It's really just the current fetishization of "expertise" transferred to what is supposed to be sports talk entertainment. Yeah, Brick is right that no caller is going to dial in with a great suggestion to fix the Bears offense but no guest is doing that and Danny Parkins certainly isn't either. At least a good caller provides a few laughs.

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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

I'm not looking for my sports host to break down the analytics of the game. Personally, I want to unwind, joke, and casually talk about my favorite sports teams.

The afternoon saloon was the perfect name, style for a sports show and the ratings skyrocketed. Sports are suppose to be fun and lighthearted entertainment. Waddle and Silvy touch on this theme, but have been in the game too long and come off as tired and rehearsed.

Score had a chance to bring some new blood and went with the boring safe hire with Spiegs. So we get more of the same analytical hosts and their ratings will keep falling until nothing is left but SJW AM radio talk.

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and I really respect the true experts out there that they have on as guests. I used to love the "around the league" type segments HFC would have on Mondays with a local reporter from out of town. I'd be completely on board on Fridays if they had some local experts talking about the big college game the next day, rather than hearing who Parkins likes in a bet.

You are correct that sports radio is just entertainment. That is lost. I can go to many outlets to hear a host interview a guy from The Athletic or a podcaster. Make me laugh, funny man!

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

When this message board has operated at its best (admittedly, that hasn't been for a little while now) the content would be a model for a good sports radio show.

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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

THIS. over and over again THIS.

Funny....it's not complicated, but there was a point where being funny and entertaining was beneath the hosts.

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I think to some degree it's just human nature at play.

Mike North was great at being the voice of the fan, because he was the fan. At that time no one would have used the slur "meatball". Everyone listening was a meatball. The hosts were meatballs. But North mistakenly thought he had more to offer than just being what he was and it was his downfall. Nobody was interested in hearing his borderline racist political thoughts even though a good chunk of his audience might have agreed with them.

Same thing with bernstein. Though the thing driving him may have been slightly different than it was for North. Whether he would admit it or not, bernstein quite obviously feels disappointed in himself that he is not one of the experts he so reveres whether in the field of law, politics, or whatever. Whereas North is just the average dope, bernstein knows he could have achieved more than being a shock jock, so his forays into Very Serious Radio are his way of coping with his feelings regarding his failure to do so.

The reason Mac is so beloved by the listeners and in this forum is because he is the one guy who never tries to be anything but exactly what he is.

_________________
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

Agree 100%.

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North was hustler. He was always looking out for his next hustle, whether it was taking a commission from sales staff or getting jobs for his family like a mini ward boss. He saw what right wing radio guys were making, who were in some ways less talented than him, and he thought he could scam his piece of that pie.

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

I think that's right. But his right wing stuff didn't come off as genuine.

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Wattabout Kodak Black?

It also depends how you want to be entertained. It's quite obvious from reading through these threads that people are entertained in different ways and therefore have different preferences in what they hear on a sports talk radio show. I don't begrudge a fella if he prefers meatball, caller-driven shows but I am definitely not listening to that.

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Lay off that whiskey and let that cocaine be.

Sure, there's an audience for Very Serious Sports Radio, but we can all see that it's not really very large.

_________________
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

He might have been successful in doing so....he just did it on the wrong station.

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You keep falling back on the same assumption that a host and the people they have as guests are providing some kind of superior intelligence.

Again, they are callers with a little more polish because of a Communications degree.

I don't mind host driven shows at some points. I think that works particularly well in the first half of the morning drive.

I don't like it as the character of a station. There is nothing more mind numbing than when CBS national radio is on the Score for a slot

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

you guys worry a lot about meaningless careers. the score is a just a bunch of idiots giving a massive amount of idiots something to listen to. theyre not charging the mass idiots anything, so the idiot hosts arent going to get much in return.. but at least they dont have to do real work and thats the real reason all of those guys do that job.

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

yes, Ike. The problem is.....it used to be fun. Now it's just....news. The entertainment factor is gone and it used to make my drive or workday enjoyable.

