I think Mac has said he needs to work about 5 more years.

You gotta install the AdBlock extension.

Carolla makes money off of the live show touring and the bum-wine sales (for now). Carolla went easy on ads his first few years, to build up an audience. Now that he has an audience, he's killing us with ads. has to be over 20 minutes of ads per hour now. whereas before (and with most podcasts), you only got an ad at the beginning, a quick read in the middle and then maybe a closing ad. So I assume the podcast was severely in the red those first few years and the live show subsidized the podcast. And he's no doubt trying to use ad revenue to shore up his many lawsuit defense funds.

Mac might be able to glom onto an existing podcast network (Dahl?), maybe with a weekly podcast supported by subscriptions if he decides to sit out a year or whatever.

Holy fuck, life-changing. Thank you.

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Soccer 1,2,3
Spanish Honor Society 1,2,3,4
Forensics 1,2,3,4

"Smiles with Nostrils"

"...no Hmong, go find some blacks"

Stern's contract is up in December 2015, and that's it for him. No chance in hell SiriusXM throws hundreds of millions at him again. He has been on cruise control for years, despite a three day work week, and ten weeks vacation.

For those that think Mac is lazy, you ought to listen to Hampton's Howie sometime.

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Good people drink good beer - Hunter S. Thompson

<º)))><

Waiting for the time when I can finally say
That this has all been wonderful, but now I'm on my way

I love Stern's defense of his hours. "We are still giving you 12 plus hours of live programming a week"

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Proud member of the white guy grievance committee

It aint the six minutes. Its what happens in those six minutes.

personally I think that such spite and vengeance would make mac bet on himself and go over to the game to kick their ass. there's always a chance that dan could bet on himself and get some sort of a handshake deal like "hey help this station bring in the ad revenue and as the station grows so will your paycheck" because if WGN really gives a shit about the station and eventually gets it up into the AM dial after they've had ~6-12 months to figure out just what the fuck they're doing (i.e. not going with harry+spike afternoon drive) then they'll want to invest in outside talent that can be a flagship program for their station. i think a dan mcneil move is that for them, barring kaplan being game-bernstein (the godfather behind the scenes) and not wanting anyone to outshine him, which believe me would be quite a trick because his head is naturally the shiniest thing in all of chicago sports/casting save carlos boozer, of course.

see the emperor has no clothes over @ the score right now.... the only problem is that the adjacent kingdoms are run by complete morons who oversee an empire that's even worse than the score. kaplan's the quintessential company man.... i don't think you can call him a straight-up traditional drivetime sports radio jock, he works better when he's doing something officially affiliated with the cubs and a team like pre/post game because that's the kind of fauxthoritative "just tellin it like it is" crap that company men propagate.

for better or worse, mack-daddy's whole schtick/persona is the everyman "pull up a stool to my bar" schtick... he tries to be inherently more welcoming and general-interest "we" type stuff as opposed to company man kaplan or here to gentrify your mind bernstein... he's more of the "pull up a stool i'll crank teh classic rock as we crack open a cold one and finally light up that J" mentality, which is radio hanging out.... which is something that WGN might be willing to pay a premium for, even if it's essentially a deferred/bet-on-yourself contract.

...or WGN is completely full of shit and nobody wants to work as a potential #2 behind the father of the year, and mac's just dragging this out because he wants more juice at the station.... he wants to fix the fledgling ratings of afternoon drive cuz i've heard him say that he's at his best getting people home and he wants to maybe even get a new cohost (which would explain both b&b/speagol shitting on mac, cuz he very well might want their timeslot/job respectively) who knows? either way i think he's in the DEMONSTRATE VALUE part of the D.E.N.N.I.S. system so i look forward to getting through the Ns cuz thats when beardown has his veritable home run derby

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Tribune has about 13 months to find a new home for The Game before the government shuts down analog channel 6 and I've heard no rumblings whatsoever about them making moves (for comparison, there was plenty of talk of WGN leasing 87.7 as KQX got ready to move back to 101.1; we just thought it would be the hip-and-with-it WGN-FM). They really ought to get on that sooner rather than later. WGN has become so ghastly as a general-talker that they might almost be better off flipping 720 to full-time sports and putting Mac and @TheKapMan back on there. Of course, this would have been a better idea if they hadn't lost the Cubs.

