Do you think that has more to do with callers just not calling or the adversarial/change in relationship between station/listener?

It's more due to the fact that nobody is listening compared to 20-30 years ago.

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Used to be that you would tune in for Bears coverage and maybe stick around for a few entertaining callers, now you have dozens of Bears specific podcasts to pick from and there is no reason to waste time listening to 5-10 mins of ads. Live play by play with hours of pre and post game coverage seem like the only logical future for AM radio, because there will still be people that want local play by play coverage that don't want to shell out the dollars for MLB.com or NFL.com.

How about some of your beloved data Parkins.
Entercom stock down 82% year to date.

When Doug and OB were on the station wasn’t changed.

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

It's hard to have compelling calls when they don't take any. Remember when the Mac and Parkins show first started Mac was musing about bringing the Score back to the people with remotes, tailgates, etc. Now they don't even take calls because Parkins doesn't like them.

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Calls will be the only way to differentiate live programming from podcasts. Why listen to a Mike Florio segment live when I'm sure he does podcasts? They'd better build their chronics back up.

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You're right that each team has dedicated podcasts but specific team or sports analysis is not the reason I listen to sports talk radio. While sports are obviously the story, it is the combination of humor and the stories about their personal life that keeps me listening to specific shows. I watch very little NFL, MLB, or the NBA but I still enjoy listening to Mac and Parkins or Speigel or B & B back in the day discuss them. I could care less about the Bulls front office or Robert Quinn flipping a coin and coming to Chicago but I enjoy listening to Mac and Parkins talk about it.

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Lay off that whiskey and let that cocaine be.

Becoming hyper local is the only real answer, you have to offer unique live programming, kind of funny how the station inadvertently hit on this early on by incorporating callers heavily into the mix. The callers steer the show into unpredictable directions, kind of like an unscripted reality show. It would seem this would be the perfect time to try this with so many people stuck at home with time to call in to the station.

Great point re: Trevor Bauer. And also great about better interviewers.

It’s like the score thinks as long as they market themselves as local hosts talking about local sports then all will be fine. But the level or interviewing at the station is really quite terrible. Larry is the best pure interviewer on the station, with Parkins and Bernsie occupying in some order second and third. Everyone else ranges from serviceable (Mac) to down right suicide inducing (Mulli).

Put another way, the talent level at the station sucks.

Personally, I will always give local sports radio a portion of my time simply because I want to hear detailed discussion about the teams I follow, but if 670 is going to come out of the other end of COVID and flourish long term, the need to step their on air talent waaaaay up. The station needs personalities that know how to be compelling. Not just people who used to work a local beat

A solution akin to this is probably close. It’s certainly being bandied about in a serious fashion by the bean counters.

Rewind to 3 weeks ago. No one thought a summer without sports was a real possibility. Now it’s looking likely. Even if MLB does resume, say July 1, it’s gonna be impossible to recoup the losses from the first half of the year.

Surprised there are still two sports talk stations, it would seem that ESPN could just go national syndicated all day with maybe local post game shows? Really wondering what the streaming/podcast numbers are right now, it would seem they could still use that medium with much lower paid talent.

THIS is the answer but they won't let it fly. They're too concerned about playing nice with teams for access and info....info and access that's available everywhere.

It's over.

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Yup, they had a good run for a few years, the early years of the Monsters and HFC were about as good as sports talk radio can get.

I’m shocked anyone is buying ad time . Who the fuck is going to go and buy anything but the essentials right now ?

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Proud member of the white guy grievance committee

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

Nobody wants to do an "End of the Score As We Know It" parody?


That's great, it starts with a pandemic
Bats and Pangolins, and aeroplanes
And Donald Trump is not afraid....

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You know me like that.

wow....touch 'em all, Doc.

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They could do more topics to get people interested in calling in. A lot of the hosts don't let the callers talk much. They get two sentences and then click.

The social justice warrior nature of the station is also a turnoff. Boers and Bernstein went from a goofy show to "We hate the Penn State child rapists" for quite a long time. While it was an important issue in sports, it didn't have much to do with Chicago sports and it was total "change the station" radio. The problem with going full politics on the sports station is that 90+ percent of sports writers and sports talk show hosts are total liberals. Liberal sports talk radio is a turnoff for people who just want to listen to people talk about sports.

The Score and ESPN 1000 have the problem of basically having the same hosts for years on end. There should be new voices who can do sports talk radio other than Mac, Dan Bernstein, Mike Mulligan and Laurence Holmes. It's pretty sad when Mike North is still better than several hosts on the station.

Ultimately managing a radio station is hard work because it's hard to shuffle the deck. WGN Radio dumped a lot of hosts in the last ten years or so and it's hardly the same station. There's always a tendency to hire old hosts because the feeling is that the old hosts are a known quantity.

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God is the uncaused cause of the universe. He had no beginning and has no end. He is not bound by the laws of the universe he created.

I'm confused as to what is political about fucking children

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They pretended that they were some sort of authority on child abuse. It's not very different than when Julie DiCaro would go on one of her social justice warrior rants about Colin Kapernick. The point is not specifically that child abuse is a right/left issue. The issue is that it's a politics/non-politics discussion.

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God is the uncaused cause of the universe. He had no beginning and has no end. He is not bound by the laws of the universe he created.

Being against people fucking children is a political discussion?

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It infringes on one's religious liberties. unconstitutional.

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

Only if the person against it is a liberal.

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(REDACTED)

They sort of pretended that they were some sort of moral figures to judge the wicked people of Penn State. But at the same time they mocked Tim Tebow and other people for their religious beliefs.

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God is the uncaused cause of the universe. He had no beginning and has no end. He is not bound by the laws of the universe he created.

Dan has been on the Score for more than 20 years. How many black people in the city have been gunned down during that time? How much of his shows has he dedicated to that subject? Those people are within listening distance of his radio station. Do they not count too?

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God is the uncaused cause of the universe. He had no beginning and has no end. He is not bound by the laws of the universe he created.

I'm sure if the assistant basketball coach at UIC had been murdering black players for 20 years while the head coach covered it up, Dan would talk about that too.

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

It was the main discussion point of their show for over a year....EVERY DAY.
And yes.....Dan became an expert on Child Psychology, Law Enforcement, and an Attorney all within that year.

It was awful radio. Yes it was a story. Yes they should have covered it. Glad you enjoyed hearing about it forever....MANY did not.

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