I think The Good Place is one of the true masterpieces of American television. It is probably the single best comedy series to come out in the last ten years. The show is just as poignant as it is funny.
There is an episode in the second season in which Kristin Bell’s character Eleanor says that every human is just a little bit sad and scared knowing that they are going to die someday. That is what makes life so wonderful. I think the same thing can be said about professional partnerships. No matter how fruitful they are, they all have an expiration date.
Friday, one of the most successful partnerships in radio history reached its end. Fred Toucher told the 98.5 The Sports Hub audience that Rich Shertenlieb was leaving the station. Toucher & Rich, a show that existed before The Sports Hub itself and had become the tent pole of the station’s dominant lineup, has run its course after more than 17 years.
It’s not hard to see why Toucher & Rich fans were so loyal to the show. In a market where, for decades, morning sports talk was less about games and scores and more about middle-aged white guy grievances, they were a breath of fresh air. It was creative – talking to drunk fans outside of stadiums, pitting staff members against each other in rap battles and giving mouthy listeners the chance to prove they really were better than Brian Scalabrine at basketball.
In a time when sports radio was largely either lectures (one host shows) or arguments (two host shows), Toucher & Rich showed the industry that it could be a party. And the industry was better off for it.
Professional partnerships require a lot of give and take and can be draining. Even if you love your partner like a brother or sister, you live different lives and have different needs. Whether it is financial compensation, time off, or some other factor, each one of you has to make compromises for the good and overall health of the show. You know you shouldn’t be keeping score, but sometimes you can’t help it. It’s human nature to try to figure out who is “winning” in any relationship.
Add to that a workload imbalance, competing visions, and personal lives diverging in major ways, and even the closest relationships can become strained. Forget Fred Toucher and Rich Shertenlieb. It is a miracle that any partnership, no matter how successful, can survive as long as theirs did.
Our industry is a small and gossipy one. Everyone is going to speculate about what the straw was that broke the very successful camel’s back. Maybe it was Fred’s social media comments while he was on leave dealing with vocal issues. Maybe it is something private that predates that. Maybe it isn’t necessarily a specific issue, but an accumulation of things that just brought one or both of them to the conclusion that it was time.
We always want to find a single someone to blame. Chris Russo must be responsible for breaking up Mike & The Mad Dog because he was the one that left WFAN. Mike Greenberg must be to blame for breaking up Mike & Mike because he was the one that left radio for TV. These things are almost never that simple, and I would venture a guess that is the case with Toucher & Rich.
Maybe Rich told management he wasn’t willing to work with Fred anymore. Maybe Fred declared that he needed to make a certain amount more than Rich. I don’t think the specifics really matter, because logic tells you that whatever it was, it was the result of a series of disagreements and evidence of diverging goals.
Marriage is hard. Surely you have seen the stat or heard it said that half of all marriages end in divorce. Well, Forbes Advisor put out a more advanced breakdown in August. It showed that 50% of all first marriages end in divorce. For second marriages, the rate jumps to 67%. It is a miracle that any third marriage lasts at all, as Forbes writes that 73% of third marriages end in divorce.
It makes sense right? By the time you are in a new relationship, you are a little more sure of who you are and what you really need. It’s not that you can’t compromise. It is that compromise is harder because you know the consequences of feeling like you gave up too much to make someone else happy.
Professional marriages aren’t all that different from romantic ones. They are built on trust, interest in one another and shared goals. Those feelings shift over time in any relationship. Divorce happens when you decide to stop addressing those shifts. Maybe only one party makes that decision, but usually, it is more than just a single incident or decision that gets a couple to the point where it is time to decide who gets stuck with the china they never use.
No matter the reality, one thing we can say for certain is that plenty of people had a vested interest in Toucher & Rich staying together. Sports Hub sellers, Beasley Broadcasting corporate types, and so many others feel the sting of this. But that is the thing about professional partnerships. While many people and departments can benefit from their success, at the end of the day, their fate rests in the hands of just two people. If one or both of them are ready to move on, there may not be much that any other stakeholder can say or do about it.
I, for one, am really bummed out about the show coming to an end. Toucher & Rich opened my eyes to what could be. Like them, I was on rock radio before making the move to sports and it was their success that gave me the confidence to say “I may not know everything about college basketball (a must where I live in North Carolina), but I am creative and entertaining. That is more important regardless of the format.”
The show won Marconis. The ratings were insane. All you can do is tip your hat to the success and thank Toucher & Rich for the memories. Until one of them definitively tells us why the show had to end, all we can do is speculate and that is more likely to drive us mad than it is to get us closer to the truth.
Demetri Ravanos is a columnist and features writer for Barrett Media. He is also the creator of The Sports Podcast Festival, and a previous host on the Chewing Clock and Media Noise podcasts. He occasionally fills in on stations across the Carolinas in addition to hosting Panthers and College Football podcasts. His radio resume includes stops at WAVH and WZEW in Mobile, AL, WBPT in Birmingham, AL and WBBB, WPTK and WDNC in Raleigh, NC.
You can find him on Twitter @DemetriRavanos or reach him by email at DemetriTheGreek@gmail.com.
