What's wrong with Boston Sports Radio?

DisgruntledSoxFan77

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As others have said, this is mostly because the teams are winning. I wouldn't say the coaches ever get a vote of confidence though - just that they never get brought up. Farrell got torn apart at the end, and the Cora hiring was widely mocked until the Red Sox kept winning, then that topic mysteriously vanished from the airwaves. Same as the Price topic, though I'm sure losing to the Yankees last night will chum the waters there.
By who? I never heard anyone mock the hiring...
 

John Marzano Olympic Hero

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By who? I never heard anyone mock the hiring...
Mock is the right word. There were more than a few people in the media who wondered why Cora got the job. They would jokingly mention how he GMed the Puerto Rican national team and how that was enough to manage the Sox. Then they would bring up how he was a bench coach for the Astros last year and how "important of a job" that was. And then they'd talk about how he was a broadcaster, etc.

Basically all the surface level bullshit that you could talk about without really getting into the details of what made Cora a sought-after manager.
 

8slim

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Nov 6, 2001
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FWIW, I've lived in the NYC market for the past 20 years and, until radio station streaming became a thing a few years back, I had to listen to WFAN for my sports talk fix. Anytime I'd go back home to Mass and be exposed to WEEI the juxtaposition was so damn stark. Hosts on the FAN didn't engage in nearly the same amount of obvious trolling and fake contrarianism. Plus they weren't transparently bigoted.

But media is an incredibly democratic institution. Ratings win. If Boston sports fans didn't want the current incarnation of Boston sports talk radio then they wouldn't listen. But they do, in droves.

Thoughtful, reasoned analysis is the domain of print and podcasts.
 

joe dokes

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Jul 18, 2005
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Once the Pats Dynasty FINALLY dies down, the Boston sports media landscape -- particularly radio -- will be in a much different state.
I think it will get worse, at least in terms of listenership. If the Pats have sub 500 teams during a rebuild, there's very little that a "sports" talk radio host can say that will rile fans up. "They suck." Yawn. "Yes, Mike, they do." They'll have nothing to say except "Sure, Belichick got them to 20 straight AFCCGs and retired after wining another SB, but he left the cupboard bare."

Its only when they say that obviously not-sucking teams suck (or try to minimize the teams' greatness) that they mass the anger of those who take it personally.
 

dcmissle

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Negativity has its place. It resonates the most, and is fully justified, when you have an outfit with great potential that cannot get out of its own way and grossly underperforms.

The Bobby Grier-Pete Carroll clown show is Exhibit A. Especially with the team fortified by all the draft picks acquired for Parcells and Curtis Martin. The waste was grotesque. Will McDonough and Ron Borges went nuts, tag teaming on brutal column after brutal column. It worked. The situation was untenable. Enter Belichick.

I don’t know what sports radio was doing at the time because I was living out of town. Interestingly, much of the print sports media in town at the time soft pedaled just how bad things had had become. That would probably never happen today. McDonough and Borges brought blowtorches.
 

JimD

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Nov 29, 2001
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Mock is the right word. There were more than a few people in the media who wondered why Cora got the job. They would jokingly mention how he GMed the Puerto Rican national team and how that was enough to manage the Sox. Then they would bring up how he was a bench coach for the Astros last year and how "important of a job" that was. And then they'd talk about how he was a broadcaster, etc.

Basically all the surface level bullshit that you could talk about without really getting into the details of what made Cora a sought-after manager.
Wasn't that just the usual contrarian BS, though? Maybe my recall is faulty but it felt like Cora was widely acknowledged as the big prize in last year's managerial hiring sweepstakes. The mediots who questioned the hiring would have been the same ones crucifying Dombrowski and Henry had the Sox dithered and allowed Brian Cashman to swoop in and steal Cora away.
 

John Marzano Olympic Hero

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Wasn't that just the usual contrarian BS, though?
Yeah it was contrarian, but there wasn't any real logic behind their thoughts other than "the Red Sox really want this guy, he must suck". And instead of using any sort of real evidence to back it up (the silver lining of a hiring a guy with no experience is that he hasn't done anything completely egregious) they just made fun of the hiring. Which is par for the course, I suppose.

And you're right, if Cora went to the Yankees and led them to 104+ wins, Felger and Mazz would spend hours talking about how "the Sox never do what it takes to close a deal", "the Yankees always get the best of Boston", etc. The thing is, anyone in this forum can write Boston Sports Media fanfic and come pretty close to what one of these clowns would say. And I think that's what really sucks about this market, these people are some damn predictable and basic. It's boring.
 

dirtynine

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Dec 17, 2002
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There’s nothing wrong with it. It targets and successfully appeals to people who are either dumb and passionate ([insert popular white guy first name from the 50s] from [insert route 1 north-adjacent town]), or more recently, semi-interested but indifferent (“ooh, what are today’s takes???”) Smerlas and Felger, basically.

If you’re dumb and indifferent, you probably don’t listen to sports radio. If you’re smart and passionate, you have podcasts.

That smart terrestrial sports talk radio has ever happened is an accident / freak occurrence / inefficiency waiting to be corrected.
 

cornwalls@6

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Apr 23, 2010
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There’s nothing wrong with it. It targets and successfully appeals to people who are either dumb and passionate ([insert popular white guy first name from the 50s] from [insert route 1 north-adjacent town]), or more recently, semi-interested but indifferent (“ooh, what are today’s takes???”) Smerlas and Felger, basically.

If you’re dumb and indifferent, you probably don’t listen to sports radio. If you’re smart and passionate, you have podcasts.

