Ex-jock broadcasters usually sound the same to me. There's O'Bradovitch, VanLear, Buffone, Jiggets, and now Hampton.

They all tend to talk about fire, attitude, want-to, desire, etc. For them it comes down to a question of whether the athlete wants to win enough to make the effort to win. If he does, then he wins. It's dull and uninformative to listen to, because no matter what the issue, the answer is something about "fire". Buffone breaks the mold a little, but not much.

I tend to think there's more to it than that, and would appreciate some thoughts about other aspects of the sports. The ex-jock never seems to give it to you; I think because he generally doesn't understand anything more about the game (except that the modern player makes a lot more money than he did, and about which he is occasionally bitter).

Hampton is starting out like this. If he does he will be VanLear. I hope he settles into the role and succeeds, but the writer types tend to have a better chance than the jock types.

Good post.

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Fire Phil Emery

I can't wait to hear Hampton breakdown Blackhawk games this winter...

The Score couldn't be arsed to promote the Blackhawks when they were their own programming. What makes you think they're going to talk about them now that they're gone?

In the cases of NIU and DePaul, I wonder how much both parties could benefit from the Score treating these properties as big deals, the same way they do for the White Sox and the opposite of the way they did for the Blackhawks. Sometimes the topic will arise on one of the shows about how DePaul basketball, or any college basketball, really, was much a bigger deal in Chicago before than it is now. Well, you're an arm of the media. You have the distinct ability to change that. Promote DePaul as being a big deal, even if they suck. The Bulls suck too, and they'll dominate programming for hours at a time. We're reminded that THIS IS THE HOME OF THE WHITE SOX WITH ED FARMER AND STEVE STONE YEAH THAT'S RIGHT HOLY SHIT THE STEVE STONE at the top and bottom of every hour; why not afford maybe half of that breathless fawning to your other properties, rather than just an offhand "and you can catch that game on the Score tonight" like it's Westwood One night filler. Find the happy medium between shoving bad mid-major college football down our throats and doing your job as a flagship. It almost undermines your business partnerships to do anything less, and it may well turn out that this cavalier attitude toward non-Sox PBP programming will burn the station if the Hawks break out down the dial.

Note that I don't care about college sports at all; I'm just trying to think of ways for the Score to better promote its entire programming schedule. Sometimes I wonder if they're still used to being a daytimer and just figure everything after Boers & Bernstein isn't being aired.

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I think the Score could really use a non-conventional sports show that runs from, say, 6-8 every night. By the time you reach that time of day, especially during football season, you've heard just about every theory, breakdown, analysis, and dissection of last week's football game and the basketball game from the night before or two nights before. You'd need to be the most interesting man in the world (my friends) to make the Bears game from last Sunday interesting on Wednesday, especially when it was the focus of conversation since the time it ended.

Maybe just a show that focuses on anything that comes up but isn't football or basketball (or baseball). Whatever might be happening. Hockey, sure, but college sports, boxing (should a major match come up), MMA, hell, even maybe horse racing, whatever. You'd need a host with a very wide range, but I'm sure you could get someone who could do it with some degree of confidence (hell, make me an offer, Mitch Rosen!) Make it a shorter show in a non-prime hour and use it to promote some of those other properties. It'd be symbiotic.

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Fire Phil Emery

I think that would be a very good idea. Unfortunately, it seems like instead of pursuing symbiotic relationships, the Score goes the other way, getting caught in that vicious cycle of poor coverage creates poor perception, poor perception creates poor coverage. "You're listening to the home of DePaul basketball, 670 The Score; our next broadcast is tomorrow night at 7:30 when the Blue Demons host Asswipe State." There. Even as little as that raises the profile of your winter play-by-play schedule considerably.

My concern would be that if you're putting everything into play like this, how do you ascertain that a variety of niches will listen from 6 to 8 and leave satisfied enough to come back again? That is to say, if you're a die-hard obsessive horse racing fan, is there going to be enough horse racing content to make you come back for more? How much is enough? How much is too much? If you get 7 minutes near the bottom of the second hour, does that justify your listening? What if you're a hockey fan and you're pulling your hair out because they won't shut up about goddamn pointless animal-abusive horse racing already? Generally you know what you're gonna get with any given Score programming. With Murph you know you're getting baseball, H&H are going to be football-intensive (I assume), and B&B will make fun of white proletarians. Are niche listeners going to take their chances on a sports junk drawer?

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I guess my first question would be what the ratings are like for your average non-Sox or non-Depaul evening broadcast. I don't think they're stellar. Then, I'd make allowances for big events in the popular sports too (for example, if the Bears are on MNF, and the show is on from 6-8, I wouldn't turn people away on Monday who wanted to talk football.)

I also wouldn't start the show with "OK, we're talking horses for the next two hours. Instead, I'd make it more of a "THE PULSE" thing but with the host steering the conversation towards a couple of topics. For example, in the first ten minutes he could throw out a hockey idea and a college football idea, then say "we're opening up the lines to all your calls on any subject." But by starting with hockey and NCAA stuff, he's going to invite people to call in with those topics. Then, if you get into the second hour and sense those topics are running out of steam, you could add in another sport or two. Just keep it a hodgepodge. If you're a hockey or boxing or horseracing fan, you'd tune in because there's no place else to get talk on the radio and because you never know when the topic is headed your way. If you're not any of those things, you still might tune in if the host is entertaining about it all.

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Fire Phil Emery

Because the Score will want to talk about what's hot, and the Blackhawks will be hot this year.