yeah agreed, sounds like it is just contract junk causing the delay

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"He is a loathsome, offensive brute
--yet I can't look away."

It was never going to be anyone other than Spiegs. Not that it matters. Hosting on 670 today is just managing the decline of a dying legacy media brand.

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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

Have to think that someone will figure out the appropriate platform to reach WSCR's core audience which is primarily 40 plus males. It may not be politically correct, but this group will be around for 10-20 more years and most are in solid income brackets.

There seems to be a huge market, but the station has moved away from the light sports talk that build a core following into an odd sports version of NPR with low energy hosts and guests that simply repeat the same thoughts day after day rather than taking the risk to provide a unique take that differs from those handed down by teams.

Parkins continues to muddle along, he lacks any real football knowledge which prohibits real discussion about the Bears, severely limiting the scope of the show. He is capable of putting on a weekend national show where you talk generally about point spreads and NFL/NBA/MLB stats, but that is all your going to get.

This may be the thing that finally gets me to remove 670 from my radio. Firing Hanley and ending 5 at 5 ruined the morning drive. MAC leaving and replacing him with Spiegs and extending Parkins is PTFB for my drive home.

It’s amazing to me how far 670 has fallen even in the last 3-5 years. Let alone 10 plus.

I’ve never been a W&S guy but I’d rather hear their thoughts on local teams rather than anything Parkins could possibly offer.

No show on 670 can compete with Kap and Hood. Zero politics. Takes calls. And they vibe well as personalities.

Mac was the last guy that understood the medium, but he was severely hamstrung by having to carry Parkins.

Not really sure where the station goes from here, but Kap and Hood seem to be able to produce an entertaining sports talk show where voices other than bland guests and producers are allowed to be heard. Would be fascinating to see what would happen if they swapped Kap and Hood with Parkins, highly doubt Parkins would survive while Kap and Hood would likely thrive.

these are the best 2 posts i've seen on here in a very long time. great stuff clawmaster.

Apropos of nothing I had to come into work today for a project and have WMVP streaming due to DePaul. Surprised to hear Fred and especially Hanley on.

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Elections have consequences.

spiegs is too emotional for my taste. bernstien is only good when he gives zero fucks, but hes too pansy to do that. i think the performance of all the hosts is effected by the imminent ruin of what used to be a fun radio station. remember how much they used to make fun of mike north? they be wishin for those days back.

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the world will always the world. your entire existence is defined by your response.

would be great to bring north back but i know it will never happen. he was a unique take on sports nobody in the country has/had. but that was the problem, he needs to stick to sports and not politics.

The world has passed Mac by. His cultural references are both limited and dated, his approach to talking sports is antiquated, and his lack of investment in his job is/was obvious. He hasn't been on top of his game in roughly a decade.

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It's pretty clear that "radio.com" sees itself as a podcasting service that also happens to hold FCC licenses. But this is just Mexican food at a Greek restaurant. Why wouldn't I go to a Mexican restaurant for that instead, and why wouldn't I listen to actual, intentional podcasts? Not only is the Score occupying a weird liminal space between podcasting and live radio, they occupy one between outsiders and insiders, too. They try to resist being official propaganda for teams themselves with varying degrees of success, but as part of this whole new liberal consensus in sportswriting, they're still part of some sort of lockstep orthodoxy.

The end result of all this is that no one has anything to say that I can't hear somewhere else. I read all the same stuff Bernstein, Parkins, and Laurence read -- no surprises. There are sport-specific podcasts if I want them. But there's no spontaneity or sense of belonging to an audience. It's just people telling you how it is. They came full-circle to Chet.



I can't disagree with any of this, but what's the right way to talk about sports today? Can't be the Parkins way. Are the lunchboxes at Barstool the only ones who figured it out?

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This, as with many TM posts, is likely true. The world has also passed me by, and I long for the days of Mac being on top as well as me not being on the slippery slope of decline into Bolivion. Neither will recover the old glory.

But, as Clawmaster says, there is a market for guys like me, more than to sell me dick pills and erotic pajamas. A station that can supply pertinent team information and not belittle me for disagreeing with the host's social agenda would satisfy quite large percentage of the population, but I doubt it would be financially viable.

I no longer belong to the most important spending target group.

Off to yell at a cloud.

The station's social commentary certainly amounts to nothing more than boilerplate corporate multiculturalism, but the spots by various beat reporters or analysts can still be entertaining and/or informative. I like Drew Rosenfel, Brad Biggs, Matt Miller and some of the other regular guests on the station. A big problem with the station, though, is that there's too much of the former and not enough of the latter.

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Don't get me wrong, the product you describe appeals to me. I just don't think Mac has delivered it effectively for a long time. Part of the problem has certainly been his lackluster sidekicks. But Mac himself has also been pretty disengaged for a long time.

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I listened a bit driving around today, and they were actively trying to tell you to not listen to over the air radio. Ostrowski kept talking about prior segments and saying it would be easy to rewind to if you were listening via the app.

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

yeh yeh yeh

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Interesting that nobody has attempted to replicate the original formula which created personalities like North, Mac, and Uncle Terry. Fully acknowledge that this is likely impossible on AM radio due to the current political climate, but one would think it could be pulled off in some format. Mac may not be able to bring his fastball everyday, but have thought a "Score Emeritus" type podcast would work and allow unfiltered thoughts to flow, at the least it would be a much more entertaining way to work through cardio sessions.

There is also the rather uncomfortable reality that me and my 40-50 year old buddies are way more emotionally invested in local sports teams than my younger family/co-workers will likely ever have because we grew up an era where you really didn't have anything else to do other than go outside and try to replicate (insert Cub hitters) batting stance while your buddy tossed whiffle balls or tennis balls.

