Hanley is funny.

Holmes is now listenable in his time slot.

Not that I would listen, but you know, if I was in traction and couldn't watch any TV, I might tune in.

I'm bored and don't feel like working. Also, a thought I had in today's Mac show thread got me thinking.

What do I think about both stations "personalities"?




B&B: Best. Show. Ever.

Laurence Holmes has the worst radio voice in the city. I don't know how anyone gets beyond that to actually listening to what he says.

Harry has a much worse voice.

Bad analogy, Duke players were innocent, Sanduskey and all others are going to hell.

Brian Hanley is about as funny as Milt Rosenberg.

mike and mike: i basically don't listen... it's schtick coma and so cutesy and as was accurately described in the OP: bristol. it's a brand. i used to like the stone cold lead pipe locks back in the mid-00s when i'd take the bus to work on friday mornings... but it's mindless chatter and their whole comedy act just falls thin on me. i'll only stay on and listen if there's a baseball expert or something i like.

mully and hanley: a bit too.... hokey for me? some of the puns that made up the hanley scale are egregious.... i mean if i'm outside with a coffee and a donut and a cigarette and my laptop doing my fantasy baseball lineups i'll kick it on the radio and listen for a bit.... but it's nothing like OMFG I GOTTA HEAR WHAT MULLY AND HANLEY THINK. maybe occasionally after a bears game, but basically that's more ob&doug/b&b territory for me

silvy and waddle: you know, i miss the carmen and silvy show. i used to hear it on the bus back from work circa ~03-04 and it seemed like they were a couple of friends doing a fun radio show. genetic tinkering = OMFG WE NEED TO GIVE A MAN WHO HAS LEARNED AT THE TEAT OF FATHER OF THE YEAR(TM) DAVID KAPLAN SOMEONE WHO CAN DRIVE A SHOW!!!! yeah i'm in the can't stand waddle crowd. he's got that whole "i am the idyllic yuppie archetype that you all wish you could be" aura that david kaplan has in spades, and well, that whole condescending WGN vibe carries over and it's just like.... ok. honestly it's hard to listen, i mean, i like silvy he's a funky little dude but his voice makes me wanna blow my nose so when i'm trying to fight off the plague of waddle he doesn't exactly make it as aurally-aesthetically pleasing as possible. like i said, silvy was in his element with carmen and they vibed well and worked it out, and while i suppose silvy's such a genuinely affable guy that he gets along and has chemistry with anyone, you can tell that he and carmen would go out for beers and whatnot whereas waddle... you know, * whip cracking sound * he's in the running for FATHER OF THE YEAR(tm) and OH BOY DON'T WE KNOW IT.

mac and spiegel: i've always liked mac's contribution to chicago sports talk radio. again i'll always preface this by saying i know i'm not his target demo so some of the middle-aged man/prostate talk is PTFB but i'll pop back. speagol grows on you over time and i think he genuinely wants to do a good quality show and puts in the work to do it.... i personally like him better on hit and ralph, but hey, that's just the baseball guy in me. when the show first started and i first heard spiegel i was like "wow, they gave mac a bernstein" but as time goes on while you can see the obvious parallels that come from being a critically-thinking sports fan, he does his thing and the show works. as it stands it's a pretty good hybrid of mac's "pull up a stool at my bar" cool-bartender-vibe and spiegel's wacky world of sports information, and like i said, this show is vastly preferable to silvy and waddle.

scott van pelt: shaved head white guys who have an ego like they know everything and i'm a pissant in comparison generally don't work for me, so like, i don't even bother. especially cuz the score wisely moved b&b to 1pm to keep the more fickle amongst us from popping around cuz...

boers and bernstein: appointment radio for like, what, ~10+ years? i remember working bullshit data entry jobs when they were on from 8-12, or 10-2, and later 2-6, and now 1-6. i won't go on carrying the flag for the b&b als, but it's a great show. to mirror the sentiments before, i'm quicker to jump ship to thom hartmann (my favorite political radio show by a rather wide margin) when they're on the soapbox about child rape or PTC/concussions/etc --- however, it works out brilliantly that after the :30 mark that you can basically pop between b&b and hartmann and their commercial breaks sync up so you can generally avoid commercials while listening to most of both shows. great trick.

