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670 The Score Going to London With Cubs

BSM Staff
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670 The Score Going to London With Cubs

The Chicago Cubs are going to London this week and 670 The Score is making sure Windy City sports fans get the full British experience. The station is sending the full Cubs radio crew to England to cover the two-game series between the Cubs and Cardinals.

Pat Hughes, Ron Coomer, Zach Zaidman, and Engineer Rich Wyatt will arrive in London on Thursday, June 22. Hughes, Coomer and Zaidman will host a live show from the Horse & Guardsman at 9 am central time, which The Score has dubbed “The Cubs Pub.”

Both games will be broadcast live on Saturday and Sunday respectively with full pregame shows.

Mully and Haugh will also be involved in the affair. They will host a special pre-game broadcast from 9-10 AM on Thursday that will feature interviews with team owner Tom Ricketts and players that made the trip to England.

The coverage is only part of the plan though. Imaging on 670 The Score will help set the proper tone. The station is employing a British voiceover artist for the weekend. It has also partnered with sister station 93XRT to roll out the perfect London playlist for the event.

London last hosted Major League Baseball in 2019 when the New York Yankees swept a two-game series against the Boston Red Sox. The Cubs and Cardinals were supposed to visit the following year, but those games were canceled due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

The Cubs’ radio crew will be the only local broadcast in London for the series this weekend.

Chris Stigall: ‘I Work Hard to Be Truthful’ With Listeners

BNM Staff
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The Post Millennial, a conservative media brand, reported that Yuengling sponsored a Pennsylvania venue where an all-ages drag show was held to celebrate Pride Month. During a podcast on Friday, Chris Stigall defended Yuengling and had a conversation with the company’s owner.

Stigall stressed the importance of truthful and impartial reporting, even if it meant contradicting his associates. Additionally, he disclosed that he and the Yuengling owner have a strong friendship.

Stigall recorded an interview with Dick Yuengling.

“I’m here to report to you that this is not true,” Stigall said of the beer company sponsoring a drag queen show. “I personally spoke to Dick Yuengling, but earlier today, I recorded the segment; I had not spoken to Dick or anybody inside the organization. He called to thank me for defending him.”

Stigall emphasized his commitment to honesty with his audience. He explained that it’s sometimes necessary to challenge false information, regardless of the source.

“I work hard to be truthful with you, even when our side strays,” he said. “In this story, some on our side have gotten this wrong. I do get things wrong, and I try to correct it. When I do, people reach out and tell me.”

Stigall explained that he recently received an email from a woman who claimed he wasn’t fair or correct in his complaint about the 20 Republicans who didn’t vote to support censure for Rep. Adam Schiff.

“I’m trying to get it right, I’m trying to be honest, I’m trying to tell you the truth,” he said.

Craig Carton Gets The Headlines, But Norm Hitzges Deserves The Big Celebration

Garrett Searight
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Nearly every headline in the radio industry Thursday was centered around the announcement that WFAN host Craig Carton is departing the station to focus solely on his TV show on FS1. Rightfully so. Craig is a mega-talent, is polarizing, and works in the nation’s top market. But Norm Hitzges deserves as much admiration, and unfortunately due to the timing of his announcement, didn’t get as much as he deserved.

Radio has been alive in Dallas for 102 years, and Norm Hitzges has been on the air for nearly half of them. For 48 years, Norm has been a sports radio constant in the Metroplex, and has long been a favorite of listeners.

I’m sure he’d probably tell you differently, but in 48 years, it doesn’t appear that Hitzges has had any of those “What the hell were you thinking by saying that, Norm?!” moments. There’s not a “controversies” section on his Wikipedia page. If you search the bowels of the internet, you can find a 1990 letter to the editor in the Los Angeles Times where a San Diegan was irritated by his work on ESPN’s MLB coverage. You can find some things on The Ticket’s subreddit that are critical, but nearly all of them are “you can tell he’s a nice guy”, and aren’t nearly filled with the vitriol that accompanies much faceless criticism.

