

That’s just how Dan Snyder rolls. Making that average expenditure even more suspect, the Slate story also claimed that “per capita guest spending [at Six Flags] was up 13 percent” in the last two years.

So, again, these figures might be right. It’d be easier to tell if the piece said where that $36 average came from.

Perhaps: From the same folks who claim to have a season ticket waiting list with “more than 200,000” names on it?

Keep the dial right here for all the breaking news in Snyder’s Six Flags soap opera.

Voting has slowed to almost nothingness in two Dan Snyder popularity polls, so City Desk is ready to declare that Snyder is beloved. And hated.

On the message board Snyder owns,extremeskins.com, members were asked to approve or disapprove of his “handling of the Redskins over the past few months.”

The balloting was made public, so everybody could see who voted yay or nay. Since Snyder’s moderators have a habit of berating his critics, or worse, that surely skewed voting.

Even so, and forgetting the home field advantage and the bogusly limited scope of the polling question — what can an owner do in May and June? — Snyder did very well: As of this morning, he was getting an 85 percent favorable rating from extremeskins.com. 

Snyder hasn’t fared so great outside his house. Sports blogging icon and my regular Friday morning date Dan Steinberg also ran a Snyder poll on his DC Sports Bog. 

There, the vote was private, and voters were asked simply to “Approve” or “Disapprove” of Snyder.

At last check, Bad Snyder was pounding Good Snyder 57-42.

It could have been worse. Snyder was really getting crushed early in the Post’s polling. But a windfall of positivity came into the Bog after Art Mills, the enforcer/propagandist at extremeskins.com, started a thread on Snyder’s site directing members to go vote.

Last time we talked, Mills, who is equal parts writing talent and full-of-crapness, told me he was paid by the team to write. Yet, far as I can tell, he won’t divulge being on the Redskins payroll to his flock at extremeskins.com.

Just tell ‘em, Art.

Dan Snyder’s tuckered theme park chain, Six Flags, stands accused of running a racist ad campaign.

 A new series of commercials for Six Flags features an Asian guy shouting “More Flags! More Fun!” and other things about flags. The spots were produced by Red Line Films, a company that made the 2005 boxing ”moviementary,” “Cinderella Man,” and other programming for ESPN, the former employer of Snyder’s partner Mark Shapiro.

Six Flags likes to keep the identity of its mascots under wraps, but it turns out Snyder’s new barker is played by a Japanese actor named Yutaka Takeuchi.

For those into counting degrees of separation: Before ever screaming about flags, Takeuchi had a bit part in “The Last Samurai,” a 2003 feature starring Snyder’s top Hollywood connection, Tom Cruise.

Keep the dial right here for all the breaking news in Snyder’s Six Flags soap opera.

Dan Snyder’s infirm theme park chain, Six Flags, announced not long ago it was cutting back on its advertising outsourcing as part of a budget slash.

Every penny helps, since Six Flags is over $2 billion-with-a-b in debt.

But perhaps the company coulda used those extra eyeballs looking at the ads produced for this year’s high season before letting ‘em hit tv sets. Because the spots they ended up with — as part of a campaign featuring an Asian guy with some sort of accent screaming “More Flags! More Fun!” — are being called things way worse than dumb on blogs and message boards.

Like: “Racist.”

Among those tagging the Six Flags ad campaign with the R word are bloggers Angry Chinese Guy and Angry Asian Man.

Here’s part of Angry (and, judging solely by his sporadic blogging, Kinda Lazy) Chinese Guy’s takedown of the Six Flags spots:

The Asian guy, of course, has an accent and does not properly pronounce the words correctly. He doesn’t even speak in complete sentences! He just barks out short phrases. I don’t know about you, but that’s pretty damn racist…We want more Asian representation in the media, but damn if this is all we’re going to get, then forget it. The saying goes something like “Bad publicity is still publicity”…fuck that. This only furthers the stereotypes of Asian people and we really don’t need this. This damn commercial puts us back a few years. It tries to play off of the Japanese commercials where the guy pops up (just as this guy does) and sells a product. How often have we seen this type of satire? LOTS. Now Six Flags is taking this ignorance nationwide, helping to deliver this stereotypical portrayal of Asians into households everywhere!

The “More Flags!” screamer is the first pitchman Six Flags has had since Mr. Six, who was deep sixed by Snyder shortly after he took the chain’s reins in 2005.

Nobody ever called Mr. Six racist. “Pedophile” was thrown his way a lot, however.

Keep the dial right here for all the breaking news in Snyder’s Six Flags soap opera.