O'Donnell: Opening boom of 'The Last Dance' becoming snap, crackle, what?

THE ICING ON THE CAKE continues to slowly melt away from ESPN's "The Last Dance."

For the third straight week, the Michael Jordan imaging venture continued to lose audience.

After opening with a first-run viewership of 6.1 million, Episodes 5 and 6 this past Sunday dipped to an average 5.5 million with Episode 6 bottoming out at 5.2 million.

So much for word-of-mouth.

According to ESPN, adding encore, DVR and on-demand viewership, those numbers were swollen to more than 13 million for week one, 11 million for week two and 10 million for week three.

By market and rating, Chicago continued as the lone national DMA (designated market area) over a 10.0 with tarheeled Greensboro, Raleigh-Durham and Charlotte consistent Top 5 inclusions.

New York and Los Angeles are showing about as much interest in the series as a chance to study under Heather Graham at The Actors Studio.

In other words, while roughly 11 million Americans may be finding some sort of distractive relief in carefully tailored memories of Mike, more than 300 million aren't.

STILL, SINCE ONLY ONE insouciant walking Planet Air covered the Bulls the day Jordan joined the team (for The Daily Herald), left newspapering to work on Jordan-authorized projects (1992 to 1994) and returned to extend Bulls coverage by a downtown daily during the final run of championships, here are two interim takes on elements twirling around "TLD":

1. Jeannie Morris should be receiving a huge thank-you check from director Jason Hehir and associates - She was the predominant pioneer in Chicago-based women sports journalists beginning at WMAQ-Channel 5 in 1967 and ending at WBBM-Channel 2 in 1992.

Along the way, she wrote and produced two tremendous documentaries on His Airness for Channel 2, including "Michael Jordan" (1987) and "Michael Jordan and Company: Behind the Scenes" (1988).

Hehir borrows footage from both and the NBA Entertainment crew that followed the Bulls in 1997-1998 clearly was attempting to catch Morris's organic flow and feel (and didn't come close).

Both Morris docs are available for viewing on YouTube and they are well worth the effort for anyone into the whole "TLD" thing.

Google "jeannie morris michael jordan" and both should pop up.

Guaranteed that Hehir and staff long ago did.

2. Sam Smith should have been given the option "to resign" by The Chicago Tribune after publication of "The Jordan Rules" - Smith is one of the few print media-spawned people included in "TLD."

For the past several years, post-Tribune, he has been on the payroll of Jerry Reinsdorf as a blogger for the Bulls website - essentially serving at the pleasure of the chairman as sort of a favorable-conduct reward.

But when his book came out, there was still an ethic in vogue at better journalism schools.

It was that when a newspaper assigns an individual to cover "a beat," presumptively, the "beat writer" is laying out the most important and impacting elements of his reportage to the public on a regular basis in return for a properly earned paycheck.

A logical corollary would be that if a "beat reporter" withheld enough information to craft a best-selling book about a towering individual on his beat, something was amiss.

Something was.

Smith had recast himself as a book writer, not a credible daily journalist.

And as has been stated before, Jordan thought Smith was weaselly before "The Jordan Rules" and after its publication, strongly felt that his initial instinct had been proven correct.

His published "answer" became the megaselling "Rare Air" (1993).

STREET-BEATIN': ESPN's decision to televise Korean baseball live in the wee hours reminds Dave Hoekstra and The Dawn Patrol of sailing's 1987 America's Cup. That was when after-midnighters were mesmerized watching Dennis Conner and The Stars & Stripes 87 sweep The Kookaburra III off the shores of Western Australia. ...

A group of horsemen and officials from Hawthorne Racecourse and Downstate Fairmount Park met with staff of Gov. J.B. Pritzker to plead their case for the resumption of closed-stands horse racing ASAP. (Arlington Park remains in its own orbit.) ...

CBS and Sean McManus have made it official: Charles Davis and Ian Eagle will be The Fisheye's No. 2 NFL broadcast team when pro football resumes. ...

Funny hearing the self-parodying Jalen Rose suddenly being a TV expert on All Things Bulls. Scottie Pippen once pointedly referred to Rose as "riffraff." ...

ESPN2 is bringing new hope to couch crusted everywhere with fresh coverage of folks like BearDaBeast and the NBA 2K League. (Hey, for impressionable minds, it beats binge-watching "American Horror Story.") ...

And Friday night marks the 50th anniversary of "The Willis Reed Game," the New York Knicks' fabled Game 7 win over the Los Angeles Lakers for the 1970 NBA title. Young Marv Albert called the game on local radio in NYC but when asked for his most vivid Garden memory, deadpanned: "When I was a ball boy and at halftime one night, Wilt Chamberlain told me to go get him four hot dogs at a concessions stand."

• Jim O'Donnell's Sports & Media column appears Thursday and Sunday. Reach him at jimodonnelldh@yahoo.com.