Teddy Greenstein’s new beat as the TV/Radio sports reporter at the Tribune has caused him to give us some bad news recently (i.e. Chip Caray’s contract negotiations back on), but today’s news that the Score is about to free up the AM drive for Mike North and Uncle Fuzzy actually caused me to feel happy thoughts.
I’m no Mike North fan, but I despise Mike Murphy and his castrado voice and his doughboy sidekick. I had to stop listening to them in the morning because they made me want to shave my wrists and not my face.
North will be far easier to avoid in the morning than he is in the afternoon drive.
There is some heinously bad news, however. It seems that while Murph and Fred will be kicked to the curb (or even worse, the evening slot currently held by J. Hood) that Rick Telander is going to brought in to work with Hood in the afternoon drive slot.
Telander? What, the Grobber’s not available? The only thing worse than giving Telander a radio show was giving Mariotti one. You’d think that the Tribune company would try to find spots for both Rick Morrissey and Mike Downey.
Morrissey could host a show on WGN where callers discuss interesting things like “the most unusual place I found my car keys” or “fascinating uses for twisty ties!”
Downey could host a show for geriatrics in which he gives tips on how to avoid chafing from the Depends waistband and what kind of pudding goes best with beef or fish.
Telander? Like he needs another outlet for his sermonious musings and faux moral outrage.
Feder says in his column today that Murphy would move to evenings. Just how bad do you have to be to finally get fired at the Score?
This would be the “new” Score lineup.
5 a.m. – 5:30 a.m. — Stocks and Jocks (nobody listens…ever)
5:30 a.m. – 10 a.m. — North and Buffone
10 a.m. – 2 p.m. — Boers and Bernstein
2 p.m. – 6 p.m. — Hood and Telander
6 p.m. – 7 p.m. — Replay of the Best of North and Buffone (they’d be lucky to fill an hour a week)
7 p.m. – 11 p.m. — Radio test patterns with Mike Murphy
11 p.m. – 1 a.m. — A rotating mess of Laurence Holmes solo, Me and Zee and Dave Kerner
That’s a steaming pile of something, isn’t it?
You’d really think they could cobble together something more listenable than this.
What do you mean nobody listens to my show?
Cokehead brokers who’ve been up all night, for one. With the way the stock market’s been going the last four years, there are NO shortages of cokehead/alcoholic stockbrokers who party all night.
Here’s MY lineup
5:30 – 10:00 – Drive to work
10:00 – 2:00 – Wait for Desipio to update
2:00 – 2:15 – Write my own blog
2:15 – 4:30 – watch the clock
4:30 – 6:30 – Mac, Jurko, & Harry
6:30 – 10:00 – a rotating mess of watching the Cubs squander starting pitching, watching my wife burn food, and watching my kids fight.
I’d like to see Steve Rosenbloom given a chance at a more expanded role. Some of his schtick might need to be toned down if he was to be on the air on a daily basis, but he’s way more talented than that hack J Hood. Listen to Hood’s voice/breathing/speaking sometime. Not even close to porfessional broadcast standards. He was a funny producer in his day, but he is not a full-time guy. And his pro-Sox/anti-Cubs stance is very transparent, and his racial undertones aren’t far behind.
I love the Chip monitor…..do we have a reasonable chance to dump this shithead?
The whole structure at the SCORE is totally retarded.
It’s like this:
Intern gets promoted to producer. Producer gets promoted to his own show because he’ll work for peanuts.
That way, they can pay Hot Dog Boy 1.75 mildos a year (I find it hard to type that without twitching).
In the beginning, it was refreshing that our first sports-radio station was stocked with "regular guys". But before you could say "free lunch" these guys became mockeries of themselves–the attention they got went to their head and, in an all-too-typical scenario, they quickly became the people they were supposed to have been an antitdote for.
So today, the SCORE finally goes outside their little varsity-club-promote-the-interns-policy to make an outside hire of a professional sports guy, and who do they hire? Bruce Wolf? Barry Rozner?
No, of course not. They would be way too entertaining and informative. Instead they may hire…
Rick Telander. The maudlin, sentimental "things-were-better-in-my-day", self-absorbed Bob Greene of the Sports Section? You’ve GOT to be kidding me.
I know that Chet Coppock and Les Grobstein are considered too uncool for the SCORE’S little circle jerk, but I would rather listen to them than ANYBODY on the station right now.
Mike D.-
Chet Coppock, are you kidding?
I thought Murph was the biggest ahole in the world when I interned for him….then I interned for Chet.
Yeah but why would I care what an a-hole he is? You’re the one who elected to go into a field that is littered with a-holes.
Mike Murphy could be a swell guy. However, knowing that wouldn’t prevent me from wanting to stab myself in the ears when I hear him in full "assclown" mode.
And I’m not saying that I would want Coppock anyway. He’s kind of a blowhard. I’m just saying that he would be more entertaining than anybody from the current asshat lineup that the SCORE foists on the Chicago listeners.
Isn’t it amazing that North makes that kind of dough? The next time you listen for an extended period anytine during the day, note how many commercials are played. They must have blocks of 5-6 minutes worth of ads. Throw in the scoreboard updates I would be surprised if there were more than 35 minutes per hour of actual show time.
Mike, the sad part is, because the Score is basically the only local sports station in town (no, I don’t count ESPN Radio) they never change anything. They just recite their stupid "decade of dominance" mantra and shuffle the deck chairs on the Titanic. I agree that either Wolf or Rozner would be an improvement (Wolf is wasted doing updates on 97.9 during mornings, and Rozner does a good job in his appearances on the Steve Dahl show), but I’m expecting the same old until ESPN actually decides to get some local programming that doesn’t include Jay Mariotti.