laurence: some of the minutiae gets to me... some of his vocal inflections, his cadences... the deliberate pauses. i mean i see the pimp player ladies' man thing as the comedy bit it un/intentionally is, and it's kind of awwwww laurence when he's gotta tell us about some fine actress he just saw on tv. i mean there's a genuine joy and elation to him when he thinks he's giving us the hookup on some beauty on tv that we might eventually rub one out to; i think when he leaves the studio he can go look in the mirror and be like "dammit, i helped!" today. THE PEOPLE'S HOUR COLON WE DO WHAT WE WANT has been suffering from a lack of HARD BAKE lately, but of course hater wednesday and ask herb are his things. and for the love of god laurence, you need to embrace the stuff that people kid you about.... has redman taught you nothing with his brilliant song i'll bee dat?!?! BRING BACK SHAKE THAT!!!!! EVEN FOR A WEEK!!! see like, once you heard that drop punctuated by shake that and the cheesy techno hit, seriously, no matter where i was i'd do a big goofy mocking dance. i'd fistpump like a champ and regale someone on the train about my GTL lifestyle. it was a total farce..... but that's what made it beautiful. why do you think all of us still call laurence SHAKE THAT?!?!!? there's no such thing as bad publicity laurence, and i wish if even for one very special night you'd just turn back the clock and OWN THAT FUCKING MANTRA. feel THE PULSE of your most hardcore fans and TAKE A HIT OFF OF MICHAEL PHELPS' BONG and put on SHAKE THAT. because it's not just a people's hour.... it's a movement.

les: he's the fucking dude. obviously i've spoke of how i've had a chance to bullshit with him off-air over the years, and like, see.... les gets his balls broken plenty by other staffers... but it's because you're damn right he's weird in comparison to them. look at every other host at the station... they're not at as many games as les is... they're not doing broadcasting for arena league in their spare time. they don't have stories about the pictures they got with expos personnel calling games in 03/04.... cuz if you really think about it, the two guys at the score who truly "live that life" in terms of sports journalism/broadcasting are les and schuster. go figure that schuster is typically awesome whenever he gets a little fill-in spot... his bulls draft night broadcast was awesome. who knew that aggrey sam was that cool? i just thought he was some dude with a fucked up name. so like, i get why to other people who live more normal domesticated lives les is an oddball... he's a sports encyclopedia and he's got so many stories and so many facts... i mean, with all due respect to bernstein les is easily the smartest guy at the station i mean just his mental capacity to make so many tangential connections with sports is astounding.... and he's always down to bullshit and talk sports and let people speak their piece.... but that's why he rules the overnights. you can't do that during a highly-financed (in terms of ad rates) tighter-programmed morning drive midday or afternoon show... but in the middle of hte night you can just kind of let it rip, toss out a few signature segments, and go to town. it's sports catharsis, and as someone who considers himself a pretty damn intelligent sports fan who brings thoughts to the table, i love the way you're able to call him up at 3:45am and get some factoids or stories that just make you go "damn." it's the essence of sports talk radio, i have no idea when this man sleeps... or if he does. he's possibly a cyborg, but like, i mean... in my ideal world this kind of show would be on during the normal operating hours, but i totally understand the need to have a more host/personality-driven show with less audience interaction during the primetime hours, whereas les' show is antithetical as it's like 90% caller-driven. take mac/spiegs and b&b for example... you get mac as the driver/personality and spiegel as the straightman, much like on b&b terry is the comedic relief to bernstein's straightman..... on les' show the caller is the comic relief/driver/personality and he's the straightman to it. he kind of presides over it and just supplants you with information and stories. it's cool, and like i said in my ideal world this is the essence of what sports talk radio is, but i totally understand why things are the way they are and i'm good with it.