The Ticket has remained a ratings monster, despite not having the play-by-play rights of the Cowboys, Rangers, or Mavericks. Despite less power in their signal and a less centrally-located stick, in May, the station was the top-rated station in the market. Not the top-rated sports station. The top-rated station. There’s only one way to do that: assembling an all-star lineup, and Norm Hitzges is a cog in that wheel.

I was a little saddened to hear that Norm’s final show would be this coming Friday. The man is a radio legend, and while I would argue that maybe no one should get another yearslong, Angelo Cataldi-like sendoff, Norm Hitzges deserves more than a week.

But I take solace in the notion that it — at least on the surface — appears that it was solely his choice to step aside now and do so with a week’s notice.

I used to be intensely against the notion that some folks — athletes, mostly — should be able to decide when their careers are over. The idea that Derek Jeter or Kobe Bryant could hang on to their careers for too long, to the detriment of their franchises and fan bases, always bothered me. But the older I’ve gotten, the more I’ve softened on the stance, and the more I realize that someone like Norm Hitzges should get to ride off into the sunset at their own choosing.

I just wish that Norm got a little bit more of the spotlight on his way out the door. He is the exact opposite of a sports radio hot taker, and something that, in my opinion, more sports radio hosts should aspire to be. Opinionated, but never cruel. Entertaining, but never offensive. Informative, but not a geek.

Unsurprisingly, that doesn’t seem to fit a character so adept at avoiding the headlines, other than for his good works.

A tip of the cap, Norm. You have certainly earned it.

Like it or Not, Guy Talk is Good For WFAN

Demetri Ravanos
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Like it or Not, Guy Talk is Good For WFAN

Craig Carton’s time at WFAN is coming to an end. The news has elicited two very different reactions. His colleagues and devoted listeners have wished him well and sung his praises. His detractors have taken to social media to point fingers and write things like “good riddance to ‘guy talk’”. 

The latter is a position I never understood. What is wrong with guy talk on sports radio? Why is the idea that having fun may create a much bigger tent than doling out picks and history lessons so repulsive to a certain percentage of New York sports fans?

Admittedly, I came to sports radio from a wacky morning zoo kind of show on rock radio where we had bits with names like “The Douche Test” and “Drunk or Kid?”. Even when I got to sports radio, I made a recurring bit out of organizing TV and movie casts into basketball starting lineups. I cannot imagine having a microphone in front of my face and not instinctively trying to entertain the person on the other end of the speaker.

I would also argue that when Craig Carton returned to WFAN after his incarceration, guy talk was the station’s best path forward in afternoon drive. Listeners already knew him to be brash, plus he was just getting out of prison. Not indulging in a little controversy or conversations outside the confines of sports wouldn’t have just been silly. You could argue it would have been detrimental to the long-term success of Carton & Roberts.

Forcing Evan Roberts to adapt to a sillier, less life-and-death approach to sports radio was good for him too. We saw more of his personality and he proved that he didn’t always have to be pigeonholed into the role of sports nerd to be valuable.

The show wasn’t Joe & Evan, it definitely wasn’t Mike Francesa, and for some people, that just was not okay.

Change is hard for everyone, especially the people that have no say in the matter. Still, I can’t understand what was so wrong with talking to a player’s girlfriend for ten or fifteen minutes instead of spending another segment on an NFL game that was played three days ago.

Not only do I think guy talk was the right move for Craig and Evan, I would argue that it should be a big part of what WFAN does in afternoon drive going forward. Regardless of who ends up as Roberts’s next partner, the ability to be fun and a little bit controversial is a difference-maker for the station. 

Personality-driven radio is about the personalities, but do not underestimate human nature. People like familiarity. There will be listeners that abandon WFAN in afternoon drive for ESPN New York simply because Michael Kay is a known quantity. His show has been on the air in its current form since 2015. As the TV voice of the Yankees, he has credibility with New York sports fans whether they have listened to his show or not.

We have seen it in the past when WFAN makes changes in afternoons. Kay and his crew always make some kind of gain in the ratings. It may not always be sustainable, but it always happens.

