YAKETY YAK!
With no games to yak about, sports radio hosts go crazy like rest of us
With no sports, sports-talk radio hosts are going crazy, just like the rest of us
Early morning sports radio and TV hosts have such ridiculous opinions about what happens in the games because the games are on very late, and the hosts have to wake up very early. But there are no games now, so Boomer Esiason and Gregg Giannotti are talking about dogs watching people have sex.
“There is no way that I am gonna have my dog watch me make love to my wife,” is the very first thing I heard when I turned on WFAN a little after 9 a.m. on Wednesday. The caller, a man named Sal, bragged about his “fullbreed boxer,” and Giannotti agreed: “If you’re trying to have sex with a boxer in the bed, it’s not gonna work out.”
With sports canceled indefinitely, what does a full day of sports talk radio sound like? Here’s a sampling from Wednesday. (This was before Thursday’s news that WFAN hosts and staff would be taking 10-20% pay cuts, and that the Minkman was taking a buyout)
Boomer & Gio (WFAN) 9:10-10:10 a.m.
By 9 a.m., Esiason was already annoyed by the “CORONA UPDATES” that the station was playing in the mid-morning block. “These COVID updates are filled with nothing but horrific news,” he said.
Like weather or traffic on the twos, the “CORONA UPDATES” or sometimes “COVID-19 UPDATES” are introduced with a little jingle, followed by a brief update on New York City’s cases, death count, and new closures. (In this case, Andrew Cuomo had just closed playgrounds.)
“They gotta do something about those,” Esiason said. “There also has to be some news associated with it that isn’t just surrounded by death… They’re so matter of fact, and so hard to take — to come back and try to restart a conversation that we had prior to that is almost impossible.”
One of the show’s producers agreed. “Every other one is a death toll … All these people are dead, now back to sports.” A producer said that they could get rid of the updates if the hosts wanted, but then backtracked and said that they’re mandated by the station. They played until at least 10, but I didn’t catch any on WFAN the rest of the day.
Gio saw this less as a problem than an opportunity to riff. “This is Ted from 1010 WINS … Everyone is dead, and you’re next, so say goodbye to your family.”
That was good enough to transition into Larry David and Michael Rapaport’s social distancing PSAs, which led to talk of the fact that people are asking Joe Buck to commentate videos of them having sex, which in turn led to Gio doing an impression of Mike Francesa doing play-by-play of a couple having sex. The impression is grunt-heavy, but pretty good, and Francesa has complained about it for years, which only makes Gio do it more.
“Right now we’re still clothed, but it looks like the clothes are going off,” he grunted. “If it were me, I’d start missionary, but that’s just me, I’m more of a traditional guy when it comes to that … I was doing reverse cowgirl before a lot of people knew what that was.”
“Jeffrey the kid, WFAN the kid,” who sounds about 10 years old, called in shortly after that. Most of the previous callers had bragged that their dogs left them alone while they were having sex with their very real wives and girlfriends, so Jeffrey was a wholesome bit of fresh air, as intended.
He said he’s participating in esports and doing online learning. Boomer points out the obvious — it’s 10 a.m., shouldn’t he be in class?
Over the course of the next seven hours, the joy of child callers and dogs in the bedroom will become a faint memory on the punishing march to drivetime.
The Dan Le Batard Show (streaming online) 10:10-11:30 a.m.
DiPietro, Canty & Rothenberg (ESPN) 11:30-12:30 a.m.
Moose & Maggie (WFAN) 12:30-1:30 a.m.
Bart & Hahn (ESPN) 2:00-3:00 a.m.
Joe & Evan (WFAN) 3:30-4:30
Without sports to analyze, there is little opportunity for shows to differentiate themselves through strength of analysis. Nuance and insight aren’t worth much when there’s no new material. Take that away and you’re left with the same technical issues everyone else is facing, with hosts, producers and guests working remotely.
Pretty much every show I listened to had some type of technical problem at some point. Bart Scott’s audio was terrible, and he kept forgetting to unmute himself. Dan Le Batard asked Stugotz who the best-looking people are at ESPN and Stugotz answered thinking he asked who the nicest ESPNers are.
Without any events to respond to, there was still what now passes for enjoyable live chaos. Jeff Kent called Carlos Baerga “a big turd.” Paul in Middle Village called Joe & Evan to explain the origins of a one-hit wonder, and landed on “Teenagers would run through Central Park and rip girls’ shirts and bras off. That’s what ‘Who Let The Dogs Out’ is about.”
Meanwhile, ESPN 98.7 runs a promo that screams “SPORTS NEVER STOPS.”
The Michael Kay Show (ESPN) 4:30-6 p.m.
With sports on hold, it’s an easy turn down memory lane. But listening to Dan Le Batard talk about the 1997 World Series or Joe Benigno relive the 1986 World Series was not nearly as entertaining as Kay breaking down April Fool’s Day 2005, which saw the biggest public meltdown of his career.
Kay told his staff at the time that he hated pranks and didn’t want any April Fool’s jokes. His program director at the time, Aaron Spielberg, went ahead with one anyway, getting reporter Larry Hardesty to call in with breaking news that the Mets had traded Mike Piazza for Sammy Sosa. Kay erupted on the Mets on the air before losing it on his staff when he learned the truth.
“I said some things that were potentially very damaging about the Mets and Omar Minaya. ‘You wonder, is there a Latin aspect to it?’ I mean, I was really getting myself into trouble,” Kay said Wednesday. “Then Larry calls back after I gotten myself into a verbal prison. I was gonna leave the show,” Kay said. “I thought it was the height of lack of respect. The thing that really got me is that I said things that were incendiary for no reason.”
In other words, the thing that ground Kay’s gears about having accused Minaya of making a stupid trade because a player was Latino was that there wasn’t actually a trade.
“Oh, I was red hot. Still red hot,” Kay said. Don La Greca agreed that it was by far the angriest he’d ever seen Kay and said he was barely comfortable talking about it 15 years later; Spielberg was fired and reassigned to Stephen A. Smith’s show, which is corroborated by published reports from the time.
Paying close attention to sports radio for nine straight hours would be a stupid thing to do in any circumstance. With no sports but the NFL Draft to discuss, it was brain-melting, which meant I was in the perfect state to end the day with some Mike Francesa.
Mike’s On (WFAN) 6-6:30 p.m.
This is what I’d been waiting for all day, and it delivered. Francesa has turned on his boy Donald Trump because of the pandemic, and it’s made for righteous radio.
Francesa didn’t quite bring the heat on Trump like he did on Tuesday, but he opened with 15 minutes of nonstop virus talk. It’s soothing to hear the brutal news filtered through the only way Francesa can speak.
“You have states like Virginia telling people to stay home until June 10th. June 10th, throwing that date around…. Handgun sales went up by 91% month over month. That’s not something you want to see, people thinking there’s going to be some type of civil unrest.”
Late-era Francesa has never worried much about transitions or making his program run smoothly, and the weighty content now just makes that even more obvious. He called for landlords not to collect rent before finishing his first segment:
“Our number is growing astronomically, we’re going to have 100,000 cases in New York before too long. We just have to do more. The virus is winning, and it’s winning by the day. We got a late start on it, and it’s kicking our rear end. We gotta stage a comeback,” he intoned, straight into the trademark “Back afta this.”
Francesa will never change and never retire. After the break, he bragged about having seen Michael Jordan “in person so many times” and let a few callers blow smoke up his butt.
Then it was time for Mike to sign off, before we set this whole thing back into motion early the next morning. “People are dying in our city, that’s what’s important. Casamigos Tequila sponsors the program, as always.”