I love talk radio, especially sports talk radio, and I’ve been lucky enough to experience talk radio not only as a consumer of the product, but also as “on-air talent.” I will not lie; part of me thinks my brief radio experience, in a very small media market, qualifies me as an expert on the subject. So every day, while at work, I turn the dial until I find some program to critique. From Rush Limbaugh to Thom Hartmann, from Mike and Mike In The Morning to The Hardline, if they are talking, I’ll listen and many times I’ll end up writing about something I heard that day.
Today is no different!
Since moving to Dallas, I’ve been amazed at how The Ticket (KTCK 1310 AM) kicks the local ESPN radio affiliate’s ass (ESPN 103.3 FM). Ask any Metroplex male in between the age of 24-50 and you’ll probably get a hundred different answers on why they prefer The Ticket to ESPN radio, but I suspect 95% of those answers would deal with entertainment value. In the end, sports talk radio exists to entertain. If a station fails to entertain, it fails to serve its’ purpose and will eventually fail.
What makes for entertaining radio? Well, it’s kind of like pornography–you’ll know it when you see it, or in this case hear it. I think we can begin by listing what makes radio NOT entertaining.
1.) Phones Sure, listener feedback can be helpful and possibly even entertaining, in small recommended doses, but when I tune into a radio program, I do so to listen to the on-air talent and not “Doug in Garland“. As I began my journey into radio, a great talent taught me that an on-air personality should not go to the phones more than one segment per hour. Tune into ESPN 103.3 and their shows contain a ton of phone calls and text messaging, especially Randy Galloway’s program.
2.) No Experts Needed In the world of sports, experts don’t exist and anyone who claims to be one is lying out their ass. Sure, it helps to understand the techniques and nuances associated with the games; however, in the end, there are way too many intangibles to attempt to proclaim some universal truth. Sports journalist serve two functions—report and entertain. The last thing I want from a sports journalist is conversations with other media members. If I wanted to know what Todd Archer thought about the Dallas Cowboys, I’d read the Morning News. If I cared what John Clayton thought, I would watch ESPN. If, for some reason, I turn on Randy Galloway’s radio program I do so with the hope (or fear) of hearing Grandpa Urine. The on-air talent who depends on “experts” expresses low confidence in their ability to both report and entertain.
3.) Tunnel Vision We have all read the various studies; we live in a country of shrinking attention spans. Yet some radio producers failed to read the memo. Many sports talk radio stations, especially the generic sports talk stations, want to take a 3 hour radio program and focus on one or two issues. Even in July, material exists to fill a 3-hour program. Sure, you may have to venture off the sports page, but being cultured and diverse never hurt anyone. In short, after two segments on a subject, it is time to move on to another subject. After that time, you’ve said all that can said and you risk rambling or even worse yet, becoming cliché.
4.) Don’t Take Yourself Too Seriously Jock talkers are the worst when it comes to egos. Turn on sports talk and you’re going to hear extreme bravado. While I think it is necessary to be self confident, on-air personalities need to realize that in the end, they’re talking sports, which is entertainment and for which there are no experts. For example, let’s take Dallas sports talk personality, Chuck Cooperstein, “Coop” carries himself as a man’s man. He speaks with the deep baritone falsetto of “radio voice” and issues strong opinions, often against the home team, to appear non-biased. He grows impatient if talk deviates, even for one second, from sports and grows even more irate if the conversation turns to certain sports topics he feels are not worthy of “talk” (i.e. high school football, fantasy sports, etc.). “Coop” needs to realize he might be a little more successful if he broadened his horizons.
Tags: Chuck Cooperstein, Coop, Dallas, Dallas Cowboys, Dallas Morning News, ESPN, ESPN 103.3, ESPN radio, John Clayton, KTCK 1310 AM, media market, Mike and Mike in the Morning, pornography, Randy Galloway, Rush Limbaugh, sports talk radio, talk radio, The Hardline, The Ticket, Thom Hartmann, Todd Archer
July 24, 2008 at 2:14 pm |
I agree. The Ticket does a great job (afternoon guys are a little bit too much zany morning show zoo type). Not the case in OKC where I grew up. Horrible!
I’m in Nashville now. Pro town, SEC country… You’d think it would be better. Maybe the worst sports radio I have ever heard. Ever. They talk Preds hockey 24/7. Nobody gives half a shit! UT, Bama, Vandy, UK, and UGA stickers on every car in town.
Check it out online. Holy balls, man! Local Titan you hoo, Frank Wycheck? Horrible. I think he actually may be mildly retarted. Honestly. Awful.
July 29, 2008 at 4:49 pm |
Read your comments and felt a need (Not sure why) to respond.
I guess our biggest disagreement is on the need of experts. You don’t think there are any. I believe there are plenty. Opinions are like you know what…Everyone has one. But it is only the smart one (Not the snarky one) that should be taken with any grain of salt. And those who are with the people involved on a regular basis have a tendency to know more than those who don’t. Are experts occasionally wrong? Of course they are, No one has has yet been born perfect, but experts reduce the level of the possibility of error while at the same time providing the likelihood that you might learn something you didn’t know. Who doesn’t, at the end of the day, want to feel just a little more intelligent.
I agree with you fully on the tunnel vision issue. There is nothing more boring than three hours on one subject (Unless that subject is so newsworhty and compelling that it demands it). Three hours of the Cowboys at camp is just brutal to me. I love to run the gamut of things. Except that every consultant that has ever commented on the subject seems to think against the line of thinking. They tell you the auidence keeps changing and what you said an hour ago is now being heard by an entirely new audience. There is some truth to that, but not as much, I believe, as they think. They also tell you to keep it local, and most importantly (and unfortunately for me) to keep it on football. I love football, but I love everything else too.
As it relates to me. There are a lot of things people have said to, and about me, but having a “fake radio voice” has never been one of those. My voice is my voice (for better or worse). As it relates to broadening my horizons. I have become better at trying to let people into my little world, but I must say people shouldn’t care what movie I went to see, or who I’m going to vote for President. Frankly, if you have to care about what is going on in my private life then you don’t have much working in yours. They have turned to the station I’m on to hear me talk about the sports of the day. All of them (Save for HS, Fantasy and WWE. The former two involve a personal type of counseling that no one other than the person being counseled gives two rats about).
July 31, 2008 at 3:06 pm |
Great article, Josh!! I agree 200% with your statements regarding egos & bravado. You could have also included tv commentators in that statement as well. That’s why I’ve more and more lately turned down the volume and made my own commentary during games.
September 26, 2008 at 5:41 am |
[...] Bags on the Air Waves? When I launched this blog back at the end of July, I began with a post blasting the Dallas ESPN radio affiliate. Looking back, I may have been a little too harsh. I even elicited a response from one of their [...]