There's been some talk that the reason Garry Meier got booted to the internet in spite of good ratings is that DeCastro and his unlikely lieutenant Steve Cochran want to open up afternoons for Roe Conn, which would be the much-needed coup de grace for the painfully dying WLS-AM. Cumulus really wanted to make sports happen on 890 if you remember the Roe & Roeper & Lou Canellis 5 o'clock horse abortion, so if they do lose Roe, I wouldn't be surprised if they just nuked the whole conservative thing and became the third sports station with Mac, Bruce Wolf, and the usual cast of third-stringers.

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Scott Turow writes incredibly popular books while holding down a job thar requires 2000 hours of billing per year

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

Also a tireless advocate for the cause of capital punishment abolition.

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I don't remember half the time if I'm hiding or I'm lost

he'd need an offer from them first.... the fact that Mac felt the need to call up his bad book writing buddy to write something tells you all you need to know about this situation... he's desperate for whatever reason for more money than the score is offering... the score gave him an urlacher-eqse take it or leave it offer 2 months ago.... they probably haven't changed it either.... mcneil has no leverage and has no other options other than retiring.

i personally love how mac showed up here right after the newspaper articles hit. he prolly figured he could get a good % of us to pine for him so then he could be like "see, mitch/zim? the hardcore fans miss me!"

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I wish Mac could go back to ESPN and kick Boers and Berstein's asses like he did for so long when they were head to head. Boers probably likes to keep his contracts private because he is smart enough to know that he's been stealing for years.

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Go Cubs!!!!

On the daily commute home I'll usually bounce between misc XM, Chicago sports stations and Roe & Roeper.
That thing with Lou Canellis was the worst thing I have ever heard on radio including Larry talking about women being interested in him.

Roe seems like a pretty smart guy and I know he's loaded from his radio gig but much more from his childhood / financial relationship with Grant Deporter but..........
If you follow him on Twitter you'll see that he's really looking like a bit of a boob with the MILF he's hooking up with. God Bless him for hitting that but it seems like something he would laugh at from the outside....and maybe he is.

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Kenny Williams fell for the banana in the tailpipe

What exactly is this guy's appeal? I always found him virtually unlistenable, but the ratings would seem to indicate that's just me. OK, fine, we all have different tastes. However, even if I were a fan, I kind of think he would have pretty much driven me away at this point. I mean, how arrogant can this guy be? He got whatever he has today because he built a fan base by talking sports and now he sits there and brags that he doesn't really have to work anymore, he doesn't really want to "talk pointspreads and pucks" anymore, he'd rather go fishing and go to Alice Cooper concerts, not to mention all the personal BS that has gotten him suspended or caused him to miss extended periods of work. Of course, if the right station throws the right amount of busks in his face, I guess he'll stoop to talking "pucks" again with all us low-life, sports-radio-listening morons and put aside "leaving that bigger footprint" for awhile.

What an ignorant, self-absorbed douchebag. Better get working on that bigger footprint soon, Mac, instead of just blowing hot air out of your ass about it. You're not getting any younger.

A couple of sliver spoon Latin School graduates. I much prefer political analysis by Senn dropouts.

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Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

There are a few things that make him appealing to his fans, which happens to include me.

Mac is genuine. You don't ever here him taking a contrived opinion just to argue something. Many sports shows try to set the hosts on different sides of an issue. They essentially have that Pardon the Interruption format. Mike and Mike is the best example of this. Mac approaches his sports viewing from an every man angle. He hates the annoying announcers, he is ok with cheering for that grindy athlete, he doesn't mind sharing his love of the home team or hatred of the opponent. I have never found him to be arrogant even though he will brag about stuff. In fact, he is very kind to his callers and associates with the listeners. He has that childish humor where he will laugh at silly stuff. He also goes outside the sports world to talk movies, food, or music.