In music radio, where personalities matter less than they do in sports and now matter less than they ever have before, there is a rule to flipping formats. Don’t enter a crowded field just because you think there is room for another station. That gives you a firm ceiling at number two behind the heritage brand in the format. You only make a change if the numbers say there is room for a competitor and you can offer the audience something the heritage brand does not.

WFAN may be the heritage brand amongst New York’s two sports stations, but Michael Kay is the heritage afternoon brand. It doesn’t matter if Evan Roberts stays or not. Any kind of change resets the clock. Whatever comes next will be treated like a brand new show.

Michael Kay’s show is fun. I enjoy it for different reasons than I did Carton & Roberts. The Michael Kay Show certainly isn’t old school, but Kay has been a known quantity to sports radio listeners in the city since 1992. Don La Greca has been that since the days of Sports Phone! Leaning into youth and innovation as counter-programming seems like a no-brainer for WFAN.

How many examples do you need from Washington and/or Hollywood? You can clamor for what you loved in the past all you want, but turning back the clock is an impossible solution when trying to find a path forward. Audiences change. What you were precious about in 2008 may not even be on the radar of listeners fifteen years later.

Guy talk is good for sports radio. It lets entertaining people entertain. We have evolved beyond “here’s a former newspaper columnist giving you the hot scoop” and thirty minutes of back-to-back-to-back phone calls. 

Spike Eskin is a really smart guy. He wouldn’t be WFAN’s programmer if he wasn’t. He knows the benefit of broadening sports radio’s appeal. That is exactly what adding some guy talk into the mix does for the format.

Golf Gets John Smoltz Through The Less Glamorous Moments of Media Life

Peter Schwartz
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After he was drafted by the Detroit Tigers in 1985, Hall of Fame pitcher John Smoltz spent his first season of professional baseball playing for the Tigers’ Class A team in Lakeland, Florida.

Sure, every five days was great being on the mound, but the time in between wasn’t easy.

“I was bored out of my mind,” admitted Smoltz who partners with Joe Davis on the number one Fox Sports broadcasting team. “I realized I was going to go crazy if I didn’t come up with some hobbies.” 

So, Smoltz took up both golf and fishing during that season in Lakeland and he hasn’t looked back, especially with golf.

“I love to fish but really got, no pun intended, hooked on golf,” said Smoltz who will compete in the American Century Championship at Edgewood Tahoe Golf Course July 14th through the 16th. 

As a baseball player, Smoltz appreciated what golf had to offer to keep him ready to get back on the mound when it was his turn to pitch. There was a cardio aspect to the sport that he enjoyed, but most of all, it kept him busy and was good for his mental health when he wasn’t playing baseball.

“You pitch once every five days,” said Smoltz. “You got a lot of time on your hands. I think it extended my career by four years and I think it served us well mentally to have something in-between. The mechanics of pitching are not the same but there are some similarities between the two that allowed me to really enjoy doing both.”

Not only did golf fill in the down time when Smoltz was an active pitcher, it also helps him today as a broadcaster. Flying from city to city and staying in hotels isn’t the glamorous part of doing a national television baseball broadcast some may think. Sure, he needs to prepare for the game, but there’s also plenty of free time. Smoltz never misses an opportunity to use it to get on the golf course. 

“I would probably go a little stir crazy if I would just fly in and stay in hotels and not get out,” said Smoltz. “It can be very monotonous if you’re not careful.”

Smoltz has done well on the celebrity golf tour winning a couple of tournaments, but playing in South Lake Tahoe is always something special for him. This year, he’ll be joined by the likes of Aaron Rodgers, Patrick Mahomes, Jerry Rice, JJ Watt, Steph Curry, Charles Barkley, David Wells, Jon Lester, Colin Jost and Ray Romano.

The field, including six active NFL quarterbacks, five Heisman Trophy winners and a plethora of Hall of Famers, will compete for $600,000 in prize money. It’s a tournament that has raised over $6 million for charities including the Stowers Institute for Medical Research.

