Jeff Agrest, in a true sicko move, transcribed what Spiegel, Laurence, and (called-in) Parkins said on Tuesday

https://chicago.suntimes.com/sports-med ... -the-score

hilariously, in his message Laurence made Shane a (nonconsensual) protege

it's time you all are hauled out to the public square and shot in the face

Holmes: There are things that Spiegs and I just cannot say. So just so you know, you’re probably not going to be satisfied with what it is that we have to say. I’m sorry about that, but there are just things we cannot say. I’ll say that I met Shane a long time ago when he was a young, spirited producer, and I liked him because he had the same level of arrogance that I had when I was a young, spirited producer. When he was younger, it caused us to clash, and that clash I think helped strengthen our relationship and friendship. I think that he is one of the most creative producers that has ever set foot in this building, and I am sad that I am not going to see him every day.

Spiegel: The station and Shane deciding to part ways has been a lot to process. It’s been sad. It’s a management decision, and we’ve gotta leave it at that. Yeah, people will be unhappy with whatever because the connection is real. I know it’s hard for the listeners who loved him, and we feel you and we can’t say any more. We’ve gotta respect the internal nature of it. I’ve absolutely loved making fun, improvised radio with that guy, and I care deeply about him as a friend. I think he’s a phenomenal, creative talent. And I know that we did great work together for a long, long time. We both wish him happiness and success, and I look forward to whatever he gets a chance to do. It’s a bummer, but it is what it is. So it goes, as Kurt Vonnegut says. And onward we have to roll.

Holmes: The job doesn’t define him. And that’s something that I think all of us could probably use a little dose of, of whether or not it defines us, even though these jobs are very personal.

Spiegel: That’s true, and sometimes we get a chance to know. You and I have both been on the beach at times, and when you’re on the beach, you start to realize that the job can’t define you. You’ve gotta be defined by who you are.

Holmes: And when I was going through a really hard time, he brought me to the softball team, and that meant thet world to me. Actively recruited me to that team, and that … I was going through it. And I told him that. I told him after that first season that it meant a lot to me to be pulled out of retirement to play on that team and have fun, even though we are the Buffalo Bills of the softball league.

Spiegel: There’s a lot of inside jokes and a lot of stuff that is just kinda gonna fade away, and that part of sucks. ... We gotta build new ones.

Holmes: His presence here and on air will be absolutely be missed. ... And we’ll see what ends up happening here and with the show and with the spot. But he is definitely missed, for sure.

Parkins: I love Shane so much. He’s my guy, he was all of our guy. I wanted him to be the EP. … He booked Ice Cube on the fly for a mock draft to do the Raiders’ pick, and then he would miss an hour of the show to make us steak. It was so insane. And then a baseball player would threaten to sue us, and then we would get called into an office. But then businesses and world-renowned chefs would line up to host us in the city. NFL players would say how much they like him — Kyle Long, [Patrick] Mannelly and Wanny [Dave Wannstedt]. I love the dude. I think he will crush in this industry, if that’s what he wants to do. I talked to him yesterday. … There’s so many stories and memories. He’s just a creative, talented, interesting, multifaceted, complicated, hilarious pain in the ass. I love him so much.

The future holds the possibility to be great or terrible, and since it has not yet occurred it remains simultaneously both.

Larry is reading the Internet on the Shane issue. He was very specific that him and Shane did not get along early on, but that Shane did him a solid by inviting him to the softball team when he was at his lowest moment. Larry was making it clear that him and Shane were work friendly….

Many that is true, but an incomplete statement.

To go from tryout for a pro team to lucky to get on a corporate softball team is quite a fall.

Hate to tell ya this "Amigo", but that is sort of the essence of how life works.

I told him after that first season that it meant a lot to me to be pulled out of retirement to play on that team

We lose a lot of rights when we look the other way when it doesn't affect our lives or it isn't a cause we agree with.

Hmmm….will be interesting to see if Leery’s guy Herbie becomes the EP

I have MANY years of experience in trying to appreciate steaming piles of dogshit.

Wouldn't surprise me at all and they can bring back the great segment Ask Herb!

Many that is true, but an incomplete statement.

I’m told it was mutual, though the timing was decidedly not. Riordan was thinking about leaving, as he intimated in the post, but the station’s bosses picked the day that Rahimi (a good friend of his) was hired.

Once Holmes took over Parkins’ seat, the show changed, which I think partly led to Riordan’s departure.

Hate to tell ya this "Amigo", but that is sort of the essence of how life works.

Does Shane have a family or did he do the Michael Scott, “I have a couple kids of my own that I’d like to have some day?”

An article about some 20-30 year old kid hipster from the suburbs producer makes the paper.

I have MANY years of experience in trying to appreciate steaming piles of dogshit.

The future holds the possibility to be great or terrible, and since it has not yet occurred it remains simultaneously both.

I wouldn't have thought there was sufficient interest in Shane to fill one page.

