The excitement of yesterday's move into Rock Town Hall's "Hot Rocks" era was followed this morning by this thoughtful-yet-disappointing "Dear John" e-mail that we received from the investment group that had been interested in helping us take Rock Town Hall to a broader, younger audience.

Follow up:

Gentleman,

We would like to thank you for your time these past few weeks and your efforts yesterday at reshaping the Rock Town Hall format to satisfy our prospective target audience. Judging by yesterday's launch of the Hot Rocks format, we're not convinced that you will have the stamina to pump out the visceral, provocative, cutting-edge rock lifestyle content that our target audience demands. At this point we will respectfully choose to cease negotiations and put our focus on other prospective content providers. Personally, we remain fans of the site and will continue logging in for thoughtful rock discussion over our morning cups of coffee.

We feel it would be remiss not to suggest that you consider pitching your undeniably intellectual approach to sensuality to a more mature, educated audience, such as Nerve. We would be happy to introduce you to a former colleague who is now part of their backing group. At Nerve, I would imagine the sensitive handling of issues like the innocent, incestual themes of Cher's work and references to the late French director Louis Malle would be better received, not to mention understood. As you know, our target readership is expected to be comprised of a demographic that considers Something About Mary and Knocked Up art house hits.

We'd like to wish you and your families a happy and healthy holiday season. Best of luck in the coming year.

So there it is, Townspeople. We'd like to thank you for your efforts and enthusiasm over our new format. Although we doubled our usual average of hits per day, over the long haul, perhaps its best we face the facts and focus on doing what we do best. Beginning today, you can expect a return to our usual Rock Town Hall format.

We should report that all was not lost in yesterday's experiment. An energy drink marketer has contacted us to purchase the rights to the controversial Hot Rocks logo!