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Rants about local media

Actually, that's not true.

Sports was a late format coming to Pittsburgh and I still think in a lot of ways Pittsburgh sports talk drags behind other cities.

But in 2002 WBGG had just hired Stan Savran to engage in a battle against Mark Madden that was carried on with Saturday columns in the Post-Gazette (after their expiriment with Scott Paulsen hadn't worked out), it had inspired TV stations to create their own nightly sports talk shows, there was/is a regular radio/TV sports column in the P-G and KDKA was trying to figure out how to compete.
 
garnet said:
5 years ago sports was hardly a format in pittsburgh...who cares...
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And nothing's changed. We have two all-sports stations in Pittsburgh, which is kinda different for a market of this size. With the make-up of this market, the bulk of your material is "the Steelers are great, the Pirates stink, and the Pens need a new arena." You hear topics like these rehashed over and over again, yet if you try to think outside the box and talk about maybe the lower-eschelon sports like the Washington Wild Things, the Slippery Rock Sliders, or other local teams, you're going to lose listeners. Same thing if you spend more than a couple of minutes on Michael Vick or any other athlete in the news for God-knows-what.

The bottom line is, all-sports gets rather stale. I think it's finally run its course.
 
Sports talk radio is not going away.

I do think you present a valid point, however. I don't think the format is what is wrong, but rather that there isn't too much diversity of opinions and that hosts aren't versitile enough to go outside the box.

Love him or hate him, Mark Madden showed that he can gain an audience by talking about ENGLISH SOCCER!

Are there tons of English soccer fans around? Of course not. But Madden is able to report on this in a passionate and provocative way.

You can comment on anything and if it's passionate and provocative, you'll gain an audience.

Now think. How many sports talk show hosts in this town- check that- how many TALK SHOW HOSTS in Pittsburgh are passionate and provocative?
 
Pratte4Life said:
Sports talk radio is not going away.

I do think you present a valid point, however. I don't think the format is what is wrong, but rather that there isn't too much diversity of opinions and that hosts aren't versitile enough to go outside the box.

Love him or hate him, Mark Madden showed that he can gain an audience by talking about ENGLISH SOCCER!

Are there tons of English soccer fans around? Of course not. But Madden is able to report on this in a passionate and provocative way.

You can comment on anything and if it's passionate and provocative, you'll gain an audience.

Now think. How many sports talk show hosts in this town- check that- how many TALK SHOW HOSTS in Pittsburgh are passionate and provocative?
Click to expand...

I don't doubt the talent that we have available here. I have heard Mark Madden on the air, and don't dispute his talents. My point is...do we really have enough going on in the sports world to justify not one, but two sports-formatted radio stations in this market? I say no.
 
That's like asking if we have enough going on to justify two newspapers and all the suburbans.

The answer is of course. There are markets with THREE sports stations that don't have as much going on as Pittsburgh.

Interested, the question you pose was posed 20 years ago when WFAN went on the air. Bob Costas wondered if there was enough going on in NEW YORK to justify such a station- and worried that there might be too much "Mattingly vs. Hernandez" talk going on.

Well, as it turned out, there was plenty of "Mattingly vs. Hernandez" talk. But people liked it. People liked to talk about sports 24/7.

After reading your rather simplistic dismissal of the format "Steelers are great, Bucs are bad, etc.", my guess is that you just don't like the format- which is fine.

Plenty of formats I don't like, but just because it doesn't cater to my own tastes doesn't mean it doesn't need to exist.

But again, I go back to my original point. Is the talent in Pittsburgh "Passionate and Provocative?"

The hosts on WBGG are not. Lynn Cullen is not. Eddy Crowe is not. John Steigerwald is not (and I love Steigy and agree with a lot of his points, but he's not as passionate as he once was and would probably admit that if he was here).

Then there are plenty of hosts who are one or the other in Pittsburgh, but not both.
 
Pratte4Life said:
That's like asking if we have enough going on to justify two newspapers and all the suburbans.

The answer is of course. There are markets with THREE sports stations that don't have as much going on as Pittsburgh.

Interested, the question you pose was posed 20 years ago when WFAN went on the air. Bob Costas wondered if there was enough going on in NEW YORK to justify such a station- and worried that there might be too much "Mattingly vs. Hernandez" talk going on.

Well, as it turned out, there was plenty of "Mattingly vs. Hernandez" talk. But people liked it. People liked to talk about sports 24/7.

After reading your rather simplistic dismissal of the format "Steelers are great, Bucs are bad, etc.", my guess is that you just don't like the format- which is fine.

Plenty of formats I don't like, but just because it doesn't cater to my own tastes doesn't mean it doesn't need to exist.

But again, I go back to my original point. Is the talent in Pittsburgh "Passionate and Provocative?"

The hosts on WBGG are not. Lynn Cullen is not. Eddy Crowe is not. John Steigerwald is not (and I love Steigy and agree with a lot of his points, but he's not as passionate as he once was and would probably admit that if he was here).

Then there are plenty of hosts who are one or the other in Pittsburgh, but not both.
Click to expand...

As far as the newspapers go, you're comparing apples to oranges here. But you still raise an interesting point, since the Trib owns just about every regional newspaper in the area, including the Daily Courier, the Valley News Dispatch, and the Leader-Times, just to name a few. Those papers are centralizing a lot of their administrative functions out of Greensburg and Pittsburgh now.

Yes, I know that there are markets with THREE sports-formatted stations, but those are the exception, and not the norm, and they are very few. I personally don't care for sports radio...but that doesn't mean I would negate it if it could be proven to be a money-maker. Like any talk format, all-sports is generally cost-prohibitive to be able to do it local and do it well. The question that needs to be asked here is, is it worth the time and money of the powers that own these stations to really, and I mean REALLY, aggressively market these stations and invest the money in quality talent?

But I digress...now back to your point.

As far as the talent goes, I think we have plenty of young and aggressive sports talent out there that are passionate enough about the format to sustain it. Steigy, Billy and Stan have one advantage over all else: market heritage and top-of-mind recall. There's still lots of people in this town who don't know Ellis Cannon from Don Cannon, and it's less work for a sales rep trying to attract advertisers to simply name-drop than explain the credentials of the lesser-knowns.
 
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