kinda sad that the video only has 147 views. Gotta believe there's more guys out there that would be fans of that stuff.

Remember the third radio station I had going here? Then it turned somewhat true when the Webio came along for a little while.

_________________
Ба́бушка гада́ла, да на́двое сказа́ла—то ли до́ждик, то ли снег, то ли бу́дет, то ли нет.

Always liked Jesse Rogers since day 1.

He's sort of like an everyman who made it.

Sure he made some mistakes early on but he was green and a rookie. You can't expect someone in any industry the first year or two to be seasoned like a 30 year old veteran.

He worked hard, played his cards right, and is respected among the sports tv/radio industry as well with many of the top writers in the nation.


--

I hope Fred keeps having these shows from time to time. Maybe it wouldn't work every day, but once or twice a month would be great. Would be great to hear Murph's takes throughout the summer on Cubs baseball and North always has a unique view on things. Maybe he can get Dan McNeil and others on in the future. It was very refreshing to watch.

Fred, North, and Murph would have a hard time with the Score's mandated pro rioters & looters stance.

Is this all there is in your life? Seriously, that seems to be the lens through which you view everything. Sad really.

_________________
“Mr. Trump is unfit for our nation’s highest office.”- JD Vance
“My god, what an !diot.”- JD Vance tweet on Trump
“I’m a ‘Never Trump’ guy”- JD Vance

The new score is basically a hive mind. No significant difference of opinion on any sports story or sports personality from any of the hosts. Boring as hell.

Just watched a portion of the YouTube video and a few things stood out to me.

The lost skill of involving callers to bring different viewpoints, seems the current hosts are almost afraid to take calls, but as all three pointed out, nobody wants to hear just the hosts drone on and on for an entire segment without other voices.

Finding out what was wrong within an organization and bringing that to the air, Uncle Terry was the master of giving you subtle hints about why an organization was failing, North correctly pointed out that no hosts had the ability or courage to delve into why Nagy finally gave up on Mitch. There was almost nobody on the score that did anything to question Pace or Nagy until late last year, it was almost embarrassing because everyone you talked to was openly questioning their abilities and the on air hosts were either unwilling or unable to take a different point of view than the accepted take on the Bears. This is where the afternoon show completely lost and credibility.

North, Murph, and Fred still have more interest, passion, and historical knowledge of Chicago sports than any of the current hosts. They are also not afraid to put out a different opinion than everyone else and have no problem putting the accountability on team ownership, this is of course completely foreign to anyone at the score currently, which again, makes the station irrelevant and boring.

Fred, Murph, and North aren't arm twisting anyone to agree with them. All 3 could have 3 totally different opinions about a subject. That's a component to great radio. Notice the word "conversation" was used multiple times describing their shows. Today's Score bowing to the PC god isn't conversation. Chicago media until well into the season was petrified to critique Fields, or talk about Mitch's positives out of fear. Also notice the 3 threw around few "great guy" qualifiers. The Score today has to " great guy" heap praise qualifier before uttering any opinion they're so scared.

This goes back to at least 2013, when the entire station seemed to Embrace Dan Bernstein Thought. It got so bad at one point that they did an open-forum show about the problem.


North's morning show was almost entirely caller-free, unless you count Fritzy hopping on the line to complain about the Jews, so hey buddy, Pappy.

_________________

I'm going to sound like an old man GET OFF MY LAWN but I don't care.

I noticed in today's world, a lot of people are just damn cowards and gossip hounds. They'll talk shit but won't put their name to it. I'm talking about real life here, not the internet. Then they talk shit, other people believe this shit at face value without even questioning it.



Social Media has killed the art of conversation Vito. The mind set of social media is the 12 year old kid in you coming out to make some snide remarks or uncivilized comments. That's carried over to real life conversations too in a subconscious way.

Look at the people who created social media. They were all a bunch of social misfits who didnt know or even wanted to learn how to converse with people in REAL LIFE One to One. So they had to do it artificially thru a computer or phone screen. This shit has really fucked up our society but like everything else, it'll have it's day on the way out. Maybe another 10 years or more but it's going to go back the other way where we can all talk and agree to disagree without blowing a gasket or making fun of others.

As a former, "Mike North Morning Show Emailer of the Show", I know your all happy for me, but still have the tchotchkes somewhere in my home office, would have to say that even North will admit the MNMS was his worst work.

The morning show was an effort to put out a more of an information type show with frequent scoreboard updates, Fred, traffic, the odd Anne Maxfield placement for news, it was a complete trainwreck. To compare that show to the other successful shows on the station really does more to prove the point that you really need other voices to make a sports talk radio show really work on a local level.

Then again, most of us are old geezers from a surprisingly not desired demographic, seems strange because me and my cronies all have raised our kids and have way more discretionary income than we did when we were in our 20's and 30's, and we still have interest in quality sports talk radio so we really should be the group they are targeting as we are in our late 40's or early 50's and while rounding the turn toward the back nine of life, we still have a good 10-20 years left in us.

I never liked North's Anne Maxfield, or Fox radio shows.Tried them a couple times, then moved on. But, I never held it against him.

