Loss of North still leaves a vacuum at the Score
By Ted Cox | Daily Herald Columnist 1/15/2009
Picking up where I left off last week, Mike North has found a place to land some six months after leaving WSCR 670-AM. Yet the Score has not yet found a way to replace Mike North.
The Dan Hampton and Laurence Holmes show from 10 a.m. to noon is testimony to how little the Score planned for North's possible departure when the station made him a cut-rate extension offer last year.
Hampton was a great player, a Hall of Fame defensive lineman who epitomized the Monsters of the Midway Bears of the 1980s as much as anybody. He retains the respect of Bears fans, and he knows his sport.
He's a lousy radio host, however, and his learning curve hasn't shown much improvement since he got the gig last fall.
Holmes is a fine reporter and a fine person, a pleasant guy to chat with, but that doesn't make him a radio host either. He certainly isn't a show "driver," a guy who knows how to generate topics and a dialogue with listeners, but in that he's not all that worse than Marc Silverman, his morning-midday counterpart at WMVP 1000-AM.
Hampton was largely a Bears pre- and postgame host in this market, and Holmes was being promoted from the reporter ranks. Both were expected to learn on the job, and more than four months in, the time has come to say it ain't happening.
Hampton has a stuttering, staggering manner of speech, especially when he gets trapped off topic talking about something other than football. Holmes is earnest, sometimes overly so, but hardly smooth.
I compared them at first to "Da Bull and Da Bear," Norm Van Lier and Doug Buffone when they were briefly the Score's morning hosts years ago, and I think that comparison holds as both shows are hard listens. Yet "Da Bull and Da Bear" had a goofy, amateurish charm that eludes Hamp & Holmes. They're working too hard to sound barely decent to make their show at all playful.
Holmes is overeager, and I don't know if he thinks his listeners are simple or if he's just a simpleton himself, but he doesn't push to elevate the discussion. Thursday, he began by asking listeners what they had been watching, what had held their attention, the night before on TV.
Really? That's the best you can come up with to engage listeners?
Give credit to producer Matt Weber for posting on the Chicago Sports Fan Message Board seeking listener response in how to improve the show. But in the seven pages and 150 replies, I'm not sure there's anything to make Hamp & Holmes sound better, only a few jokes at their expense.
http://www.dailyherald.com/story/?id=264661
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