LcoalSports Talk Radio Who do you like and who do you hate

What is this lcoal sports of which u speak?

 

Used to like Tony Bruno, but he's not on now. Dumbest decision ever by Fox to let him go. They thought Van Earl Wrong could fill the void and they haven't had a decent morning man since.

Used to like Czaban when he was on evenings at Fox. Rarely catch his afternoon show on WTEM now that I have satellite and I'm not up to hear his morning show.

I listen to Ferrall on Sirius sometimes.

I think the beginning of the end of sports talk radio can be traced back to when J.T. the Brick won Rome's smackoff and parlayed it into his own show. It's ushered in a whole new generation of screaming. Once upon a time talk radio was a tolerable medium, with folks like Myron Cope in Pittsburgh, Geoff Sindelar and Pete Franklin in Cleveland, Larry King overights (yes, he was on radio first...and pretty goddam decent at it)

 

Too much -- not all, but way too much -- of it is utterly retarded sniggering fratboy bullshit, ragingly misogynstic, borderline racist, and proudly anti-intellectual.

The virtual equivalency of a 24/7/365 cock-swinging Olympics.

 

As was previously sad, caller-driven talk radio is completely un-listenable. Doesn't matter if it news or sports. Even under the best of circumstances -- intelligent callers conversing with an intelligent host who doesn't bait them, shout over them, hang up on them -- there aren't enough good, interesting callers to go around.

The reason that Kornheiser is easy enough to listen to is that he doesn't talk to callers or active athletes. I will give Cowherd one morsel of credit: his segment where he takes 10 minutes, talks to 3 or 4 beat writers and asks them questions is a very good idea. That is how you use a national platform -- give me the opportunity to listen to people that I don't get to hear from very often and people who know more than the average bear.

 

I catch up with the Kornheiser show on podcast since it starts at 2 a.m. out here.

While I agree the vast majority of local sports talk is unlistenable, Omaha's local ESPN show isn't too bad (even though it is -- shockingly -- football-centric). It has good guests and rarely veers toward the LCD blathering so often heard elsewhere.

 

I don't listen to the FAN in Toronto much other than Prime Time Sports with Bob McCown, which has solid co-hosts and guests, and Mike Wilner's postgame Jays Talk.

 

I listen to our local FM talk station on the five-minute drive to work. The announcers are okay. What amazes me is that they can go on and on about the same subjects every day. This is why I would stink in talk radio. "What's your take on the Tigers?" "They suck."

And then you have 3 hours, 59 minutes and 55 seconds to fill.

 

Hope that they're paying cash for their burgers.

Agreed on the afternoon duo. The No. 2 morning show in town is surprisingly good as well.

 

This is about lcoal sports, so I'll keep it lcoal.

Dallas-Fort Worth has two sports-talk stations: KTCK-AM (The Ticket) and KESN-FM (ESPN). The Ticket is the established station and is consistently tops in the entire market in men 25-54. ESPN has tried to make inroads, and scored a couple of coups by bringing in former market king Randy Galloway and Michael Irvin, but the Ticket still leads by far.

The Ticket is pretty formulaic: Two main sports talk guys and a sidekick per show who'll burn some straight-sports segments and mix in some news and entertainment talk in other segments. They tend to talk about themselves a lot, which I don't care foor unless they're doing it to make a broader point. The exception to the overall formula is Norm Hitzges, who goes from 10 to noon solo and keeps it strictly sportsy.

The DFW ESPN affiliate, which I think went on the air in 2002, tried to be the anti-Ticket at first, but they had little local fare in the beginning other than a Chuck Coopersteen show and wresting Mavericks games away from the Ticket's sister station. They later brought Galloway over from WBAP and added more local shows, but the Ticket still held sway.

Today ESPN has only Irvin and Galloway as local shows. It's Irvin's show in name only — some Yankee named Kevin Kiley drives the bus, with the Playmaker as sidekick. With Eldorado on his best behavior, Galloway doesn't have anything to talk about to the Chicken Fried Nation. And the Ticket marches on. (They go to network for Mike & Mike and the Herd, and everything after Galloway.)

The Ticket has had a stable daily lineup from 5:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. for almost a decade now and still dominates — amazing in the crazy world of radio today. The only major lineup change happened last year when Hardline co-host Greg Williams got fired for drug use, but he was such a drag on the show, the spring Arbitrons went up. Before that, the last person to leave was Rocco Pendola, and that was in 1999. (Pendola, I understand, is now working in Pittsburgh with the Laddie.)

I have entirely too much local sports radio knowledge, I know.

 

I'd rather listen to music than sports talk radio.
Only time I listen to sportsradio is either at the top of the hour or 20 or 40 minutes after the hour to get the sports news update.

 

We have a sports radio station in our town with zero personalities, unless we count the nameless dude who goes on the air with his one-minute sports briefs that are, literally, ripped from today's headlines (reading stories straight from the local daily paper). I can't hate a guy for trying to give the station a local voice.

The nearest market with local sports talk is Memphis, and it has a couple of yahoos who can be quite annoying: George Lapides (WHBQ-560 AM) and Chris Vernon (730 ESPN).

Lapides, who's in his 236th year of continuous broadcasting in Memphis, is an old newspaper guy who thinks Memphis sports should revolve around him. He does talk about sports, but only after he quits yapping about his friends at the Germantown Commissary or the North Mississippi Land Bank.

Vernon, a fanboy who jumped from WHBQ to ESPN 730, is an idiot. Enough said.

(EDIT: As a shareholder of the North Mississippi Land Bank - I bought 26 acres of prime country property as pasture for my wife's three horses - it irks me that my puny share in the company could be sponsoring Lapdies' show. I think I'll bring it up at the next shareholders meeting)