Monday (Guests and Reruns) edition: Wha’ Happened?
Posted on May 19th, 2008 – 8:29 AMBy Michael Rand
As we might have mentioned to a fair number of you, this week will be filled with guest posts and some of our favorite work from the past 1.5 years or so of RandBallin’ as we head out of Beefland / Upper Crustatia for the next week or so and try our best not to be ugly Americans overseas. (That’s a fasola-link! by the way.) We would like to leave you with a Monday morning talker, however, courtesy of Rocket (and toned down quite a bit from his original post): if one was to rank the programs on our local sports talk radio station from best to worst, how would such a list shake out? He only included the 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. programs in his very hurtful list because in his neck of the woods that’s all he gets. He also had The Common Man at the top of the heap. We’ve heard how you feel about various writers. Now we’re curious: what does this crowd like to listen to when so inclined to head over to KFAN?
35 Responses to "Monday (Guests and Reruns) edition: Wha’ Happened?"
I’m just going to throw gasoline on the fire and say that I don’t like Garage Logic or Joe Soucheray at all. I’m not a big fan of people who push their opinions/agendas and call it “common sense”. He strikes me as such a snarky dip-[redacted] that I can’t force myself to listen to him. And I hate his voice. Is that enough?
Common Man is my favorite (“Capitals … lowercased!”). As for the worst, I’d rather listen to a running circular saw than Superstar & Chris Hawkey.
My commute is 15 minutes each way, and is usually configured to listen to Rand’s favorite colleague, Mr. Reusse, both ways, on KSTP. In his absence, it’s MPR in the morning, and Barreiro in the afternoon. Can’t stand KFAN in the early morning; PA/Dubay,
Common Man (prefer Mischke), and Hartman are OK.
This was the original post, by the way…
I was shocked –shocked, I tell you – to learn that RandBall has yet to rank the local sports talk radio shows. It is time to rectify that situation. There is one caveat to note before we begin. I currently live in an area of the country that plays the shows from 9 AM to 7 PM. So, The Power Trip and Sludge and Lake will not be considered.
4. The Chad Hartman Show – This is the perfect show for those who are deeply concerned with what the Anoka Library Association and the Woodbury Park Board are up to.
3. The Dan Barriero Show – Bumper to Bumper probably would have rated higher on this list as little as six months ago (and definitely a year or so ago). However, what used to be a nice blend of sports topics with other topics has gotten a little lopsided. The fact that Dan now has a show on
the all talk station is further proof that it is only a matter of time before he completely jumps the sports shark.
2. Duckies and Bunnies – The main strength of PA and Dubay is that they basically just talk sports; and while it’s nice to have some shows that are a bit more eclectic, it is also nice to have a show that only cares about the ostensibly dominant subject matter of the station. That being noted, PA’s shtick is growing increasingly grating. Whereas Dubay, whether you agree with him or not, generally expresses some semblance of sound reasoning for his opinions, PA will let any ridiculous collection of words tumble out of his mouth. The nonsense is most often sandwiched by a tired string of worn out catchphrases and/or borderline racy/homophobic/sexist innuendo.
1. The Common Man – If you don’t get it, you probably also wonder why Common keeps saying Abner Doubleday invented basketball when you’ve called in several times to correct him. If you do get it, Common and his interim producer put on the most entertaining radio show in the upper Midwest.
I’ll take the bait and go the other way. I can’t stand the Common Man. I actually don’t think any of the KFAN “personalities” are that great. I guess if I had to rate them I’d go (Worst to Better)
Common
Superstar
Sludge and Lake
PA
Dubay
Hartman
Barriero
For a market this size, how can they not come up with people better than this?
The real question is whether or not Rand makes it back from Europe. I’ve seen Hostel and I’m a little worried. Just in case he doesn’t make it back, I think we should all start getting our resumes together. Without this blog I’d actually have to get some work done.
I’ll just rank the running bits:
1. Supershow. I applaud Dan Cole’s ongoing attempt to aggravate Barreiro into dementia.
2. Carl Gerbschmidt.
3. Jeff Dubay’s troubles with women/his weight.
4. Anytime Kessler or Andrew Zimmern are on with Barreiro.
5. Common’s ability to make his inability to make a sincere, well-argued point into a strength.
RE: KSTP. As we like to call it in outstate Minnesota, “What’s that?” No offense meant to Friend of Rand Kraig Applecherry, all offense meant to the insufferable wingnuts who find purchase on their weak signal outside the metro.
People still talk about sports on mediums outside of blogs? Huh.
Didn’t Barreiro just sign a new contract for like 600K a year too? I agree that it is nice to not talk entirely about sports but on a sports station shouldn’t each show talk about sports at least 50% of the time? How many times can they talk about Hillary being a uterine-american and Obama not being a uterine-american?
By the way today is KG’s Birthday. He turned 32 today. If you could get KG anything for his B-Day, what would you get him?
jama: I would get KG some courage, so he can step up when he’s needed. Shed the “Raging Violet” moniker. Take on the mantle of “Big Ticket” and all it entails.
5) Duckies and Bunnies. It’s a tired bit that I stopped listening to long ago (and, yes, I stream the Fan at work her in Arizona often).
