Right he was promoted. It wasn't like he was given the spot after failing in midday.

He had one chance in Atlanta at night, failed, and came back and was given a second chance.

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by the way, there is a pathway to success for producers. Ba Ba Booey is pulling down a cool million per year. There are guys all over tv and radio (to a lesser extent) feeding families in production jobs. But no, all these guys have stars in their eyes. It's not like they aim small either. None of them go out and hump it in Omaha or Grand Rapids and perfect their art. No, all these great producers work a couple of years at the Score and suddenly they should be on the air in the #3 market in the country.

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

I thought it was Hood who tried to torpedo the show, not Telander (though Telander was the one who eventually quit). As bad as it may have been, I don't think he should have gotten shut out from the Score the way he did for it.

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Parkins did it the right way. Rather than going to Chicago after school and producing, he tried his hosting chops at a smaller market and kept moving up from there.

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“When I walked in this morning, and saw the flag was at half mast, I thought 'alright another bureaucrat ate it.'" - Ron Swanson

That is my recollection as well.

Part of that is Mitch's fault for throwing out those weeknight 10-midnight or Sunday noon-5 shifts to board-ops who put in the hours. Then they get the idea that they're stars struggling to shine. Drew Hayes may have had the right idea in 2009 by putting up a Chinese wall between those who host shows and those who do not, but he was run out of the Score on a rail and they went right back to dangling the carrot. At least we got the Bruce Wolf shitlosing out of it.

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Wow .

I was a Score intern in the early days, and personally know many of the names you alluded to - and share your opinions on most of them. I worked closely with Gerry Riles, and worked for Murph, Mac, Jiggs and North.

One word you didn’t mention anywhere in your missive: ratings.

Radio stations don’t get to decide for listeners what the listeners want to hear. And in two cities now, not enough of them wanted to listen to Jason Goff. That’s the business.

Look, I’m a white guy who wanted to do that job for a living and didn’t make it. All the credit in the world to Goff for getting there. No one understands better than me how hard that is. It’s a prime job and there aren’t many of them available. But once you get in the game, you have to make plays.

Hood was more comedian than sports talk host. Really funny guy, great in the sidekick role, but never brought enough to the sports side of things. I mean, in this arena, the “minstrel” is what he WAS.

Riles was... Riles. I liked him and Tommy Williams personally. But race wasn’t why they didn’t last.

Goff advanced at the Score in large part due to how personally beloved he was. I’m sure it killed them to let him go.

But I always saw him as a “replacement level” sports talk host. Good guy to have on your bench when you need someone to fill in. Not an everyday player.

I’m not one of the people who says athletes or entertainers should just “stick to _____”.

But the flip side of that is: the consumers have the choice, if that’s not what they want to listen to at a given time, to flip channels.

Hell, I AGREE with most of Goff’s opinions on social issues and race in sports. But I would get out of work at the end of the day and want to hear sports talk and sometimes didn’t have the energy for it.

And on top of that, Goff had some of the same weaknesses in his game that North and Murph had. If you’re going to be a mass communicator, it helps to bring a level of education and breadth of world view to it.

It’s not racism but a matter of NUMBERS that there are more regular dudes who “hear” Mike North than “hear” Jason Goff. If you’re going to make “keeping it real” part of your brand, then your brand of “real” needs to have enough people with whom it resonates to carry a show.

You can’t say, “I’m going to make race an integral part of my brand” and then complain when a solid segment of the audience sees you through a racial lens. You didn’t give them a choice between seeing you as a broadcaster or a BLACK broadcaster.

This is actually the same problem Dan Bernstein had in the early days - there just weren’t enough of us brainy north suburban Jewish sports geeks who could “hear” him - and he had to adjust. Terry was credited by many I have spoken to over the years with helping him become more digestible for the mass audience.

You mention the “Men In Black” show that was never heard from again. Score management had a similar reaction to a couple of Mike Greenberg/Dan Bernstein broadcasts that, let’s just say, didn’t speak to the mass audience. And I didn’t hear anyone play the anti-semitism card when that happened. But those guys went on to illustrious careers because they are both super-intelligent guys, highly knowledgeable about sports (both of them cultivated their knowledge as beat reporters before being hosts) and were - to put it bluntly - more schooled and talented than Jason Goff. Bring me the black guys with that level of education, intellect, and talent who didn’t make it and we can have a real discussion about racial inequity - which certainly does exist.

In any case: Jason didn’t get wronged here. His ratings were poor. And when your ratings are poor in this business, they make a change.

Laurence Holmes still has a job because he doesn’t have these same weaknesses in his game. He’s - again, to put it bluntly - a brighter guy and a more polished broadcaster.

It’s also worth pointing out that if the Score has 1 in 7 regular hosts who are black... well, as a ratio of the population, that’s about right. A better - or at least as valid - question is: where are the Hispanics and women?

Honestly, my friend, Kerry Sayers, has more of a complaint in this arena than Jason Goff does.

As a listener, I let Jason Goff’s work speak for itself. I didn’t even disagree with his stances on social and political issues - I’m actively engaged with them, in fact. But part of why, over time, I listened to their show less was because that’s not what I tune into sports radio for. I have other outlets for that.