Smoltz will be in the booth for the Major League Baseball All-Star Game on Tuesday, July 12th in Seattle and then he’ll make his way to South Lake Tahoe.

“I’m always excited about it,” said Smoltz. “I’m crossing my fingers that nothing goes wrong and I get to play in it every year as many times as I possibly can because it is the greatest tournament that we have as celebrities. I have to get in there at the seat of my pants after the All-Star Game. It works out. It’s a fun time. In the future, if I’m still fortunate enough to keep playing, I’ll spend more time up there and just enjoy the week because it is a great place.”

After his playing career, Smoltz moved to the broadcast booth calling Atlanta Braves games. Then, his national career began as an analyst for MLB Network along with calling regular season and post-season games for TBS. In 2014, he joined FOX teaming with Matt Vasgersian in the network’s number two booth.

In 2016, the moved up to the number one booth to work with Joe Buck.

“It’s been a blast,” said Smoltz. “I’ve worked with about 40 different play-by-play announcers and once you learn styles and you get a chemistry, it’s a lot of fun. Joe (Buck) and I, right away, I thought hit it off and now Joe Davis and I got it as well, so that part of a broadcast is no different than a pitcher/catcher relationship. The best broadcasts are the ones that have the best continuity.” 

This season, baseball has gone through some rule changes including the pitch clock and the banning of the shift. For Smoltz, baseball will always be a part of his DNA, but he admits that there was something a little off-kilter with the sport in recent years. 

Like many in the baseball world including the fans, the new rules have worked out very well.

“I enjoy the game now,” said Smoltz. “The new rules have enhanced some of the action. For a while, the action was kind of being dormant. The game moves now. I love that and the young talent and the greatness that’s in the game obviously gets to get displayed now if they continue to navigate the action part of the game.”

How would Smoltz, a first-ballot Hall of Famer inducted in Cooperstown in 2015, have handled the pitch clock?

“The pitch clock would never have been an issue for pretty much anybody in our era,” said Smoltz. “That’s just the way we learned to play. That would have been a non-issue. The game was played a lot faster then. Information and a lot of different things have slowed it down so that’s why we got rule changes that are in place.”

As the sport of baseball has evolved with new rules, so has the way that the games are presented on television. There have even been big changes since Smoltz moved from the playing field to the booth like players being miked up during games, the K zone showing where pitches crossed the plate, and other technological advancements.

“I would think that the viewer has a lot more enhancements at their disposal,” said Smoltz. “The technology has to have made it better I would think.”

There’s still more than half of baseball’s regular season to be played and then the fun really starts with the playoffs. 

“I love the postseason,” said Smoltz. “I miss that part so much. To be part of it as a broadcaster…to bring in the nuances of what players are dealing with…the pressure…I still love that. That part is pretty cool. A game of the week is good but you can’t make a game of the week a playoff game.” 

John Smoltz excelled during his playing career and has excelled in the broadcast booth. He’s also done pretty well in one of his hobbies as he’s carved out a nice side gig on the celebrity golf tour. That intensity he had on the mound will be on display next month as the 56-year-old Smoltz looks to be in the mix to win to win the American Century Championship, celebrity golf’s most prominent tournament.

“I’m running out of time so it’s getting ultra-competitive for me to try to have an opportunity to win,” said Smoltz. “I don’t think I’ve ever shown up at something, besides the Champions Tour, that I got a chance to play in where I felt I had zero chance. I love competing. I love getting better.”

If his playing career and broadcasting career are any indication, maybe the best has yet to come for Smoltz on the golf course.

In Nielsen Surveys, One Word Can Make All The Difference

Dr. Ed Cohen
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In Nielsen Surveys, One Word Can Make All The Difference

Most weeks, this column will write about the Nielsen ratings system and how you can better understand it to make it work to your advantage. This week, I’ll go in a slightly different direction and cover one of my pet peeves regarding surveys or more specifically, survey questions. Many books have been written about questionnaire design and surveys are built in different ways depending on the mode: online, phone (yes, some still exist), mail (that mode still exists as well), or in-person. 

