ESPN Bloodshed in Pittsburgh (Radio Version)

Passionate sports town and some of the best franchises in sports.
But, Pittsburgh is a pretty small market for radio.

 

I left a radio station about 25 years ago, and before I departed, I scrubbed all of the ads with my voice and the voice of others who had left. Cleaning the cartridges, I said.

I got the person who was on the air at the time in a bit of trouble. I felt bad about getting her yelled at. I have no regrets about the rest of it.

 

Radio firings are the worst. People bitch about newspapers beancounters, but radio is bloody..
And... Disney Radio?

 

I'm sure that there is more of a market for Demi Lovato and the JoBros in Pittsburgh than Steelers talk anyway.

 

But less overhead as a Disney station

 

I've always liked Savran and Junker. (Stan! Guy! Love the show!) But I have to wonder about this, because I'm not sure what he CAN do at FSN Pittsburgh. Didn't Liberty Media axe Sportsbeat and gut virtually all of the local programming, save for the Pirates and Penguins pre- and post-game shows?

 

Pregame stuff, he hosted Steelers press conferences and did live interviews. They'll find enough work for him.

 

Exactly. Disney is syndicated, and as such there's very few on-site employees for a Disney station -- a station manager, someone running the board, some ad reps and maybe an on-air person for live cut-ins at Radio Disney-sponsored events.

Funny thing is, a lot of Radio Disney stations are AM. You never see pop on the AM band anymore, unless it's them.

 

Seriously, some of those guys axed from ESPN would be a great addition to 93.7 The Fan.

 

My radio firing story:

About ten years, I was doing sports talk radio in the morning, combined with my TV sports anchor job at night (all in all, a sweet set-up).

It's a Friday and we just finish up an intense week of bringing in the market's highest-profile coach to talk about whether he was about to get fired. Lots of buzz around it.

Our show ends at 11 am each day. In the 10:55 break before we say goodbye, I hear a 10-second promo, "The New 710!" - a different tagline from what had been just our call letters and 710. The program manager walks in at 11:01.

"Uh, sorry guys, this is the last day. We're switching to smooth jazz starting immediately."

Smooth jazz?!?

Went up to the GM's office - he was a heartless bastard.

Me: "Look, if I was going to leave, I would have given you four months notice. You know I would have."

Him: "Sorry."

Me: "The newspaper will probably call me by 2 p.m. Want me to play nice or talk about this day?"

Him: "What do you want?"

Me: "Three months severance."

Him: (sigh with rolling of eyes). "Done".

What I did not tell him was that, the next week, I was playing to give four months notice anyway as my wife was in her seventh month with our first born.

 

Stan and Guy are a Pittsburgh institution, and if these schmos at ESPN were losing money with those two doing four hours of live radio a day, then they're just asleep at the wheel. I tried to listen to the other sports station, 93.7 the Fan ... just couldn't get into it. Pittsburgh sports fans are provincial, and we like what's familiar. Clearly 93.7 would be wise to pick up Stan and Guy as a team if it can get them.

The afternoon show with Paulsen and Logan and the other guy was definitely weaker. I give Paulsen the benefit of the doubt because he was so good doing the morning show on WDVE for so many years. I like him because he's a familiar voice more than anything else.

But Stan and Guy are just plain good. And if you can't make a go of it with those two -- even in a small market -- you're not really trying.