Three Jerks on the Radio

I voiced my distaste for the Team 1200's morning show personalities in a recent post. My overall gripe is that on a morning sports radio show the hosts rarely talk about sports. Secondary to this is that they biased to the point that they don't even discuss other games. In fact, they rarely, if ever, talk about baseball, football or any sport without an Ottawa connection. Finally, they aren't funny at all. If they were funny I could probably live with the lack of sports content.

On Wednesday October 7th I conducted a bit of an experiment. I decided to track the content of the show to see if it was just me getting my hate on or if the jerks really ignore the sports content in their morning sports show.

Before I get into the details I should briefly touch on the general format during my listening time (7 am to 7:45 and 8:30 am to 8:50 am). The show has a 1 to 3 minute sports update every 20 minutes by someone other than the jerks. Pretty standard sports radio fare. So 3 to 9 minutes of every hour has guaranteed sports content. There are traffic and weather updates as well. Finally, there is a contest every day called the Dirty Dozen at around 7:30. Callers are asked 12 questions and if they get at least 6 right they win. If they don't they have to recite some stupid "I am not a man" speech.

For purposes of this experiment I've restricted my notes on the content to the discussion by the jerks. I'm ignoring the 20/20 update and the traffic and weather. The jerks get a point for every segment that involves sports and lose a point for every segment that doesn't. You'd expect the score to be above zero. Anything below zero is a fail.

Today the first words I heard from the jerks were a discussion of David Letterman's apology to his wife followed by the attractiveness, or lack thereof, of said wife. Score - 1 for the jerks.

Next up was some praise for their Swedish God's goal against a guy in his first ever NHL game (a goal he should score). Score back to even.

This was followed by an interview with Cyril Leeder, president of the Sens that began with a chat about Homer Simpson. They played the Simpsons "na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na leader" (think Batman) clip as the intro which brought Homer about. I'll be generous and give the jerks another point since Mr. Leeder has a sports connection.

The interview with Cyril Leeder continued with a request to bring back the ice girls that shovel the snow during breaks in the game. I already gave you a point for the interview, but I'm taking one away now because the request lead directly to a conversation about whether or not a girl wearing a hockey helmet was sexy. They then try to make a joke about needing to wear a helmet while ploughing (their word, not mine) your wife. Not funny at all. Score back to zero.

The Dirty Dozen was up next with the categories being New York Islanders dynasty, sports siblings and the Rideau Canal. 2 points for the jerks and 1 against since there was no sports connection to the canal questions. The jerks are above water.

At this point I went to the office to grab some supplies and came directly home to jump in the car and drive about 25 minutes west of my home. A perfect opportunity to continue the experiment. This particular portion of their show included chats about:

• Boston Candy (-1);
• teen drinking (-1);
• smashing cars (-1);
• hat trick trivia (+1);
• travelling to Jamaica (-1);
• starvation insurance (-1);
  
• fighting in hockey (+1);
• leafs suck (+1);
• Brittania drive-in (-1); and
• Letterman's wife again (-1).

You should double check my math, but the total score I have is -3. I can live with some non-sports banter from time to time, but this is an average day with more non-sports chat than sports chat, not to mention no discussion of:

• the huge playoff game between the Tigers and Twins to decide who gets to make the ALDS (the Twins won in extra innings);
• out of town hockey games, like the exhilarating Flyers v Caps game; or
• any other actual game that happened the night before or upcoming Wednesday night other than the Sens beating the Leafs.

You'd think in a city of 1,000,000 people you could find 3 interesting people, with good voices, that have sports knowledge and a bit of charm.

If you want to hear real sports radio, check out the Team 990. Sure, they talk about the Habs a lot but they also understand that there are other teams in the NHL and other sports that people are interested in hearing about.