4) Superstar. I’m sure it’s entertaining but it’s on to early. That said, it’s still better than PA & Dubay.
3) Common. Take away the golf stories, and he’s fairly entertaining. I particularly like any interaction Dan from Woodbury has with Bump.
2) Mary Lucia’s afternoon show on The Current.
1) Bumper to Bumper. And it’s not even close. Dan’s is the most relevent, thought-provoking and consistently engaging of all the talk radio shows in your market.
A couple of sidenotes:
* I didn’t forget Hartman. He’s just that awful.
* You guys should stop whining about the quality of your talk radio options. Minneapolis is light years ahead of Phoenix in this category. Stu and Jama could put together a more entertaining drive time radio show than anything currently offered in the Valley.
I would definitely listen to Stu and Jama. Rand and Linneman, well, about 9 minutes a week is all I can take. Dave MN and all of his brothers would be good too (anyone else miss “Cole Family Radio”?)
fasola: Steve MN would have to be a call-in host, because Paul MN and I will have nothing to do with him after “the incident”
Mary Lucia’s afternoon show on The Current.
Yes, yes, a thousand times yes.
Stu
What do you say, are you up for a radio show in Phoenix? No Income Tax! I’d demand that my name come first though, after that you can be in charge.
Stearns County would have be included in the show though.
I talked to my Tempe-based brother yesterday. 105 degrees yesterday, pushing 110 today. Can’t do it. I need my heat balanced out by stifling humidity, garnished with seven punishing months of winter.
That said, if I did a show, I’d demand that it be called the Morning Zoo with Boner and Dr. Fart, regardless of it’s in morning drive time or contains two people. I feel very strongly about this.
Gold Bond medicated powder gets me through the 110-plus days.
What about The Cool Down with J and Stu? I’ll start pitching it to Clear Channel.
I don’t listen to sports talk radio (must have been all the years my parents subjected me to Sid, Dave Mona and Dark Star.) I would add to lattewarrior’s point that Mpls. is light years ahead of Phoenix in many things. Don’t get me started on the TV sports guys.
My guess is Morning Zoo with Boner and Dr. Fart would kill in the ratings here, sports talk or not.
My guess is Morning Zoo with Boner and Dr. Fart would kill in the ratings here, sports talk or not.
Stu
If it were the 2 of us I would have to demand that I be Dr. Fart. It sounds much more professional than Boner. And I prefer the afternoon so that my hangover wears off by the time I get on the air.
Common FTW. I once tried explaining Common’s show to some Access Vikings bloggers but then I realized they have their own special seven out of ten ratio and even the dominant three still rode the short bus to school every day.
I don’t mind the morning show for the little bit of time I get to listen. At least it isn’t just one personality being shoved in your ear the whole time.
Morning Zoo with Boner and Dr. Fart would kill in the ratings here
Boner and Dr. Fart would be my girlfriend’s two favorite radio personality if only because their names would never cease to make her laugh.
Dave
That’s too easy to even comment on. We all know those are her pet names for her little schmookem.
While they might be fitting, she doesn’t call me either of those names…
Who said you were her schmookem?
apparently, no one. I just thought…
We all know what thinking gets you….
“We all know those are her pet names for her little schmookem.”
Please see No. 10 on this list:
http://men.msn.com/articlemh.aspx?cp-documentid=6939112>1=32001
Common man is completely unlistenable. Any cleverness that was once in his schtick has long since gotten stale. Hartman jumps so much from topic to topic I can’t go near the Fan at that time either. PA and Dubay at least talk local sports and Barreiro is easily the most thought provoking on the station.
Time to shake up the middle of the day at the ol’ 1130 over there…
Just be grateful you’re not listening to sports radio in Seattle. At least the guys in Minny resist the urge to suck up at every single opportunity.
In my limited experience, the average Seattle sports talk radio host is:
a) obese — you know how chubby people get all out of breath when they get excited? There you go;
b) openly rooting for the home team, on cloud nine when they post a two-game win-streak, unable to see any flaws in the roster;
c) openly rooting for non-Seattle teams to struggle, considering suicide during losing streaks, unable to see anything but gaps in their losing team’s roster;
d) unable to talk about *ANYTHING* other than sports. I mean, they’ll spend three hours breaking down Carlos Silva’s last start.
You should hear them talk about losing the Sonics. They’re just incredulous about the whole thing, and when someone brings up a reasonable point about the business or political sides of the issue, it sounds something like this:
“Well, I mean, c’mon … what are you … that’s just … how in the … yeah, but … SAVE OUR SONICS, MAN! ROWR!!”
These people make the Common Man seem like he has the sage wisdom of Paul Harvey.
ps: I would totally listen to Boner and Dr. Fart.
Proposed tagline:
“Everyone loves a Boner in the morning.”
I’m okay with Hartman until Brian Oake with that overdone rock radio dj voice comes on… and tells us his feelings on who should win “American Idol”.
Common would never waste his dead air time yakking about “American Idol”.
Also not a big fan of PA’s “Covenant” stuff but Dubay can be kinda fun sometimes.
