Since the departure of Rich Shertenlieb, the co-host vacancy alongside Fred Toucher on Boston’s 98.5 The Sports Hub has become a popular topic of discussion and speculation.
On Wednesday, Fred Toucher utilized a “Man-on-the-Street” segment headed up by producer Nick Gemelli to point out the fact that the question of who will replace Rich on the show is something on a lot of people’s minds.
“This is simply just Nicholas asking people who should take Rich’s place, which is a topic of conversation,” Toucher said. “Our own Nick Gemelli, only son of Mark Gemelli, went out to talk to people. I can’t speak to this I haven’t heard any of these, just about who will fill this coveted chair that people are texting me about that have no experience in radio and think they have a legitimate shot at it.”
But the segment seemed to get some criticism from longtime listeners of the show, as initially Toucher was unsure of whether to call the segment drunken recaps or not. But Fred said it didn’t make sense to call it a drunken recap because Boston Celtics fans tend to be more well-behaved.
Fred added later that the goal of the segment wasn’t to try and dunk on Rich, since drunken recaps is a bit from Toucher and Rich. It was just simply a chance to try and get a sense of the pulse of station listeners about who should be the next co-host.
“The point I was trying to make is that I’m not trying to do a drunken recap here,” he said. “All anyone is talking about in the region at all, the only thing anyone’s talking about, is who’s taking the Rich chair.”
No one cares. No one listen to terrestrial radio. Unless broke and can’t afford streaming or Sirius.