Fred Toucher has had a very public voice issue for several months, and recently shared that the topic has been brought up in contract negotiations between his agent and 98.5 The Sports Hub.
“No one has been like ‘You’re screwed’. No one has been like ‘Oh my god, dude, you’re like this forever’,” Toucher said of his voice problems after reading a portion of Barrett Sports Media’s Demetri Ravanos’ recent column on the issue. “However, I will say that if you’re ever negotiating a contract and have anything sketchy going on, they will use that against you,” Toucher joked. “Is it freaky for me? Yeah, a little bit. This is what I do for a living, so it’s a little freaky.”
“Now I can imagine what it’s like to be an athlete and have these Twitter doctors say ‘Well, what’s wrong with your injury?’,” Rich Shertenlieb said.
“I swear to god, no one has told me this isn’t going away,” Toucher said.
Toucher continued to read portions of the story, before quoting “Even if you love the show, it isn’t easy to listen to these days.”
“Someone from corporate just writes something else on their pad,” Shertenlieb joked. “Got him ‘here’, let’s mark Fred as a minus sign. It is kind of funny what publications and posts that we get quoted to by our bosses. Like, why are you paying attention to buttcrunch.com?”]
Toucher added that while he’s appreciative of the support he’s received, he does feel some of the coverage might be slightly overblown, before sharing that the conversation has come up between station management and his agent.
“Awful Announcing has an article. They’re very nice, but they’re essentially obituaries for my career. They make the point that like Mad Dog is on the air, so it’s not like you need a silky smooth voice to be on the radio. My only fear is that I will lose my voice like last week, but I don’t think that’s going to happen again…I’m not nearly as worried about as some other people are, but it was used in our agent’s conversation with management. ‘What if he can never talk again’. I’m like if ‘I have a raspy voice, you’re not going to re-sign me?'”