That smart terrestrial sports talk radio has ever happened is an accident / freak occurrence / inefficiency waiting to be corrected.
I think this is spot on. I've had occasion to listen to it in a lot of markets over the years(which of course anyone can now do via streaming), and the vast majority of it sucks. Hot takes, fake arguments, and increasingly, TMZ/ Tiger Beat (dating myself) level off field/celebrity gossip. I don't think any of this is particularly unique to Boston. There's been like one great daily show in the history of the format ever, Mike and The Mad Dog in their heyday. That's pretty much it. And like every other market, I suspect there are a significant number of smart Boston fans that have long since stopped bothering with either station. There's been the occasional decent listen around here(Holley,Keefe), but they rarely sustain a Drive time slot. If anything the sorry state of sports talk radio in this market is just reflective of the general coarsening and dumbing down of the culture at large. Thankful for places like this, podcasts, and the handful of smart, interesting print people still out there.
 

lapa

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Apr 20, 2018
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Just read game threads. Might help explain the radio market a bit. It’s a big market team so it’s either over the top whining due to entitlement of expecting every game to just be there for the team to win by default or whining in the years then suck. There’s really no market for measured and subtle discussion or analysis, the game threads at times read like nyyfans forum threads
 

Haunted

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Aug 23, 2006
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Last night, I was in the car for the end of the game and about a half hour after. I mostly listened to the EEI post game but flipped over to 98.5... and immediately regretted it.

Adam Jones - after a 16-1 massacre of the team's biggest rival in their own stadium, in which a player for the Red Sox hit for the first post-season cycle in 115 years - started ranting about "who cares, it was off a catcher, doesn't count, they still suck and their bullpen" and then CLICK.

Who enjoys this, honestly? Can't we relish one victory for like an hour without being told how silly it is? Jones is in Tanguay territory for me (instant channel change), but I figured I could see what he was bitching about for 2 minutes. I lasted maybe 30 seconds.
 

Cesar Crespo

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Dec 22, 2002
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Who enjoys this, honestly? Can't we relish one victory for like an hour without being told how silly it is? Jones is in Tanguay territory for me (instant channel change), but I figured I could see what he was bitching about for 2 minutes. I lasted maybe 30 seconds.
People who say they are Redsox fans but aren't really Redsox fans?
 

RedOctober3829

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Jul 19, 2005
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Last night, I was in the car for the end of the game and about a half hour after. I mostly listened to the EEI post game but flipped over to 98.5... and immediately regretted it.

Adam Jones - after a 16-1 massacre of the team's biggest rival in their own stadium, in which a player for the Red Sox hit for the first post-season cycle in 115 years - started ranting about "who cares, it was off a catcher, doesn't count, they still suck and their bullpen" and then CLICK.

Who enjoys this, honestly? Can't we relish one victory for like an hour without being told how silly it is? Jones is in Tanguay territory for me (instant channel change), but I figured I could see what he was bitching about for 2 minutes. I lasted maybe 30 seconds.
I would not listen to Jones at all even if it was the last possible option on earth. He is absolutely awful at what he does. He tries too hard to be a radio tough guy and he sucks at it badly.
 

ObstructedView

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Aug 1, 2001
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This morning between 6:30 and 7:00 on EEI encapsulated things perfectly. I warily tuned in during my drive, hoping that there might actually be some interesting or entertaining discussion about last night's two big wins. Instead it's Callahan and crew yelling at everyone to get off their lawn. Hot takes included:

* Price still sucks.
* Sale is cooked, and the organization is hiding something.
* The Chiefs have reinvented football, and we should all be in awe that they "put up 40" on the Pats without Kelce doing much (naturally no mention of the two short fields, or the fact that they have no defense).
* The a-hole who threw beer at Tyreek Hill should be summarily executed (lots and lots of righteous indignation about that one; probably occupied more air time than anything else).

As others have noted, the common thread with a lot of this is the fact that anger and negativity sell.
 

DJnVa

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Dec 16, 2010
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Yep. Two big wins and they spent 10 minutes joking on a question in the press conference about Sony Michel’s 3rd and 1 conversion—like they didn’t realize it was a big play.
 

The Talented Allen Ripley

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I was out watching the game last night and on the ride home I had The Sports Hub on. Adam Jones was declaring that JBJ still sucks and that although Eovaldi is pitching well, he hasn't done anything to impress him.

This is Boston sports radio.
 

John Marzano Olympic Hero

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I was out watching the game last night and on the ride home I had The Sports Hub on. Adam Jones was declaring that JBJ still sucks and that although Eovaldi is pitching well, he hasn't done anything to impress him.

This is Boston sports radio.
Adam Jones is just so fucking thirsty. At this point he's practically begging for people to acknowledge him.

"Guys, I'm totally like Mike Felger, right? Right? Just like Felgie! Please listen to me. Please. PLEEEEEAAAAASSSSE."
 

joe dokes

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I was out watching the game last night and on the ride home I had The Sports Hub on. Adam Jones was declaring that JBJ still sucks and that although Eovaldi is pitching well, he hasn't done anything to impress him.
Sometimes, those glassed-in radio studios act like mirrors. He was looking at his own face when he said that stuff.
 

Isildur1

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Jan 23, 2012
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I’m not even sure how anyone can get mad at Adam Jones. The guy is so over the top and so desperate for attention that I genuinely almost feel sorry for the guy at this point.
 

8slim

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Sunday morning, 10am, I’m puttering around the house doing chores and I figure it’d be nice to listen to some sports talk. I fire up the 98.5 stream and I’m greeted by Mike Flynn (of Johnston & Flynn) starting hi show with a monologue about how all professional sports suck and how he only watches college and hockey now. NBA is a “crappy product”, NFL is “unwatchable”, baseball is “too long”...

Stream stopped. On goes a podcast.

Seriously, who the hell wants to wallow in that bullshit? Why would I choose to devote the next many minutes of my life to listening to a sports show with a guy who is telling me that he hates sports?

What a disgrace.