others:

abbatacola: especially solo, i just get this vibe like he's on a quest to tell us what to think and inform the stupid and he's got a condescending vibe.... he's better with a partner, as i seem to remember the old last call shows being pretty good (grandma trivia!) but when he's got a solo evening slot or something, i just can't shake this vibe where it's like matt's trying to prove himself to either us the listeners or his bosses because there's just this edge i can't shake... and it's nothing personal with matt he seems like a good enough dude he doesn't strike me as a giant shithead when you run into him at a remote, it's like blink 182, that's just the impression that i get.

goff: as i've said before, a lot of his solo endeavors seem to be like he's reading out of the book SPORTS RADIO TALK FOR DUMMIES as he's trying all of the cliches and conventions and stopping short of saying [TOPIC] LIGHT 'EM UP!!!!!!!!!!!!!! sometimes, but he works best in a partnership. i liked the shows he did with bowen and i hoped to hear more of that, but alas, it was not meant to be. maybe during football season because i'm guessing buffone-lite (vocally speaking) might not be an OMFG BASEBALL!!!!! maven, but the 1/2 shows i heard goff and bowen do were great. goff needs an ex-athlete or someone who's "played the game" or whatever it is that jason works hard to brand himself at doing off-air (ergo why he's blocking people like me and rpb for DARING to criticize him on twitter, because it's obvious that he's trying to build a goff ALS and anyone who doesn't think happy thoughts...



randazzo: the best solo spot/fill-in host they've got. the dude handles his biz and manages to get clever texts on the air as opposed to the meatbally schtick for the morning shows and b&b's dichotemy of pure stupidity/"meatball" and bernsie's smart friends / other pre-approved ALS guys. last time i heard him he and herb lawrence (another guy who i'd love to hear get a shot to host some shows) had a good off-the-cuff segment where they were talking about the miami face eater and all that, and basically, randazzo's the one guy lurking in the background who's definitely going to go national in some capacity within a few years, that is, if he doesn't end up announcing for a MLB team. dude's game is sewn.

and like i said before but i'll repeat here, even tho the nature of his intrepid reporter thing means he can't do it much, schuster is typically great whenever he does a show. like les he knows his shit, but he's got a more dry/acerbic/self-depricating sense of humor about him that works for me so if i hear schuster doing a show i'll typically scoot over there for awhile.

rosenbloom/grote: that show grows on you. shit, i'll listen to rosenbloom and whoever at 7am today... he works. maybe he's best in small doses? i dunno. being totally honest, i'd listen a lot more 5-9am if rosenbloom was driving the show. some of the saturday morning bits are getting a bit forced down our throats radio (WB? sucky radio... the pot smoking, etc) but typically rosenbloom is quality filling in for whoever, and on saturday mornings if i'm not passed out drunk (i don't smoke weed anymore, lamentably) i'll pop on the radio while i have my coffee/donut/cigarette/morning-constitution/box-scores.

oh yeah, and i'd be remiss if i didn't say that i actually like it when hub does spot shows during football season on the weeknights. he's always prepared and you can tell that no matter your take on him re: any pro/negative bears bias, the guy's a pretty cool dude and he also knows his shit. i like his veritably-contrarian views on the bears because my general life philosophy is to expect the worst and be surprised by the best, and hub definitely outlines the potential perils of what the bears are doing.... he's just got a good vibe going when he's hosting a show, it flows nicely, and hey hearing him talk about hip hop and/or basketball is humorous. can't lie. i once texted in that it should be pro football weekly and basketball news AND hip hop news. i'd love to hear hub's crack staff break down the latest drake beef with some other rapper he's probably..... you know what? i want to sell myself as a product sometime soon/ish so yeah. lol.

anyways, i typed too much i talked too much i ate an oreo donut i swigged my coffee, but what the fuck i couldn't sleep tonight so i got my fix of phonecalls/les/csfmb so i'm good. happy 4th y'all