All News format out, ESPN Radio takes over

[Liut]

I remember hearing longtime wrestling announcer Tony Schiavone doing a WSB news update during (I think) Neil Boortz's show while driving to a football game one Friday evening. I think it was in the early-to-mid 2000s after WCW went belly up. If you're a wrestling fan the voice is instantly recognizable, so it was a really weird and random moment of a guy drawing any paycheck he could when he was between gigs.

I remember the wrestling that aired in the early Turner SuperStation days.
The host was Gordon Solie and Tommy "Wild Fire" Rich was the man!

 

[Chef2]

Horrible, yet to your point the show had every ounce of ESPN's marketing power behind it. Now every ESPN Radio host might as well be in witness protection.

Is Bruno on in Philly?

 

[BurnsWhenIPee]

I remember the wrestling that aired in the early Turner SuperStation days.
The host was Gordon Solie and Tommy "Wild Fire" Rich was the man!

The Freebirds were terrifying to 11-year-old me.

 

[Chef2]

Talk radio. Absolutely unlistenable.

Now? Yes
Back in the day? No

 

[Chef2]

For many years, the great Larry Zimmer did Colorado football on Saturday and the Broncos on Sunday on KOA.

Zim was a screamer. Which I despise. Zim’s deal (which I love to this day)….is if you were playing like krap, he would call you out for it.
I love Logan.
I love Hastings.
I love them both together.
Both of them on the Broncos was a disaster.
Mark Johnson is very good for CU.

 

[dixiehack]

Gene Deckerhoff doubled up with the Bucs and Florida State until dropping the Noles after the 2021 season. That’s a helluva commute even if both teams are at home that weekend.

Wes Durham had the Georgia Tech/Falcons combo for a while and still does Falcons radio in addition to his ACC Network duties.

 

[Typist Clerk]

There were few Saturday radio delights in the autumn on a par with discovering Georgia was playing a night football game. That meant the dulcet tones of Larry Munson were carried across the miles on WSB 750. "The stupid clock," "Get the picture," "We're on the 34-and-a-half yard line," "Loran, whadda ya got?" and countless other phrases spilled out of the radio as Larry described the successes and failures of the Dawgs. One night at Tennessee, he exclaimed, "The defensive spotting board just flew out the window," which made the rest of the broadcast even more of an adventure.
The magic of clear-channel radio (and sometimes not so clear in our DXing exploits) could bring a midwesterner, in season, the Bruins on WBZ, LSU football on WWL, the Dodgers and Kings on KFI, magically appearing most of the time about two hours after our sunset, and a host of stations in between. The legacy of network radio's heyday meant most of the powerhouses were NBC or CBS affiliates, so news on the hour was never out of reach. And all the midwest powerhouses seemed to have baseball, or hockey, or both. KMOX had everything, including the all-night music show hosted by John McCormick, "the man who walks and talks at midnight on the 50,000 red-hot watts of KMOX, St. Louis." Between live sports and music to doze off to (McCormick's tunefest, KOA with the "Dolly Holiday" show, WCCO with Franklin Hobbs, WJR with Jay Roberts on Nightflight 760, WGN with Franklyn MacCormack, later Jay Andres, all provided the shows to do that, even in the post "Music Til Dawn" era on several CBS stations, including WCBS), it was a nightly feast.

 

[dixiehack]

There were few Saturday radio delights in the autumn on a par with discovering Georgia was playing a night football game. That meant the dulcet tones of Larry Munson were carried across the miles on WSB 750.

In November 1999, the rocket scientists at Boone Newspapers flew a handful of employees from various points across the South up to Minneapolis for several days to train each of us on maintaining the new web pages the company was setting up for our respective papers.

My publisher booked me on a flight that didn’t arrive at MSP until quite late, maybe 9-10 pm. But this actually worked in my favor because I became the only one in the group with a rental vehicle.

Saturday was a free day for those few of us having to wait on Sunday flights home. I wouldn’t have minded exploring the city on my own, but I wanted to be fair and not leave my new friends stranded at the hotel. So we settled on an all-day outing to the Mall of America.

We all met back up right around sundown for the drive back. One woman in the group was dying to know how Auburn was doing against UGA. So I rolled the dice, tuned in 750 and sure enough we were barely able to get a few static-filled sentences from Munson, grousing as the Dawgs were going down in flames.

For a moment in time we were connected back to home from a very distant outpost. And it didn’t seem quite as far away.

