The only thing that shocks me about Terry's babbling is that he didn't work three or four "Dudes" into that string of garbled nonsense.

From what I understand, those remotes are not cheap. About $8K when you add up everything the station charges and I know it is paid for by the Beer companies, but I just wonder who at the Beer companies thinks its a good idea? I have seen a couple in Wrigleyville and places like Rockwell, which draws like 10 people.

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"That's what the internet is for. Slandering others anonymously." Banky
“Been that way since one monkey looked at the sun and told the other monkey ‘He said for you to give me your fuckin’ share.’”

Remotes are never good business in radio. Remotes where one of the two hosts is unlikely to show up seem like particularly bad business, but I guess the A-B distributors have money to burn, so whatever.

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Back in the 1990's, Score remotes would literally fill joints up...hundreds of people. You older guys may remember Ron Santos restaurant, which was huge. I went to a HFC remote there and the place was packed. Live WYC was great.

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CSFMB 2014 Nascar Pick 'em Champion

We don’t have a trillion-dollar debt because we haven’t taxed enough; we have a trillion-dollar debt because we spend too much. — Ronald Reagan

I'm not sure if it is $8K but I did learn a long time ago that yes, there is a substantial fee to book them if the beer company doesn't pick it up. Why do the beer companies do this? As a reward/perk for pouring their beer from dedicated taps and having regular deliveries of bottles (or cans). Bud and Miller have been known to put in refrigeration systems, new signage, or artwork (painting the side of an establishment) in exchange for pouring their product, and those systems cost a lot more than getting Dick Bernstine and Harry Boers to sit in their joint for a few hours.

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DRINK BƎTTƎR. @theRIPH

jesus christ almighty.... $8 for just one of those "who needs two?" remotes? that doesnt even cover a whole month or two worth of them? i guess terry boers will NOT compromise on his compensation for having to pop in the car and drive on out 15-25mins to go do live radio in person so people can show up and behold them and touch them and get hosed in their presence.

i'm with you on the "who at the beer companies thinks this is a good idea?" thing. is it REALLY worth 8 grand to have dan bernstein say "the bud light who needs two tavern tour" like ~10 times throughout a normal broadcast? are ppl listening gonna go "HOLY SHIT OMFG I COMPLETELY FORGOT THAT BUD LIGHT EXISTS AND I FUCKING LOVE BUD LIGHT SO WHAT AM I DOING DRINKING THIS OTHER PISS? and then once that product placement nudge gets them to sip the nectar of the sports-demagogues they're going to have a moment of clarity like "oh my god this has been exactly what's been missing from my life for years" and then they "make the pledge" to drink nothing but bud light from that moment forward, so then they make sure to plow through 6-12 bottles/cans of BL per day and then you'd figure after what, 500-1000 6ers/12ers of bud light purchased they've profited the $8k to make up for the remote..... and that's just one person, so when you consider that tens to hundreds of thousands of people all across chicagoland are having the same epiphany and making the same brand commitment they're going to make that 8k back tenfold if not 100-1000x over and over and over again? #ReallySmartPeople.

so yeah plz 4give my skepticism.... as i wrote out the hypotheticals in the last paragraph i realized they're profittinhg millions to billions off of each WNT?TT remote, so at ~8k/remote and ~48/yr that $384k/year promotional cost/writeoff allows them to potentially make no less than a billion dollars of profit off of all of the epiphanies they create wholesale in the b&b/score audience (and that's what, at least 10mil listeners worldwide? potentially 1 billion when they start simulcasting the show in chinese and russian to add in hundreds of millions of listeners from the non-english-speaking-world?) and yeah.... so totally worth it.

and as i finish up this post here, goddamn dude, i just realized that using biggie's $8k/remote figure and CH's estimate of 48 remotes/year, that's $384k per year on b&b remotes. that's a whole lot of $$$ to a simple peasant like me, even if $384k/year isn't enough to get DAMANEEEEELLLLL to roll out of bed in the morning! #CestLaVie

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Terry now needs to be transcribed like West Side Mike?? Maybe it's about time he packed it in and moved to Florida to be amongst the rest of the retirees, instead of being just a quasi retiree like he is now. Then he could concentrate on a twilight career like handicapping horse-racing full-time and writing a newsletter.