We have 1,500 pages on DiCaro…..

Hate to tell ya this "Amigo", but that is sort of the essence of how life works.

I wouldn't have thought there was sufficient interest in Shane to fill one page.

There isn't won major decision that the CFMB Football Guru's have advocated that hasn't turned out to be a damn flop.

Nobody Shane leaving is significant because he's part of the stations sjw culling.

There isn't won major decision that the CFMB Football Guru's have advocated that hasn't turned out to be a damn flop.

That article is firewalled. Would someone post it?

Dollars and sense: ‘What’s going on at The Score’ sparks talk in Chicago sports media

By Jon Greenberg
May 6, 2025
Dollars and sense is an occasional column about Chicago sports business and media that people occasionally ask about.

This week in Chicago, there’s a big media conference focused on sports radio and podcasting.

But when I checked the schedule for Barrett Sports Media’s two-day affair, I noticed it’s missing a timely and local discussion topic: “What the Heck is Going On at The Score?”

It’s certainly a question people are talking about in Chicago as another mainstay left the city’s original sports radio station. So why not make it an industry-wide topic?

“What the Heck is Going On at The Score?” would be a lot more interesting than “Hitting Homeruns (sic) From The Corner Office” or “Podcasting’s Big Future.”

There are already a number of 670 The Score employees speaking at different panels during the BSM conference — including Mitch Rosen, the operations director at the Audacy-owned station.

Founding Score host Mike North and the recently departed Danny Parkins, who just left for TV fame and fortune in New York City, are both receiving awards. I believe they’d have opinions.

Former Score producer John Mamola works for BSM and could be the host, and Rosen could explain the challenges of running Chicago’s preeminent sports radio soap opera. Score host Laurence Holmes could even turn it into a podcast for his “House of L” show.

The Barrett Sports Media conference is being held at the Edlis Neeson Theater and I can think of no better place for an event on sports radio than the Museum of Contemporary Art.

The latest development at the station came last week when executive producer Shane Riordan abruptly announced he was leaving the station immediately. It came on the same day the station announced that Leila Rahimi, the on-again, off-again host, was back to full time at the station as the lead host of the midday show.

This news came about a month after midday host Dan Bernstein was fired because of some dumb tweets after a long, successful run at the station and about nine months after Parkins, the hometown kid made good, accomplished something that so rarely happens in the medium these days: He left on his own accord for a better job.

Compared to ESPN 1000, which chugs along with the same lineup (for better or worse), The Score is like a merry-go-round, roller coaster or Tilt-A-Whirl. Take your pick. With Parkins, Bernstein and now Riordan gone, that’s three big departures in a year, all under wildly different circumstances.

Change isn’t always bad. It’s beneficial to get new voices in the mix. But is the station better today than it was a year ago? I’d say the answer is no.

Not everyone has to agree, of course. Argument is the core of sports radio, right?

Was Bernstein the GOAT? Do you put him on the Mount Rushmore of Chicago Sports Radio?

Et cetera and so on.

I’m glad that Rahimi and Marshall Harris, Bernstein’s former co-hosts, are making up the new midday show (along with regular third co-host, the always entertaining Mark Grote). They’re good people and I hope they get the runway to develop and succeed. It’s a job that any of us in the industry can do for a shift or two, but it’s more difficult than you think to do it five days a week. To be original and creative and engaging, while also being a technician, for four hours a day is even tougher.

Bernstein wasn’t everybody’s cup of tea — at times, he could go overboard on the animus — but he’s difficult to replace. There’s a reason he lasted that long at one place.

The same goes for Riordan, an aggressive producer who cared how the show sounded and had the gravitas to influence a show.

Holmes, who is Matt Spiegel’s latest co-host, doesn’t have to measure himself up to Parkins, of course. He’s been doing this for decades. He’s as technically sound and opinionated as anyone. I’m guessing the longtime host would like to stay in the afternoon slot for a long while as well.

Sports radio is built on habits and familiarity, and the loss of three mainstays will hurt the Score’s product, if not the ratings. But again, maybe change is a good thing.

The Score had been relatively settled for the last three years when Holmes, who was doing a solo midday show, replaced Rahimi (who briefly went back full-time to TV) as Bernstein’s co-host.

But then Parkins got his big job at Fox Sports 1 just before football season.

The afternoon show he did with Spiegel, Riordan and Chris Tannehill was just fun sports radio. Riordan always joked with me about my love for their afternoon rivals on ESPN 1000, Marc Silverman and Tom Waddle, but I always toggle between the shows and stick with what interests me. When that foursome on The Score got going, it was difficult to change the station.

Parkins going from a local radio show to the morning show on national TV was a pretty big deal, and it even got a few of us to look up to see what channel FS1 was on. (Don’t quiz me on that, though.) But the aftereffects of that move are still being felt.

The new afternoon show is fine — Holmes knows how to do radio — but it’s not the same, and losing Riordan is a major blow.

