Neal McCready Rammer Jammered, Yella Hammered off the radio in Alabammer

Wait, when was this? You know, the Columns is calling me.

Oh, and I rather enjoyed Neal, if only because I loved how he really got callers fired up. In full disclosure, I know Neal and am a fan. He's been good to me in the past.

 

Not pro-Alabama enough... fuck talk radio and the entitled hilljacks who call...

 

Delta's ready when you are ...

If fan reaction cost him his newspaper gig, I could get the outrage. Talk radio? eh. If you sign up with the dancing monkey circuit, you have to expect to be gone when people don't dig your dancing.

 

Well put.

 

I should have added that Neal's writing, in my opinion, was often brilliant and hard-hitting.
It's just the radio gig that really didn't sit well with me.
He's shown over and over that he can get a scoop or work a beat.
And talk radio, Rufino, as I understand the concept, is supposed to be about letting the people talk some, too.
It is the abnorm when callers are "Tider Ted" or "Eagle Bob" though that show had a few of those types.
What I don't understand is why hosts don't tell those routine, oft-callers that today they can't be on the air.
Tell them not to call so frequently.
In this and other beats, you often hear hosts "welcoming" these frequent-fliers to the airwaves.

 

I talked to Neal one time.

I e-mailed him and asked why he voted for Arizona State (when it was No. 12) in the AP poll. He responded less than an hour later and was candid with me.

Of course, one e-mail response does not judge a person. But I thought him taking time to respond - and so quickly - was nice.

(FYI, Neal voted the Sun Devils No. 1 for three straight weeks before the Oregon loss.)

 

I can't believe we've gotten this far in the thread without mentioning the whole "moving Texas ahead of Cal" controversy from 2004 ...

In case you don't know what I'm talking about (cut-and-paste from a December 2004 Knight Ridder News Service story):

"The Associated Press poll is made public and that led to a sticky problem for Neal McCready, columnist for the Mobile Register in Alabama. McCready raised Texas from No. 9 to No. 5 in his final vote of the year on Sunday even though the Longhorns hadn't played since Nov. 26. He wrote a column in the Sunday edition of the Mobile Register indicating that he received extreme pressure from Texas fans to reconsider his order."

Seems like Neal's radio bosses aren't the only ones who cave to public pressure ...

 

Neal did good work with the radio show. It's a bummer that he's out.

I'm definitely not doing the show again. After today, I mean.

 

Isn't the idea of talk radio to piss off the fans? If they hate the host, isn't that a good thing, economically speaking?

 

You'd like to think so, yes.

 

There's no such thing as bad publicity?

Valid... but I'd like to think there are still a few of us out here who tune in to hear well-presented opinions from interesting hosts and guests, not the "idiotfest" Costas dubbed the genre a few years back. Life will go on, I think, even if I never hear Jim Rome read another e-mail from "Orenthal."

 

No, the idea of talk radio is to generate revenue and ratings (in that order). How to best do that varies from market to market depending on the fanbase and what other types of radio are available in town. Callers, however, are rarely the key to a successful talk show because the vast majority of them don't know how to be interesting and entertaining on the radio. A show taking lots of them unless there's a hot topic that everyone has a strong opinion on that day is a show likely on its way to the talk radio graveyard.