Over my career, it’s always been entertaining to watch amateurs write questionnaires, operating under the assumption that anyone can do it. This is a fallacy. Back when I was doing perceptual studies for radio stations, my mantra was that you would be better off with no data rather than bad data. It’s easy to generate bad data, but in the absence of information, the gut of many radio pros is pretty good.

Most of today’s questionnaires are self-administered, in other words, someone is answering without the aid of a knowledgeable person working for the survey operation. Even in the days when much survey research was done by phone, interviewers were often poorly trained and turnover percentages were typically massive. 

In other words, you couldn’t be sure that the “professional interviewer” could help the respondent if a question wasn’t clear since tenure was typically less than six months. The exception to this rule is focus groups or one-on-ones where a professional moderator can follow up if a group member or individual doesn’t understand the question. 

For example, if you have a Fred Jacobs doing your online focus group, his years of experience will make sure that an off-the-wall answer can be clarified. The only problem is that particular branch of research is considered qualitative and is best followed up with a quantitative study.

There are so many ways to screw up survey questions (and I’ve made my share of mistakes in the past), but let’s start by focusing on one word: “and”. It’s a good starting point because as soon as you add the word “and” to a question, you may be asking two questions. 

A very simple example would be “Do you like or dislike President Biden and Vice President Harris?” While it might make sense to ask about the two together as both are Democrats and ran together for their respective offices, a respondent may like one and not the other. How do they answer the question?

In radio research, this comes into play in a couple of ways. The one that I’ve had issues with over the years is music testing. While the Barrett Media websites cover sports and news, many of you have worked in music formats or may be doing double duty today. In music testing, you are typically trying to find out three things about a song:

1. Is the respondent familiar with the song based on the hook?

2. What songs do fans (P1s) of a particular format like best?

3. Are any songs “burnt”?

For me, numbers two and three are two separate questions. When I did music testing back in the days of in-person auditorium tests and scantron sheets, I preferred a 1-7 scale for like/dislike, and a separate place for something to the effect of “Are you tired of hearing this song on your favorite station?” If the respondent wasn’t tired of the song, it was left blank.  The scantron forms also allowed for an “I don’t know this song” option. Online testing can use the same version.

The reason for pointing this out is my opposition to the use of variations along the line of “Love it, Like it, Don’t Like, Tired of it, Don’t know it”. If you love the song and are also tired of it, what do you choose? That’s why I’ve always said, “If you want to ask two questions, ask two questions.” 

As an aside, the 1-7 scale has two big advantages. First, the fans of a format tend to like that format’s music, so typically, most of the songs score well (the exception was always rock formats). With a 1-7 scale, the choice is essentially “good, better, best” (5, 6, and 7) offering a bit more discrimination. 

Next, while we want to know if respondents have any “lean”, they often want to be neutral.  Using an even number of choices will lower the scores a bit. With an odd number of options, there is a middle, in this case, using the “4” choice. When doing perceptual studies, I always preferred a seven-point scale.  While others like ten-point scales, where 10 is “strongly agree” and 1 is “strongly disagree”, in my view, respondents will see “5” as “neutral” or “not sure” (assuming “not sure” is not offered) and that lowers scores because the true midpoint is 5.5, which isn’t available.

If you work exclusively in spoken word, also consider the polling that you review. Aside from the other survey research issues (sampling, sample size, etc.), always look at the questionnaire. The best polling outfits will typically show you how the questions were worded, but even the best firms and organizations occasionally make mistakes, and that can lead to misleading results. 

As someone who has both created and reviewed many questionnaires as well as lots of data in my career, I enjoy looking at how surveys are constructed today. To that end, I’m in a couple of survey panels, in my case, earning airline miles. While I always answer the questions honestly, my interest is in looking at the questions and the questionnaire flow. Can I readily understand what is being asked? Are they asking me to answer something where I have no real knowledge to answer the question? You’d be surprised how often that arises. 

Then there is the length of the survey and whether you hit a burnout point. I suggest that you try it as well and you’ll start to get a feel for what will likely work and better yet, what won’t in your research, if you’re fortunate enough to have a budget. 