What you and CM should hold against him was his power play which blew up the era you are now pining for. The MNMS was an abomination because he thought his political and societal thoughts were insightful and he could be the next Don Wade. The problem was he was not smart enough or well-informed enough to pull it off. That’s fine when you’re talking sports because so much of it is subjective and the arguments are more entertaining and less consequential.

_________________
“Mr. Trump is unfit for our nation’s highest office.”- JD Vance
“My god, what an !diot.”- JD Vance tweet on Trump
“I’m a ‘Never Trump’ guy”- JD Vance

That's the irony. The old guys like us will still listen to radio whereas the younger generation doesn't even know what a radio or the AM dial is.

North's career at the start of the Score w/ Jiggets was like he built a $10,000,000 mansion brick by brick then by himself, decided to burn the entire house down.

He obviously got so full of himself that he saw the mega money in being a right wing radio host. I really don't even think he was that right wing, he just acted the part to try to become the next Rush.

That may have worked if he took his political show and went to some other station that broadcast that kind of material. But it didn't work on a sports radio station. Sports radio back then was an escape from the real world. A brief time in your day to forget about all the politics and kids and mortgage payments and work etc.... in your life. Nobody back then wanted to turn on the score and listen to some political talk. Left or Right. After the way the Score built up their shows to popularity and how it was fan/caller heavy - nobody wanted to go back to listening to a know it all loud mouth. And that's what North had become.
---and today's sports radio is exactly that---

Also I felt like North always thought he was in some kind of Mafia movie, like Casino. He was sort of unattached from reality at that point of his career. I remember the story when they fired him that he was making over $1million a year and when it came to renew, they offered him $700-$800K a year and he got all offended and said no. So they let him go. I understand the mindset of not accepting something lower than what you're currently making but if he had no other place to go, he should have taken that money while looking elsewhere.

And that entire webio thing was crap from the start. We see now that the idea was 10 years ahead of it's time but webio was full of grifters and criminals. Lot of ex-score members like George Ofman got taken for a ride and I don't think ever got their money back.

.

_________________
“Mr. Trump is unfit for our nation’s highest office.”- JD Vance
“My god, what an !diot.”- JD Vance tweet on Trump
“I’m a ‘Never Trump’ guy”- JD Vance

North thought he could become a Midwestern Don Imus, general talk in the mornings, all sports the rest of the day.

Except Imus had a lot more experience, more addictions, was funnier, and had more influential national news and political voices who listened and would be willing to call in. Meanwhile North had Fritzy, Bookie Priest, and one or two mob-adjacent guys (the father of one of whom was gunned down in front of his Galewood home about 60-65 years ago).

_________________
"When people want their version of the truth, they go find it, no matter how baseless their beliefs." -- Ken Rosenthal

Remember a few years ago ESPN had a documentary on WFAN in NY . They said North was a copy of Mad Dog Russo but in Chicago. I dont know about that. But after his first year on The Score, North had an offer for a $1Mil to move to NY and be on WFAN.

When slow witted Gene Lamont was introduced as Sox manager Mike North said "He was worried if Lamont would be able to find Comiskey Park" right after interviewing Lamont.

Gambling talk was and will always be PTFB time for me, but North was one of the first guys doing daily segments i/c/w gambling, but he made it fun and entertaining while the current score approach to gambling talk is perhaps charitably described as tedious. Incredibly annoying to hear the afternoon show goof try to make it all into a math problem, guess he thinks he is doing "calculus", again doubling and tripling down on the "smart fans station" BS where they attempt to make you think logic can be applied to the obviously illogical practice of sports fandom.

Dolts like Parkins and Bernstein apply a cracked lens to sports, taking sports from the fun, sandbox topic into yet another opportunity to make sure everyone knows they are on the "right side of history", everyone knows they suck, but nobody has the balls to do a mercy kill on the Bernstein era of the station.

Fred is having his podcast tonight here :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxjkkfYpDQM

I'll listen to hear him talk about Les.

So he didn't retire.

Forced retirement

_________________

North wanted Maxfield on both because she had cache in news and because he thought she was hot. He failed to realize he worked in radio. They took almost no callers, Fred became a kiss up sidekick and North clearly began to take himself super seriously for large segments of the show (Fritzy and Bookie Priest aside, although he kinda took BP seriously too)

_________________
Ба́бушка гада́ла, да на́двое сказа́ла—то ли до́ждик, то ли снег, то ли бу́дет, то ли нет.

On Fred's podcast he had 2 twins from Cicero (now in their 70s) who were Bears ball boys, Cubs clubhouse boys in the 60s.
Some pretty good stories..

According to Speigel, Fred has a new lady in his life. Good for him.

_________________
“Mr. Trump is unfit for our nation’s highest office.”- JD Vance
“My god, what an !diot.”- JD Vance tweet on Trump
“I’m a ‘Never Trump’ guy”- JD Vance

Speigel sounds like a real gossip hound.

Tieing the knot again, and building a new house. Man loves his beer. 5 years cancer free which is beautiful.

did his wife pass away?