I don't need vintage Mac or Boers or Norm Van Lier....I just want the hosts to be entertaining and try having a good time.

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It started with the baseball steroid debate. I believe it was Dan Patrick that was talking about it everyday. Previously his show was light and fun.

The Score’s end of fun started with Penn State and continued with concussion talk. Stop cheering for and defending college sports, and you’re a child hater if you let your kid play football. Then the SJW stuff took over with Covid “look at red states playing football” right behind it.

All of those things were worthy of discussion. But they changed the tone of 670 from a fun and easy listen to a political grind.

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Hawaii (fuck) You

The Mike North Morning Show helped put the station onto the skids as well.

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There are only two examples of infinity: The universe and human stupidity and I'm not sure about the universe.

I was never a North fan. But we used to laugh at how bad that morning cast was at the end.

I loved Boers and Mac. It’s hard to believe that a guy like Bernstein was able to transform the station with his brand of radio.

_________________
Hawaii (fuck) You

I think that was the beginning of the end....and that launched September of 1999...well before the steroid grandstanding. There were still a good number of shows that were fun, but yeah....woof. That was the first strike.

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The beginning of the end was North breaking up the Monsters and the HFC.

Edit: What W said.

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I don’t think that crappy program changed the tone of the station. It was still goofy and offbeat. The needless shuffling of the line up never made sense. I think North is just one of those guys whose act wears thin. That was probably inevitable especially as his ego grew.

But Boers bowing to Bernsie and getting lazy is a much worse crime. Boers was funny and talented. And Murph had his place in that line up.

_________________
Hawaii (fuck) You

By the time serious radio took over, Terry was checked out. Then he got sick.

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North wanted to be a national star. He was perfect as a local sports guy. I think he rightly saw that conservative was the way to go if you want to be a national radio star, but his political thoughts were too shallow to carry a show.

He went from gambling expert to meatball sports fan to political analyst to investment analyst as themes for his show. He's now back to gambling talk one a week.

The highlight of the Mike North morning show was Ozzie calling in and repeatedly swearing on the air.

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

Or the time Mitch tried to add Abbatacola to the show to save it but Fred successfully big-timed him back to producing Boers and Bernstein. "Mmmm, bad fit!"

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I don't remember that. The show was really strange. They seemed to be going for some Howard Stern dynamic. Bring in a news lady. Have a sidekick named Fred. It was the first Score show that I remember actively avoiding. His career since has been totally embarrassing. If McNeil wasn't around I doubt they would have even brought North back for the anniversary shows. Now that he's gone the station will act like they never were on the air.

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

The big push for Drinky was the first real board/station storyline when I came here, late fall '06. Anne Maxfield was struggling as a contributor to the North show, so Mitch restricted her to only doing the newscasts and brought Drinky, then the darling of the CSFMB, up from afternoons to be a third banana. Everyone here was pushing for him to save the morning show, but then it didn't work out and Anne was "let back out of her cage" after a week or two. From everyone on the afternoon show taking turns saying "mmm, bad fit!", we can assume that Fred had something to do with why Drinky was a, well, bad fit.

Anne would quit the show and they promoted Jen Patterson to read the news. Fred got moved to doing afternoon updates after North left, and he was coolly received until he got fired too. Around that time, Mitch tried to manufacture a morning-show-in-waiting out of Drinky, Leery, and Zach Zaidman, but they were all a bad fit and after a month, the station just went back to Steve Rosenbloom.

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It's not an assumption, the hosts I prefer and their guests are providing superior sports talk than the average caller.

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Lay off that whiskey and let that cocaine be.

Shes not very good. Its still a must turn off show. Rather listen to the Herd during this slot and thats bad cuz its all hot take nfl nba bullshit.

I agree. I'm rooting for her because I like most women in sports media not named Sarah Spain or Dicaro but Leila just feels handcuffed. Not her problem, Bernstein is a hanger-on at this point but she was much better when she could flex her chops with the gay Holmes or the nerd Parkins.