Questionnaire design is both art and science, in many ways, just like media. What works in one situation may not work in another. Do your best to make sure you get the odds on your side.

Let’s meet again next week.

John Murphy Unsure If He Will Return As Voice of Buffalo Bills

BSM Staff
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The radio voice of the Buffalo Bills will have a decision to make regarding his presence in the team’s broadcast booth coming up very soon. John Murphy has done play-by-play for Bills games since 2004. He succeeded Van Miller, who retired after the 2003 season.

Murphy had a stroke earlier this year just ahead of the Bills/Bengals Monday night game on Jan. 2. He was spotted at Bills minicamp last week but turned down a request to be interviewed by The Buffalo News.

John did text saying he’s going to know right before training camp begins next month.

“I’m going to wait until late July before I decide whether to come back,” the text said. “Still some recovery to do.”

If Murphy doesn’t come back, Chris Brown will continue to call play-by-play for games on WGR. Eric Wood is returning as the color commentator.

Craig Carton: Boomer Esiason will be a Radio Icon

BSM Staff
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WFAN host Craig Carton said it’s hard to argue with being referred to as a radio icon, but he also believes another one of his FAN colleagues is just as deserving of the same title.

On Friday’s edition of Carton & Roberts, co-host Evan Roberts asked Carton if morning host Boomer Esiason would be considered a radio icon when he announces his retirement. Carton, who will be leaving WFAN on June 30 to focus on his FS1 morning show, said Boomer absolutely is an icon.

“When Boomer’s career on the radio is all said and done – whenever that is – and that’s obviously something he’ll decide with his family, he will have had an iconic career at FAN,” Carton said of the Boomer & Gio host.

Evan pointed out that Boomer will tie Don Imus for the longest tenure in morning drive at WFAN in 2025. Carton said that feat definitely makes Boomer an icon.

“He’s done more Super Bowls on the radio than any other person,” he said. “He’d also be the longest morning show guy in FAN history, which would make him iconic.”

Carton and Esiason hosted mornings together starting in 2007 up until Carton went to prison.

Jared Carrabis to Make MLB Network Debut Monday

BSM Staff
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DraftKings podcast host Jared Carrabis will be making his MLB Network debut Tuesday, contributing to the network’s coverage of the 2023 MLB Draft Combine.

Carrabis, who joined MLB Network at the beginning of the season, will be interviewing some of the more than 300 prospects working out at Chase Field in Phoenix.

Jared announced he would be helping with combine coverage last week on Baseball is Dead.

Carrabis went independent last year after several years at Barstool Sports. In addition to Baseball is Dead, Jared co-hosts a Red Sox show called Name Redacted, The Sweat Tuesday Takeover for The DraftKings Network, as well as hosting on NESN and making regular appearances on 98.5 The Sports Hub.

Jared’s presence on MLB Network will expand to some studio shows also. He’s already appeared on Off Base with Lauren Gardner, Ariel Epstein and Xavier Scruggs.

Nick Wilson: Bad Look for NFL Teams to Turn Down Hard Knocks

BSM Staff
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The NFL is still trying to nail down a team to be featured in the training camp version of Hard Knocks, and the fact that so many teams have indicated they aren’t interested in being on the show is bewildering to 92.3 The Fan host Nick Wilson.

Wilson said on Afternoon Drive on The Fan Friday that it was interesting the league had gotten pushback on participation.

“What resistance are these teams giving them?” he asked. “You don’t have an option.”

“I just think it’s such a choch move,” Wilson added. “Like, look at how many teams have been on Hard Knocks and have acquiesced even though they’ve griped about it.”

The Detroit Lions came up as an example of a team that helped themselves by taking part last year.

“It was a hundred percent a big part of why people rooted for them as they made that late-season charge last year,” Wilson said.

The Lions may get voluntold to be featured again this year if no one else wants to. Wilson said he thought it would be a little tougher this year for Detroit considering people think the team could win the NFC North. The expectations were lower a season ago.

“It only works if you then go out and deliver on expectations,” Wilson said.

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