Following a thrilling win for the Cleveland Browns over the San Francisco 49ers, 92.3 The Fan hosts Ken Carman and Anthony Lima took calls from fans who desire to have Browns head coach Kevin Stefanski fired. Stefanski has been with the team over the last four years and is trying to prepare and invigorate his team to win football games despite facing adversity.
The team currently sits at 3-2 on the season, and following one of the most improbable wins of the year, the program was aghast to receive inquiries about relieving Stefanski of his duties. After a stretch of these calls, Lima went on a tirade and invited people to stop listening to the show, stating that they would consider stopping calls altogether.
Lima referred to it as “an exercise in futility” for the Browns fans, also expressing his disappointment towards those in the city for neglecting to celebrate the win. Instead, people are asking for changes to be made surrounding the franchise, which has qualified for the playoffs two times in the last 20 seasons. Rather than doing “fire the coach radio,” Carman and Lima felt the program would receive legitimate answers towards their question as to whether or not the victory over the 49ers represented a “signature win” for the head coach. After the segment went viral, the program opened by addressing the unexpected dispute.
“I got bogged down in the minutiae of discussing it with these people, and I wasn’t even looking up at Tone,” Carman said Wednesday morning on 92.3 The Fan. “I finally looked up at Tone, and you had had enough, and then you just went into the entire tirade of what you saw… [and] I got a bunch of people from around the country texting me going, ‘Hey, seriously, don’t take calls anymore. It’s great.’ No, that’s not what we want.”
After Carman explained his perspective, Lima shared that he received messages from people inside and outside of the sports media industry that concurred with the notion to eliminate callers from the show. Sports fans shared with Lima that they do not consume as much sports talk radio because of callers diminishing the value of the program. While they understand these sentiments though and recognize that they are in a stint of bad calls, the show has an obstinate resolve to continue implementing the views and opinions of its audience.
“We will always want to hear from fans; don’t worry about that,” Lima said. “Calls are going nowhere; we’re not replacing calls forever. I think calls can be really entertaining [and] I think they can take a show to a whole new level at times.”
The program has a segment titled “Comin’ in Hot,” which utilizes the viewpoints of listeners calling into the show to interact with the hosts. Although there are certain shows and stations that have eliminated or significantly limit this type of mediated communication, Carman and Lima both feel that is essential to maintain loyalty to the commitment of accurately depicting the disposition and affectations of the metropolis. The Browns face the Indianapolis Colts this Sunday, and no matter the result, listeners can be assured that they will have the latitude to express themselves on editions of The Ken Carman Show with Anthony Lima going forward.
“[The callers] make us laugh; they make our listeners laugh,” Lima said. “We know we got it in you; we also know that you get a little too emotional, just like the hosts do.”
