The one moment that epitomizes Glenn Ordway and his brand of radio was the stunt where Mike Adams locked himself in the studio. Ordway said numerous times today that he went in each day and “played radio.” To paraphrase Ordway from The Boston Magazine piece years ago, on radio, people aren’t just “fat.” They’re “enormous.”
Ordway viewed “The Big Show” as a sitcom that aired each day from 2-6 p.m. Every co-host had a character, and almost every co-host was elevated from appearing on the show. Hell, even Bill Burt from the Merrimack Valley was a big name in media around here for a few years. And now, many of those guys (Burt, Larry Johnson, Butch Stearns) have fallen back down. Like most sidekicks in a popular sitcom, they will forever be viewed as their previous character. You can’t see Michael Richards without thinking about Kramer. You can’t see Fred Smerlas without thinking, “stuttering-Patriots-fan–boy-bully.”
Talk radio, at its core, is entertainment. These hosts aren’t journalists, they’re job isn’t to gather news. They’re job is to get the highest ratings possible.
Ordway was fired, and he admitted this today, because the show was failing in the ratings. Why did Felger and Mazz surpass “The Big Show?” It isn’t because they talked hockey. Ordway eventually talked hockey too. It’s because they were more entertaining than Ordway and his crew.
It sounds simple, and it is simple. Ordway’s act got stale. He couldn’t be remade with Holley, as he was indebted in his way of doing things.
Ordway’s appeal was tied directly into “The Big Show’s” format. Few, to my knowledge, listened to hear what Ordway specifically had to say about something. That’s why Ordway probably took so many vacation days; the ratings didn’t suffer when he wasn’t on the show.
A lot of that can be attributed to WEEI not having legitimate competition until “The Sports Hub" came along. They didn’t change for over a decade, because there was no reason to change. When they did finally change, it was reactive, and the masses had already turned over to the more entertaining station.
This is a long-winded way of saying, “Glenn Ordway screwed Glenn Ordway.” Felger and Mazz took an updated version of Ordway's schtick to the FM dial, and did it better than he ever could. It was younger and hipper, but the biggest difference is, it was new. Ordway and the same characters had been on the air for well over a decade.
Every sitcom eventually gets cancelled. “The Big Show” just got cancelled.