 

[Typist Clerk]

In November 1999, the rocket scientists at Boone Newspapers flew a handful of employees from various points across the South up to Minneapolis for several days to train each of us on maintaining the new web pages the company was setting up for our respective papers.

My publisher booked me on a flight that didn’t arrive at MSP until quite late, maybe 9-10 pm. But this actually worked in my favor because I became the only one in the group with a rental vehicle.

Saturday was a free day for those few of us having to wait on Sunday flights home. I wouldn’t have minded exploring the city on my own, but I wanted to be fair and not leave my new friends stranded at the hotel. So we settled on an all-day outing to the Mall of America.

We all met back up right around sundown for the drive back. One woman in the group was dying to know how Auburn was doing against UGA. So I rolled the dice, tuned in 750 and sure enough we were barely able to get a few static-filled sentences from Munson, grousing as the Dawgs were going down in flames.

For a moment in time we were connected back to home from a very distant outpost. And it didn’t seem quite as far away.

"Hunker down!"

 

[HanSenSE]

Not to forget Bill King, who for a couple of years in the early 80s was doing the Warriors, A's and Raiders. Holy Toledo!

 

[DanOregon]

In a similar vein, Greg Papa started with the Warriors on the radio, then did the A's, added the Raiders, the Giants for a time, and now does the 49ers. You'd think the Sharks would let him handle some pre-season game just for fun.

 

[Chef2]

Gene Deckerhoff doubled up with the Bucs and Florida State until dropping the Noles after the 2021 season. That’s a helluva commute even if both teams are at home that weekend.

Wes Durham had the Georgia Tech/Falcons combo for a while and still does Falcons radio in addition to his ACC Network duties.

Durham and Dave Archer are very very good together on Falcons radio.

 

[2muchcoffeeman]

Now? Yes
Back in the day? No

Always.

 

[MileHigh]

Zim was a screamer. Which I despise. Zim’s deal (which I love to this day)….is if you were playing like krap, he would call you out for it.
I love Logan.
I love Hastings.
I love them both together.
Both of them on the Broncos was a disaster.
Mark Johnson is very good for CU.

Agree on all except Hastings, who I can't stand. Logan is awesome and probably the greatest high school football coach in state history. Big M.J. fan. Lots of enthusiasm. He and Barnett are very good together.

 

[BitterYoungMatador2]

Is Bruno on in Philly?

I think he's on some podcast network now. He has lit himself on fire more times than a weird Vegas magician. He just can't help himself. Got blown out at Fox Sports Radio, then Sporting News Radio, then back in Philadelphia.

"When You're Deemed a Racist, There's No Escape" - Tony Bruno Gives His Full Thoughts After Cancellation of Radio Show - Crossing Broad

 

[playthrough]

Tying what you were listening to with the part of your life you were in ... I listened to Steve Czaban as well as Tony Bruno on Fox Sports Radio (Andrew Siciliano was his sidekick) when I was home a lot with my infant daughter. She's in college now.

 

[BurnsWhenIPee]

Remember working in Central Illinois shortly after graduation - newly married, no kids and still had clueless optimism about what a noble pursuit journalism was.

I listened religiously to WSCR sports radio out of Chicago, when they only had a daytime license, so they went off the air by 6 p.m. or so. Mike North and Dan Jiggetts were the mid-day hosts, and they seemed so edgy when they'd say things like "You're a Jag-Bag" and segments called "Who You Crappin'?"

Mike Greenberg was there as a reporter, not even a host yet. He was actually tolerable then, which should tell you how long ago that was.

 

[Batman]

Tying what you were listening to with the part of your life you were in ... I listened to Steve Czaban as well as Tony Bruno on Fox Sports Radio (Andrew Siciliano was his sidekick) when I was home a lot with my infant daughter. She's in college now.

One of my weird career highlights was having my paper be the "sponsor" of the Daily Czabe. IIRC, it was one of the last FSR shows before they canned him to bring in Stephen A. Smith.

 

[BitterYoungMatador2]

The early days of FSR was leaps and bounds better than anything ESPN was churning out, IMO. Bruno in the mornings, Czabe in the evenings and, before that, Bob Page. Bob Golic used to be part of an overnight show that was laugh out loud funny at times, proving one Golic was at least entertaining.

 

[Chef2]

Tying what you were listening to with the part of your life you were in ... I listened to Steve Czaban as well as Tony Bruno on Fox Sports Radio (Andrew Siciliano was his sidekick) when I was home a lot with my infant daughter. She's in college now.

You’re old.