I'm in the car too much and have sort of masochistically listening to EEI lately. It's just really bad.
Morning show: This is mostly fine. It's vanilla, because Greg Hill is vanilla, but there's a big cast and I think they're mostly likable - Wiggins can be genuinely funny, Courtney is a professional broadcaster with a nice voice and does a good straight man, Curtis reminds me of dudes I went to middle school with and gets off a good one liner now and then, and the new little producer bro Sheim plays the little brother role well. You're not going to get any sports insight, but for driving around it can be entertaining and you stay up on what's going on in sports. It's fine.
The local Maine morning show is not listenable and I just don't listen to T&R even though it's available to me now because I forget about it.
Mid-day show: This is a trainwreck. Gresh is wholly unlikable in any way and is miscast as the host of the show. He can't host a show. His ideas for bits are dumb and not funny and are desperate to "involve the audience" and Fauria doesn't have enough going on to carry half the load. Their producer is a Boston meathead of some indeterminate common name I can't remember and adds no value whatsoever. Fauria somehow manages to always fail to come through with any meaningful or interesting insight about the Patriots, even though he played for the team, and seems to have as much knowledge of how the Patriots operate as I do. It makes no sense.
Also, Gresh's voice is among the more grating I've ever come across. I actually do listen sometimes to the local Mannix brothers in the mid-day, even when they're talking about high school soccer. But mostly this is when I'm putting on a Spotify playlist. It's embarrassingly bad. Not professional radio.
The drive-time show: As alluded to above, it's so bad. I actually like Mego and am rooting for her hard, but you can tell she's desperate to put on a show and be the host and she just isn't ready. She got so excited for the Herald story that she ended up beating it to death with a baseball bat. Arcand is a straight man, but Mego is too, and so it's like Andy Hart doing handstands. Awful. Jones is clearly supposed to come in and be the entertainer to balance out these two, but I'm pretty sure it's going to fail spectacularly. Who knows? Maybe it will be so uncomfortable it's listenable.
Our local Javs and Eli show is luckily much better. They're very good on the NFL, but sorta ignore all the other sports, which is too bad. I only listen to EEI during commercials and when the locals are talking to the coach of UMaine hockey or something.
The night-time show: Poor Rich Keefe. I genuinely feel bad for him. He's stuck with producers who can barely read the trending and news and sound like they're still in high school. He's doing mostly call-in, where the callers sometimes sound more into it than he is, and then inviting in (begging for) Hart and Bradfo and all the other local chum to make the time go by faster. I'm slightly worried he self-harms. He's just glum and half-hearted and clearly submitting resumes everywhere in the country.
I often listen to the re-broadcast Fox national stuff instead of this. Anything is better. This makes you want to drink.
I've got to think a full-on format change is in the offing. They can't go on like this. It's not Boston sports quality. This is what you get in Omaha or something.