As someone who has worked as a broadcaster, I can tell you his foggy thinking and stuttering is due to fatigue and probably due to his age as well. It's tough to talk day after day after day. Some days you hit a brick wall talking, and even though you don't want to talk anymore, you still have to for the sake of the show.

They need to cut the show down an hour, then. Dan may be even more burned out on his job than Terry is.

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Remotes were and are successful when your featured talent is actually popular & liked by the target audience. Previous Score talent has proven that.

Currently, there are no shows/personalities at WSCR that would dictate a full out major remote with successful results. Maybe with Mully & Hanley?

There are obvious exceptions... Another Bears Super Bowl appearance? A World Series by Sox or Cubs, of course. Bulls NBA & Hawks Cup Finals.

Bottom line is that it is a business cut & dry. It doesn't matter how much a remote/event costs, if sponsors/stations are consistently losing money and attendance, they will go away.

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"This is Chicago, my friend. Anything can happen."

At McBrides I had to pay $5000.00 for Uncle Dougie and Hub 8 years ago for a two hour remote.
Pretty much filled the place but no one was really drinking or eating, took a bath on that one I have to say.

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https://www.backroadspubandgrill.com

Really? You paid $5,000?

I always thought the sponsor pays for the remotes and the sponsor picks the bars. Bernstein once explained it that way. Budweiser tells them where to go for the Friday "Tavern tour" remotes.

That was bad money. Who the hell is gonna show up to look at Hub?

North and Mac would make for a darn good remote, but in the Score management's infinite wisdom neither work for the Score anymore. No wonder the station is dying when you don't employ the best talent available.

It will really suck not having Mac this year to talk about football. Can't listen to him on Drive, because he doesn't really do any talking of substance.

Bud and Miller's success isn't in putting big money into making a great product, it is in putting big money into promoting a crap product, and when necessary pouring more money into keeping the competition down and away from them. Most people think sports talk is interrupted by the commercials but others know the talk is there to interrupt what would otherwise be a steady stream of commercials. So if Dick Bernstine mentions "Bud Light" every six minutes (which he's good at) then Bud gets to have their mentions. In a sense, the remotes while originally intended to build an audience have now just become a way for Bud to get their name regularly mentioned regardless of who else is spending money to have sports talk interrupt their commercials. When you consider how much a 30 second commercial costs as compared to sponsoring a remote, Bud is getting over. Someone figured they spent $390K per annum? That's a fucking bargain! Also, this is bonus (or as one former host equated it as "investment") money. They get out the studio (or in Boers case out the house), and the station has the opportunity to underwrite a promotions department through beer money.

When WSCR started they needed to generate some heat and a buzz. Those MNF remotes could sometimes be outrageous and the numbers were the kind of thing that showed that Dan Mason could have spent his money to generate the "word of mouth novelty of sports talk" or spend the OPM that is beer money. DannyMac was at the vanguard of this and his popularity endures because of this. Some of the old timers still fondly reminensce of remotes, and fish fests, and golf outings, and bus trips.

And DRube, I can understand and appreciate your opinion about hitting a "wall. However, that wall you mention should not be a daily (hourly, or segment) occurrence. That's what vacation is about. I can appreciate getting burnt out but there also comes a point where the ability to continue comes into question. Again, I had a loved one that I watched go through this where that "wall" became almost permanent and impenetrable. I like Boers, think he (at least he used to) makes the show listenable. I tune in now and when he speaks it isn't just gibberish but a disconnect that I've recently witnessed.

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DRINK BƎTTƎR. @theRIPH

Boers is old.

I love the picture previously posted of him and his wife cuddling on Christmas morning like the Yellow King and his sister during a flower making session. It illustrates Terry is not long for the station

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.