Question:
I know he takes 39 weeks of vacation a year, but why couldn’t Mark Giangreco pull double-duty and host his own show? Dan Patrick does it.
If I were running ‘MVP, I would back up the Brinks truck to try to entice him.
Of course, if that ignorant civic embarassment Mike North can snag $1.75mm/annum, then Giangreco would have to be worth at least 6 billion.
Would Alex Kaseberg or Sanjay be Roz’s sidekick?
Anytime I needed time off from TV to work on my radio show, I could just show Detroit riot footage. That always gets me a vacation!
Adding to what Mike D said about promoting producers to full-time, a similar mistake The Score makes is making update guys full-time.
We can be conditioned to hear Bartosh, Kerner, Ofman, or even Swieca for 2 minutes at a time. When that gets stretched to 3 hours, it’s still only listenable for 2 minutes, tops.
Steve Olkin used to be pretty good on The Huddle on the old 670 WMAQ, I think it was. If any of the update people should get a shot at all, he might be one.
I’d suggest a rotation based on the season for some of their slots. Let O’Bradovich and Buffone loose for Bear season and then switch it up in February.
Give Rosey the next couple months until the Hawks are done — anything to keep Jesse Rogers off the airwaves — and then go to Giangreco/Wolf/Rozer or somebody for the summer until the Bears are up again.
One of the Score’s big failings is their inability to offer a national perspective on anything. Especially now that ESPN Radio is in the market, they wear their regionalism like a badge. Even in a sports city like Chicago, you can not program an entire day’s worth of talk around five sports teams. They don’t want to discuss national sports at all now, because they think it’s the reason they consistently beat ESPN Radio. If they’d find a way to balance a national perspective with their ability to beat any breaking local story to death, they’d be better off. Instead we get this strange caricature (North) of what a Chicagoan is, or the psedo-intellectual (Bernstein) or the dirty old man (Boers) or the complete dumbass (Ofman.) It’s not bad radio, but it’s certainly mediocre, and never will be any better than that. It’s easy to ignore, and I find myself doing more of that every day.
Caricature?!? If I knew what that meant, I’d probably be mad. Now somebody give me another Polish and get the Da Coach on the phone. That’s exactly right!
Yes, I’m a DOM, but I believe a MORE description word would be:
Misanthrope
mis·an·thrope
Noun
One who hates or mistrusts humankind.
Fearless prediction:
I think Andy is bucking for a job there.
Of course, it’s gonna be a hell of a commute.
Out on the Town with Andy?
Mornin’ Murph! Mornin’ Fred! If Murph and Fred get moved, they won’t get to play this clip every morning like they currently do.
–"I Predict" bell.
–Barbara Glanz, Murph’s English teacher at LaGrange
–Chelsea’s Old Drawers
–The "thinking man"’s sports radio station.
Dammit, it’s the "what if" bell, not the I predict bell. What would Swami Murph say?
Miss a little, miss a lot.
Stop calling Murph and Fred and try not getting picked off base, Corey.
:::I despise Mike Murphy and his castrado voice and his doughboy sidekick:::
I’ll take Murph’s voice over Hot Dog Boy’s race baiting every time.
Side note:
Best Murph moment ever. He’s doing "Talking Magic 8-Ball" and asking for calls. No one calls.
Finally, someone calls in with a question. I… uh… the caller asks, "Hey 8-ball. Are you ever gonna do this bit again?"
The answer was, "Yes. Most definately."
The reality. The bit was never heard again.
Dammit Chuck, you’re just in denial because Joe DiMaggio was the greatest ballplayer of all time, and he was Italian like me.
I was going to be Bobby Collins’ sidekick right before he crashed his plane into that hospital.
I thought bacon would kill him before faulty flying.
No truth to the rumor that I had anything to do with Bobby’s death…
I just found this site thanks to a google seach for news of Murphy’s demise. I see I’m behind the 8 ball by about a week, but heck, I’ll see what comes up anyway. The story is still going on. I’m in tune with Andy’s observation that North will be even easier to avoid in the mornings. I haven’t been able to tolerate him since he and Jiggs split up. The only time I hear North’s voice now are during the first 3 seconds of those infernal incessant decible heavy commercials. I do, however, like Murphy…if he actually is transferred to evenings, I’ll just tape him at night and listen in the mornings. Or maybe I’ll find him up the dial. No one dissects a game like Murph does.
In general, I find the Score’s offerings to be deteriorating. I prefer the weekend hosts to the daily hosts. The smarmy Bernstein is barely tolerable with his part time co-hosts, but is unlistenable with his full time partner Boers. Terry, if you read this you’ll be shocked…I think Bernstein is a bad influence on you and (choke) I actually like you sans Bernstein. I didn’t listen to the two of them at all for about a year (as they frequently admonish their callers to do) but lately they’ve seemed to tone down their soft porn and self congratulatory acts to the extent that I can take them in small doses. I just recently started listening in small doses again while each worked solo during the others’ contract negotiations. Just this morning, Bernstein was saying that his station manager is running a business and hosts are basically survive by virtue of ratings points. This, I suppose is true. I, however have standards not necessarily in tune with the Boers/Bernstein verbal clubbing of less sophisticated callers nor with the staccato shoutathon of North. And now he’s to be a political observer? Is this insane, or what? This is one loyal SCORE listener that is being driven away.
ESPN Radio is more frequently the station of choice now, particularly Mac, Jurko and Harry. I’ve even developed a taste for Mariotti given the choices we have at 10AM weekdays. Whoda thunk? The lineup of discarded SCORE hosts is a much more professional bunch than the group they have polluting the airwaves now.
One final thought. Buffone and OB are THE BEST on Sundays after Bears games…I bleed for them. I Just wish they’d give Buffone a regular slot. Oh, you say he’s teamed with North? Well, Doug, I’ll look for you on Sundays this fall.