Why does ESPN Radio not take a lot of phone calls?

[Leebo65]

Colin is one of my favorites. He is inspiring. He motivates. Although I haven't started Q90x yet. His philosophy is right on. Every man wants a trophy wife. If they don't have one they are a failure.

 

[quadraphonic]

Yeah, and we should only listen to former jocks talking about sports.
Waitaminit.

 

[Nate Wesley]

My question would be....is it a good thing or a bad thing that ESPN doesn't take calls from the listeners?

If you listen to local sports shows for any significant length of time, you already know why ESPN Radio's national shows rarely have live callers. To hear really good engaging callers, you have to muck through a lot of crappy ones. Callers recycling talking points to death, callers being in-articulate or unintelligible, dumb callers who STILL don't know to turn the radio down on the phone, callers who are big Howard Stern fans...lol.

Someone said the hosts and some of the callers were scripted...uh, you mean like your typical morning show? Or that nationally-syndicated talk radio host you listen to every day at lunch? ESPN Radio shows probably put in the same type of prep, call screening, and guest booking that the other big radio shows get. They may not be fully scripted, but there's definitely points they want to make or hit. Whatever added spontaneity or spice gets added to the equation is just gravy.

Suffice it to say, ESPN would have a pretty good argument on why they don't actually need callers. For as much as some of ya'll say you hate them, you seem to know a heck of a lot of what they're talking about.

 

[Pratte4Life]

I don't necessarily agree with this Nate.

I listen to WFAN a lot, and I note how their callers always have great takes and are hardly the drones you make them out to be. WFAN has the philosophy of embracing the caller- they've even asked a few to become hosts- and hosts know how to bulid off them.

As I said, a host gathers his own callers for the most part. If he gets crappy callers- he probably has a crappy show.

In my expeience, when I was a host in east Tennessee, I didn't get a lot of callers because I didn't really relate to an east Tennessee audience. When I was a host in Pittsburgh- I got a lot of callers because I DID relate to that audience.

On Cowherd- first of all I don't agree that FOX is made up totally of pompous wing nuts and CNN is made up of nice guys. News media outlets tend to lean left, and with fewer conservative outlets conservatives are going to flock to them.


It used to be CNN was the leftist news network (remember- CLINTON NEWS NETWORK?) and FOX was the right wing one with MSNBC in the middle. Then MSNBC started leaning more left, taking the CNN viewers away from them with faster paced, more provacative shows and making a grandstand play for the left by firing Don Imus.

That has more to do with the demise of CNN (as well as its sale from Turner and such) than anything else.

That said, Cowherd does little but parrot the ESPN company line- and he does it with obnoxiousness. He's really not that different from The Fabulous Sports Babe- and that show was a disaster.

Why is it that so many believe personality on a sports talk show must be obnoxiousness? Is it the foundation Pete Franklin laid, or is there something else?

Because I can show you a ton of personality driven shows past and present- Myron Cope, Ken Beatrice, Art Rust Jr., Steve Somers, Mad Dog Russo, Tony Bruno, etc. where the host is not a "cut 'em off and shout" guy (well, Russo will shout but it's usually not with anger) but rather a character.

Are Cowherd's ratings the result of his talent, or his network?

 

[KeithE4]

Hmmm, that's quite a departure. He always homered for the Pac-10, even tried to make an argument of them being the best conference in football. Whatever.

He used to be ESPN's lone west-coast booster until maybe a year ago. Now he seems to be just another parrot for the TV network's east-coast bias. Maybe it has something to do with his TV show and being officially part of "the family" (i.e. not radio-only) now.

 

[KeithE4]

Again, This network has sharp people. What ESPN radio could really use, is more true radio people, and fewer TV people, who come over to fill shows. It needs more pep, not less.

Why would The Northeast-wide Leader in Sports want more "radio people" on the radio network, instead of familiar TV personalities like Mike & Mike (OK, Golic has more TV presence than Greenberg), Dan Patrick (before he left), John Clayton, Mel Kiper, etc.? I thought ESPN Radio exists solely to pimp the ESPN brand, ESPN programming, and ESPN personalities, rather than being primarily a stand-alone radio network in the old-fashioned (CBS/NBC/ABC/Mutual) sense.

From what I understand, marketing is the only reason the Mickey Mouse Outfit is in the radio business at all. ESPN Radio and Radio Disney are advertising tools for their respective "prime" businesses (cable networks and the leagues/conferences they broadcast for the former, & theme parks, movies, records, toys, etc. for the latter). Does either network make money on their own, or are they just considered advertising expenses/writeoffs by corporate Disney? From what I've heard, ESPN breaks even, and RD has never made a profit by itself.

 

[kjl]

As for callers, less is always better. At least thats my opinion.

Agreed.