JMHO.

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Hawaii (fuck) You

You touched on the main thing for me. Mac realizes it's just sports and there's no need to get worked up over something that is ultimately so silly. It's ironic because he seems to be a much bigger fan of sports than bernstein. And bernstein fancies himself as a "sports are just silly entertainment" type of guy, and yet he screams at the top of his lungs and works himself up to the verge of a stroke over the sports opinions of others.

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Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

fringe benefit of not rolling out of bed for under 300k, eh?

but yeah like you guys are touching on, i think that mac wants to be liked. at the end of the day it's whatever but it's like "hey have you got a burger? a beer? you diggin the music? you want me to roll one up for ya?" mcneil's more of a party-host than bernstein, so the "effort" of his show is to be as accomodating as possible. having ascended to the top of the score despite never having an inherently populist show, bernstein cares fuckall about 8-track tuesdays and "general interest" man-stuff because he's got THE ONE TRUE PATH TO SPORTS ENLIGHTENMENT. bernstein IS correct and his show is all about how you deal with that fact, whereas mcneil's on another vibe where he's trying to hit you on some other common level other than sports because he's chummy like that.

i mean, can you picture bernstein throwing parties @ his place? can you picture him doing a cookout remote @ the comiskey parking lot? i don't think he cares about any of that stuff so when he turns himself into an unlikable demagogue what's really left to love of his show? scrabble-word thursdays?

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These are the reasons I've always liked Mac. To me he's always been a Steve Dahl type radio verite' guy who just happens to talk sports. I appreciate his brutal honesty, and how he incorporates his family, and real life into his show. I don't think he's lazy. I think he's a guy that's carved out a comfortable living, and doesn't see sports as the be all and end all in life. Yet an can still balance that with being the passionate anti-Bernstein meatball some people love.

P.S. LoHo in in! Fuck!!!

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I don't mean to sound bitter, cold, or cruel, but I am, so that's how it comes out. - Bill Hicks

Let's do it for Johnny!

Good call.

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Kenny Williams fell for the banana in the tailpipe

North was more entertaining than either of them have ever been.

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Be well

GO BEARS!!!

Yeah, right, Mac is so "genuine." He keeps all his fans who, I'm sure have made him very well-off, wondering where the f*** he is while he's on all these extended "vacations" dealing with his addictions, contract disputes, suspensions, and I'd-rather-be-fishing-in-Lake-Pissypoopy-in-Ontario episodes. Give me a break. He's a two-faced blowhard phony.

Mac is raising a son with autism. I'm sure he didn't plan on drug addictions and needing to get away from it all.

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I'm with Pappy's Crappy 100%.
At what point do McNeil's superfans finally say "Fuck it, I'm done waiting for this douche to make up his mind"?

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Just chillin' like Garret Quillin.

The same time Johnny B's do. Mac is pretty good at what he does. The best thing on the score. He isn't textbook espn professionals like mike and mike. Let's say he is more like the Bob Collins of sports talk. His blowup with Harry was awesome and Jurko just uhhhhh uhhhh uhhhh at that point was classic followed by Carmen and Silvy after the extended break. He is a thing a fairly authentic thing, not all shtick.

Pretty sure that's in Toledo.

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You know me like that.

The reason why people like Mac has been covered. I still kind of like him but he's been losing me ever since he returned with Spiegel. Mac got to pick his little entourage for his show at WSCR and his show suffered because of it. And please, he has no leverage. If he had leverage he would have been signed by now. Who really gives a fuck if he comes back or not? I think we will all move on and find something else. We can listen to a myriad of other things now with podcasts.

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Back off, Warchild. Seriously.

True but radio still exists for a certain demographic.

Sirius just tried to get him to sign an extension in exchange for pushing the show back an hour. So there are a lot of chances they extend him.