The influence of sports talk today

[Pratte4Life]

We were mentioning in another thread how sports talk has changed from caller driven to host driven over the years- but with every market having two 24/7 sports talk stations and the vast majority of them running syndicated fare we've also seen something else go by the wayside- and that's the dominant sports talk show host who has real influence.

Think LeBron James saved the Cleveland Cavaliers and that's why it would be tragic if he left? I submit to you the Cavs were really saved back in the early '80s when Pete Franklin railed against owner Ted Stepein to the point where he got the NBA to take over the team from him before he could move it to Toronto or some other place. There's a famous story where Stepein was on a sports talk show in Toronto and was being interviewed about his interest in taking the team there, but Franklin got word- called in- and told the audience of his incompetence.

While you do have the risk of being looked upon as a raving lunatic, at least "Cleveland sportscaster calling up" would be less likely to be hung up on like you or I would, and so Franklin struck and supposedly the flirtation with Toronto was quelled.

But ESPN radio is not going to take the cause of a city like that. And while I can recall sports talk shows being the place where a host could rail against a manager until he was fired or get a community involved in saving their team, I'm not sure there is that dominant host in a market anymore- the way Franklin was in Cleveland, Myron Cope was in Pittsburgh, Ken Beatrice in Washington, Bob Trumpy in Cincinnati, Art Rust Jr. in New York City, etc. The proliferation of sports talk has led us away from a solo big gun.

Do you think there is still that influence? In the past decade- I can think of two examples- one being when ESPN Radio kept the Don Imus controversy alive through a weekend which kept the heat on him for his dismissal from MSNBC and WFAN the next week, the other being that I believe here in Pittsburgh Mark Madden has helped the Pittsburgh Penguins' popularity to soar.


There may be other examples- I've read that Dan Sileo was instrumental in pushing for George O'Leary to get the UCF head coaching job down in Orlando- but I'm not sure anymore. Whereas Mike Francessa once probably greased the skids for Mets manager Bud Harrelson to be fired, now the only guy Francessa is getting canned is Mad Dog Russo.

Thoughts?

 

[ShawnHill1]

I've lived in Los Angeles area most of my life, but I can say that some of the more influential sports talk hosts include Ed "Superfan" Bieler, Bud Furillo (who was also the sports editor at the late Los Angeles Herald-Examiner), and Jim Healy, all of which were before my time (although I listened to the last years of Healy's radio program before he passed away).

I started listening to sports talk radio in my early teens (around 12 or 13; a family friend got me into it), and got into the likes of the original Loose Cannons (Steve Hartman & the late Chet Forte), the (Joe) McDonnell-Douglas (Krikorian) show, Lee "Hacksaw" Hamilton, Jim Rome (when he was local-only), later Steve Mason & John Ireland, and the "Sports Gods"--Dave Smith and Joey Haim. Some of those guys are influential in some way or another, but in the present day...there's no one I can think of. Hartman, Rome, and Mason & Ireland are still around, McDonnell, Smith, Haim aren't on local radio anymore, and Krikorian still writes for the Long Beach Press-Telegram. There are only a few local sports-talk shows now on L.A. radio, and they're in my opinion are boring, embarrassingly awful, or both (with the likes of Vic Jacobs and Roger Lodge).