10 Things That Make Sports Radio Suck.

Like most things KSR related, most/all of the items on this list can be found in the Knoxville market, but I'm sure there are other spots in the country that feel my pain.

1. No good, knowledgeable information is ever followed by the statement, "And I'll hang up and listen to your answer." Get a cell plan that's got a decent number of minutes and don't be afraid that you might have to engage in some actual discourse about your ignorant, piss-anty little opinion. If you ain't got balls, don't call.
2. Station programmers who have a show only because they are the programming director. This is the Mickey Dearstone Principle. And it doesn't matter how hot (well, cute anyways) the girl you put on the show with you is (Nurse Nickie, Heather Harrington, etc.). It's radio, not television, and in radio, unlike life, functionality actually trumps appearance.
   
3. Stupid caller nicknames. Examples: The Cattleman, Small Mike, Titans Sheep...wait, all those were the same guy, which brings us to number four on the list...
4. Callers who have nothing better to do than call every freaking show on the local radio dial because their poor, pitiful little lives have all the variety of a nun's sex life. Especially when they insist on asking the same question on every show.
5. Callers who stutter, badly. Sorry, I've got a speech impediment too. It doesn't make me feel better to hear someone put in a position to be ridiculed by taking five minutes to say five words.
   
6. Shows with equipment so bad that you can hear the host's laptop in the background when he gets an email. (Sorry, Basilio, I have to be fair.)
7. Hosts who are so far up the coach's posterior that their nickname is Jimmy Hemmorrhoid.
8. Athlete interviews. I'm sorry, but the average interview with an athlete is about as entertaining as watching flies swarm around an outhouse, and the younger the athlete, usually the more painful it is to listen too. The older athletes tend to speak only in safe, non-controversial language and the younger athletes usually are media virgins and have no idea what they should really be saying.
9. Callers who ask the same question as the last caller, after uttering the phrase, "I just got the radio on and I'm not sure if you guys have covered this yet." No, you didn't just get on, you've been on hold for 45 minutes and you're going to ask that damn question no matter what. Just be honest about it.
10. Hosts that act like being on the air makes their opinion more important than everyone else. In reality, they are less valuable, most of the time, than the intern that answers their phone.

I could easily come up with another 10 things, but if there's one thing as bad as bad sports radio, it's bad blogging about bad sports radio, and I've done enough of that for the night.

Times Are Tight At The Animal

Let me start this out by saying that the whole reason that I started this (rarely-updated) blog was because of the Animal's decision to pull Jim Rome from their station in order to put on more of the dreaded "local programming". Much to my surprise, the new show in the 12-3 slot was pretty entertaining, mainly because John Pennington is a knowledgeable sports guy who has a good balance of being informative while not taking himself too seriously.

Then the Animal basically told John that he cost too much to keep and they escorted him off the airwaves. What was their idea to put into this three-hour block of absent programming?

How about the great idea of three separate shows...hosted by the same two jock-sniffers Josh Ward and Chip (no one knows how to spell my name when they rip me on message boards) Caine/Cain/Kain/Cane/Nobody cares what your damn name is. Ward isn't brutal, but Chip is as welcome as a yeast infection in a house off ill repute.

Three different hour-long shows, hosted by the same two guys. If that doesn't confuse the hell out of callers and listeners I'll be shocked. You get a lot of calls in the third hour from people wanting to discuss topics from the first hour and the hosts are too incompetent to steer back the conversation.

Show grade:

Fail.