Nailed it right there.

Our sports playing son has zero interest in sitting down and watching a game. He just watches highlights on his phone.

The desired demographic for the station does seem to skew much older than the seemingly outdated market information they are using. If you grew up physically playing baseball either in a structured league or just with friends you have an innate understanding of the ebb and flow of the game, how to set up hitters, the pitch to pitch strategy which makes you much more invested in watching what happened immediately before the highlight. It also makes you see right through guys like Parkins who while they have memorized all the stats off the back of the baseball card are incapable of formulating any unique takes due to not understanding the complexities of the game.

Clawmaster - you need to post more like every day more. great stuff once again. keep it coming.

Few responses :

1.Mac on his 6th experiment pitch is still 10x better than any of these other guys. If i know Mac is going to be on and have no clue who the guests are lined up or what happened in the chicago sports scene, doesn't matter, i will still tune in because it's Mac. He's a star. Even a over the hill star is still a star. none of these other guys are even close to a star in the biz.

2.Spot on about the younger generation. They don't really give a shit about sports like we did. And that's a good thing. I think i would have accomplished more in my life if it wasn't blind loyalty for the fucking cubs and bears. As an older man, i think back sometimes and am like wtf did i waste all that money, energy, and most importantly TIME on these fuckers. These assholes don't give a shit about me.

Like I use to have this fantasy when I was a kid that I had a magic wand and could say fix the Cubs. I was some kind of sports wizard that I would make all the cubs great and make them win the world series. Use to think like this for a long time....until... i finally realized WHY THE FUCK would I want to do that if I had that power? For example, why would I want George Halas or the Trib Co. to get all the money and praise. They don't deserve it! And Shit, it should be me getting the credit and money.

Maybe I'm nuts to think like that as a kid but i'm sure i'm not alone.

Thank you for the kind feedback, did not really anticipate getting into a deep dive into sports talk radio, but since were in the midst of our annual Polar Vortex weather event why not?

A fanatic seems to me to be someone that behaves somewhat irrationally when exposed to a certain stimuli, in our case it is sports fandom which is a multilayered yet completely irrational fanatic devotion to "our" team. I too have wondered why I spend my fall Sunday afternoons screaming at my TV while fielding texts from friends/family that share the exact same affliction. There seems to be a type of narcotic type sense of well being when the Bears win, a totally irrational feeling because I have no financial or personal stake in the team, likely some type of group belonging need that has been engrained in us as humans.

I noticed that movement in junior high about 12-13 years ago. It has only gotten worse. They only watch highlights.

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I know at this point I sound like a paid ad read for them, but Barstool has captured some of the best of that original formula. The only thing missing is the callers as callers into a podcast just isn't feasible, but the personalities, opinions, and fun are all still there and keep me listening regularly.

Barstool Chicago is run by people who listened to the same hosts we did their entire lives and the influence of them is clear in each podcast. Had 670 spent time looking for talent rather than recycling producers, perhaps a few of these guys would've landed there before Barstool made them full time. I'd say the chance of 670 or 1000 getting any of the talent from Barstool has passed though. The firing of Danny Mac taught everyone don't try to make a joke or else you might get fired. These guys won't give up their chance to be at a place that lets them say what they want when they want.

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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

For some reason I suspect the salary NBCSN Chicago pays for pre/post game doesn't exactly cover a Range Rover payment

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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

In game 6 when the Hawks clinched in 2015, Andrew Desjardins took a late penalty while the Hawks were protecting a 2-goal lead. I was beside myself and full of tension and anger. I was pacing, ranting, yelling at Desjardins. My wife questioned why it mattered to me so much. Millionaire players/billionaire owners none of who are my friends or people I will ever meet. We know there is very little loyalty in sports and teams see fans as customers and dollars signs. Why make rooting for a sports team part of your personal identity? I love the Onion's saying on T-shirts "The sports team from my area is superior to the sports team from your area."

Since 2015, I have intentionally detached myself from teams. Teams don't deserve the blind loyalty and we all know there are much better uses of our time and energy. I remember an older colleague telling me back when I was in my 20s how as you get older you'll realize that these teams and wins and losses aren't that important. How right he was. Obviously, I follow sports closely and consume a large amount of sports journalism but my enjoyment of sports is not solely derived from whether some random group of athletes wearing a uniform I have watched for years, wins or loses.

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Lay off that whiskey and let that cocaine be.

The changing times and such explains why there are not certain kinds of voices, but the bigger problem is that there are hardly ANY voices, that is stars. I think/believe it's just money. Like any advertising based enterprise, it just doesn't pay the way it did (and that was pre-covid). I'm not privy to any numbers, but I'm guessing that all those Little Guys and Heavenly Bodies and Marconi's and the myriad mortgage brokers in the day put a lot more money in the coffers than Sleep Number, Blue Chew and anything else around now. The bosses, the Man, don't want star hosts because they cannot pay star hosts.

I can't stand this guy. Even when he admits failure he sounds like an elitist snob. Ohhhhh, your wife can afford good things. Fuckkkkk off.

Sorry you're poor.

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I think you're right and wrong. It's true that the world has passed Mac by. It's passed me by too. But the typical listener is still in the same place Mac and I are. The people that the world has not passed by aren't listening to terrestrial radio anyway.

This is a problem I see with a lot of businesses that see their customer bases aging, e.g. baseball and horse racing. They abandon the customer they have to chase the customer they want. And you know what? It never works.

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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