He issued a statement on Twitter about why he left the station, or why the station left him.

The amount of support I’ve gotten in the last few days has been incredible. I don’t have my career without you, the incredibly dedicated and appreciative Score listener.

Thank you for everything pic.twitter.com/vSd4o0U09d

— Shane Riordan (@shane_riordan) May 4, 2025

I’m told it was mutual, though the timing was decidedly not. Riordan was thinking about leaving, as he intimated in the post, but the station’s bosses picked the day that Rahimi (a good friend of his) was hired. Did they need to cut salary? It would make sense. Audacy, the owner of the station, isn’t exactly thriving financially and just had layoffs across the country.

Once Holmes took over Parkins’ seat, the show changed, which I think partly led to Riordan’s departure. His on-air time diminished, but Riordan’s greatest strength was booking guests, a lost art these days. His aggressiveness and sense of the moment put him on par with famed Chicago sports radio producers (is that a thing?) like Jesse Rogers and Randy Merkin.

If there was news happening, Riordan was on it, and he knew how to push his hosts’ buttons on and off the air. He felt like he needed his show to crush the competition and he produced it accordingly. The Score will be more boring without him there, but he’ll bounce back. With Barstool Sports in town, I could see him landing there in a production role.

In that regard, if The Score bosses were smart, they’d make sure Tannehill is happy at the station. He’s the most indispensable person there and should be paid accordingly.

And now back to Bernstein.

Less than a month after Parkins left for New York, Bernstein went viral for a weird reaction during a transition with the afternoon show.

Bernstein didn’t like how he was greeted by “Barstool Eddie” Farrer, a Barstool Sports personality who was guest hosting with Spiegel. Bernstein’s outsized reaction during the awkwardness was caught on video (because every sports radio show is now also a streaming show for some reason) and it blew up as the Barstool commentariat went wild protecting their own.

Holmes left the show to move to afternoons to co-host with Spiegel. That opened up a midday spot for Harris, who had been a regular fill-in at the station since 2022. Harris came to Chicago from Sacramento in 2021 to work on TV but was let go as sports director at CBS 2 last summer. He had some sports radio experience in Philadelphia and was officially hired as Bernstein’s partner in late September.

Bernstein and Harris, with regular third co-host Rahimi, lasted until late March. That’s when Bernstein’s professional life exploded because of a heated conversation on X over a fish.

Yes, a fish.

A proud amateur angler, Bernstein liked to show off his catches on social media. A troll accused him of killing a fish instead of throwing it back and Bernstein lost it, threatening to reveal the poster’s identity and tweeted “want your kids involved.” It was so weird, it’s hard to believe it actually happened.

No one was hurt and no one would have seen this nonsensical exchange except that Twitter is full of people who screenshot these exchanges to get other people in trouble. But Bernstein is certainly smart enough to know nothing is private when it’s tweeted. He had gotten in trouble in that medium before, and this was the last straw.

He had been at the station for 30 years and his firing didn’t engender much sympathy. The Barstool folks celebrated, which was to be expected, and a lot of people in Chicago had a “you get what you deserve” kind of reaction. Bernstein is polarizing, to say the least, and if he were on the air talking about someone else getting fired for tweeting about a fish, he’d be making fun of them too. (“Questioning my sportsmanship” has now become a joke among reporters.)

People asked why I didn’t write about it at the time. I was on vacation and, frankly, the whole thing bummed me out. Bernstein had a long, successful career, and he has a family. He was smart, quirky and extremely knowledgeable. To lose his job over something so dumb just struck me as an awful shame.

I didn’t like it when Score original Dan McNeil lost his job in 2020 (read about that here) over a tweet, and I felt the same about Bernstein. Yes, they were responsible for what they put out there, but there’s way too much emphasis put on social media.

McNeil and Bernstein were good at their jobs because they knew how to give engaging, not always polite opinions on air. That doesn’t always translate to the Twitterverse. If you have a public-facing job, it’s important to remind yourself you never have to respond on there. But if you do, don’t flip out over a fish picture.

Whether you liked him or not, Bernstein is a great sports radio host, and locally, his knowledge made him a valuable asset. He’s not for everyone and had plenty of detractors, but he was popular, as evidenced by his performances when I did local media surveys in 2019 and in 2022. I’m guessing you’ll find him on a podcast of his own soon, though not at Barstool. I wish him well.

The same goes for the new midday team of Rahimi and Harris — both of whom had good relationships with Bernstein. They can’t replicate what Bernstein brought to the air, nor should they try.

But they have five days a week to try to stay on the air as long as they can. Because one thing about The Score, it always changes.

That would be a good opening line for a panel discussion, wouldn’t it?

"His aggressiveness and sense of the moment put him on par with famed Chicago sports radio producers (is that a thing?) like Jesse Rogers and Randy Merkin."

No, it's not a thing.