Several sports radio shows in recent years have added a video component to the program. In Portland, 1080 The Fan has added a YouTube feed of Dirt & Sprague, featuring Andy Johnson — better known as “Dirt” — and Brandon Sprague, giving listeners a firsthand look into the studio throughout the course of the show.
The station has received praise for the addition, with audience members expressing how it was unique to be able to see show producer Jason Swygard trying to get his hosts to go to break on time.
“I had a feeling that this would happen,” Andy Johnson said, “and here we are today on November 1st, and we have a listener saying one of their favorite parts of our show is watching Swag try to get us to break on the live stream because now they can see either how annoyed of us he is or how annoying from our perspective he is.”
Swygard, who is nicknamed “Swag” on the program, previously produced Primetime with Isaac and Suke before joining the morning show, which was in middays at the time. Johnson described how listeners timestamped the segment where he was visibly seen waving his arms trying to get the show to break.
On X, formerly known as Twitter, Andy Johnson responded to listeners with GIFs of a Monsters Inc. character waving their arms and an inflatable tube man drifting in the wind, presumably aggrandizing Swygard’s gesticulations.
“I love how you’re making this my fault for you guys not being able to tell time,” Swygard said. “That’s what I love that’s going on here.”
Johnson was surprised that Swygard took the discourse personally and wondered how he was making anything his fault. Recapitulating the point that Sprague had just made on the air, he stated that he said that listeners are either enjoying watching him trying to get them to wrap a segment or seeing him be annoyed at them for continuing anyway.
“I’ve always said this about him off the air to people who listen to the show from time to time and chime in on thoughts,” Sprague said. “I say, ‘In the moment, it’s annoying to me, but really in reality, I think when he’s most upset is probably when our boss is giving him nine other things that he needs to try to get done.’… It doesn’t actually do anything to his job if we’re three minutes over the clock. Nothing happens – like, literally nothing happens.”
The listeners of the show are ostensibly enjoying watching Swygard work as the “clock monster,” as named by Sprague on the air, leading Johnson to suggest that the program needs to find a way to maximize the potential of this phenomenon.
“I think we now need to get Swag an airline sponsorship; like, ‘Swag, brought to you by Alaska Airlines,’ and then we give him the light-up things that you land the planes with, and then he’s got those in there,” Johnson said. “Like the runway lights.”
“He’s not that guy,” Sprague replied. “He’s the air traffic controller.”