The issue of race in why Jason Goff isn’t on the air anymore is a lot more nuanced and lives on more levels than you portray here.

I think a lot of this is you empathizing with your buddy and trying to blame it on something/someone.

(Postscript: that Stephen A Smith would be run out of Chicago is probably one of the most complimentary things ever said about Chicago as a sports city.)

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Proud member of the white guy grievance committee

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

HOOD torpedoed Telander and then Telander quit and Hood got FIRED.

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Reality is your friend, not your enemy. -- Seacrest

I totally believe both parts of this.

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I'll say this once again about Goff, he has much more in common with North than Bernstein (hell they grew up probably a mile apart). North was very popular in this city. I think Jason can be that guy, the populist fighting FOR the people against our underperforming sports teams. You can bring up all the social issues you want in that context because you are a man of the people.

Instead he chose the other route.

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

Yeah, Hood openly and sometimes viciously antagonized Telander on the air. That hostility made it difficult for Telander to function on the air and led to his resignation within a few weeks (if I am remembering things correctly) of his WSCR debut. In the wake of Telander's resignation and Hood's demotion/firing, Mulligan was inserted into the show as Doug's partner. And the rest, as they say, is history.

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That's a bit of BS. Goff advanced because he improved at his craft more than any other WSCR host over the past decade. He's clearly a hard worker and has some talent. Simply put, his most significant problem is that he came of age as a radio personality in a radio Zeitgeist defined by Dan Bernstein's elitist disdain for the listening audience. Although Goff began his career closer to a Mike North-style sports populist than a Bernsteinian champion of the corporate status quo, Bernstein's eventual triumph over North exerted a kind of hegemonic control over Goff's development as a radio personality. As much as Bernstein helped advance Goff's career, Bernstein's intellectual influence has perhaps also irrevocably undermined it. Part of the problem for Goff is that he lacks a high degree of formal education and doesn't seem curious enough to read widely on his own. As a result, it will be very difficult for him to conceive a compelling radio persona that isn't circumscribed by Bernstein's neoliberal aesthetic of humiliation and contempt. Like many other second-tier radio personalities at the Score, Goff lacks the basic creative ability and understanding necessary to overcome the force of Bernstein's appealingly unique and edgy but deeply flawed approach to radio.

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Thank you for the correction.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

I think that's all true too, but I also think that as much as he improved, he also got ahead on being a well-liked member of the Score family and that a lot of people were very disappointed that it had to come to this.

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Also, I wasn't there: what exactly did Hood do to make Telander's life such a living hell, anyway? Turn his mic off? Fart in the studio?

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by the way, it's a Eulogy for a Goff.

We have a lot of guests peaking in and I'd hate for them not to dismiss us on that account.

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

No, I thought it felt more like an elegy, all those line breaks. Don't think I didn't deliberate on it.

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he'd do all kind of shit. snide comments about hiring idiots or whatever. it was super awkward.

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Reality is your friend, not your enemy. -- Seacrest

Dolphin DiCaro checking in

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Proud member of the white guy grievance committee

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

If a black guy was getting huge ratings would they fire him?

I would assume not, unless he pissed off a major sponsor or Crane Kenney.

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Hood reminds me of Mike Murphy in several ways. He is (or at least was, at that time) very petty and some of his on-air schtick (playing commercial jingles after a mention of a product/sponsor) is just as hokey as Murph's.

If I'm remembering it right Hood was initially upset with the title of show. I also think that Telander was afforded some sort of special treatment too. Telander was totally disinterested in doing radio. That is sort of how I remember it.

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Ding! FUcking DING!! Many of these guys ASSUME they way in is to stay in the market. While they suck BAD on their fill-in weekend shifts. Go to another market..GET BETTER! You being on the other side of the glass sure as hell doesn't mean you deserve to be next in line. I give Parkins credit for that AbbattaDOUCHEBAG NEVER could understand that. Goff NEVER deserved the afternoon slot either. HE.WAS.NOT.GOOD.ENOUGH.

Of course...I'll hang up and listen for your "You're a racist.." replies.

I was surprised at how short-lived the Telander era was. He had the Sportwriters on TV, was a successful columnist and seemed to be comfortable on the air. For some reason (maybe the Hood stuff I was unaware of) it was a failure.

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I'm sure Sir has figured out a way to disagree with everything this guys said except for that one part.

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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

Telander had no clue how to do a radio show and Hood had to carry his old ass. Like I said, Hood had a real gripe. He just didn't do himself any favors by burning the whole thing down.

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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

It started out as Hood's show. He was the headliner and it was doing well. Then they brought in Telander and named it something like The Rick Telander show with johnathon hood. He had every right to be upset.

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

I was never a big fan of Goff but I did believe that Hood deserved a better shot. He was the goods. He was better than a number of guys that they've paraded through there over the years. He had personality and he knew sports. Never a fan of Holmes either.

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Data-driven arguing.

Your entire premise is echo-chamber bullshit. "There aren't enough black voices."

Here are several including some who had what you define as prime slots.

You: Still not enough, because I say so.

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Why are only 14 percent of black CPS 11th-graders proficient in English?