News and commentary: progress in work
Update 6/6/20: Whitlock gave a longer interview to Outkick the Coverage in which he provided his insightful perspective on a variety of issues.
About leaving FS1: “When I was presented parameters for my return to FS1, and then I looked at other options with more upside, control and freedom, it became clear returning to FS1 would be fear-based, not opportunity-based. I reject fear.”
New York City sports radio station WFAN (660 AM, 101.99 FM) has retooled its lineup now that afternoon drive host Mike Francesa has retired for the second time. WFAN has the distinction of being the first radio station to adopt the 24/7 sports talk format.
Reunited at last. In a long-awaited/anticipated first media appearance anywhere, Gerry Callahan sat down with former radio partner Kirk Minihane on the irreverent Kirk Minihane Show podcast, a daily offering that is part of the Barstool Sports network.
Gerry Callahan’s 20-plus year career at the Entercom-owned Boston sports radio station WEEI abruptly came to an end this morning. Evidently Entercom suits told the Mut and Callahan co-host that he was done after he finished his shift at 10 a.m. Eastern.
As expected, Kirk Minihane, the former WEEI morning drive host, is going to work for Barstool Sports as a daily podcaster. Minihane made the announcement today on Periscope while doing “a little bit of espionage,” which was an unauthorized farewell tour of the Entercom-owned WEEI studios in Boston. Minihane will launch his new platform in Boston and is not relocating to the now-NYC-based Barstool Sports, apart from occasional appearances there.
The owner of the irreverent, muckraking Turtleboy Sports blog knows a thing or two, to borrow language from that TV commercial for an insurance company, about online censorship. The entertaining and provocative Massachusetts-based investigative journalism portal — plus its slightly toned down, less vulgar TB Daily News version — focuses mainly on municipal corruption, felonious activity, and welfare scammers and assorted “hoodrats,” rather than sports. Given that the big social media networks have repeatedly de-platformed Turtleboy Sports and associated sites, owner “Uncle Turtleboy” claims that he “invented” tech censorship.
A federal judge today sentenced former New York City sports radio WFAN host Craig Carton to 3-1/2 year behind bars for his involvement in an apparent Ponzi scheme. Carton has admitted to being a high-rolling gambling addict which led to the wrongdoing. Clinton-appointed Judge Colleen McMahon threw Carton a curve ball by opening up with the tired talk radio refrain, “Colleen from New York. First time, long time,” the New York Post reported.
After his much hyped mid-December 2017, retirement, iconic WFAN host Mike Francesa returned to the New York City sports radio station’s airwaves about a year ago. Since then, his compulsive tendency to rewrite history has gotten far worse, which is saying something. Francesa teamed with Chris Russo on one of the most all-time successful sports-talk programs, theMike and the Mad Dog show, from 1989 to 2008 on WFAN (660 AM, 101.9 FM and Internet streaming) until the “Mad Dog” defected to SiriusXM (and subsequently MLB TV). Francesa flew solo starting as of September 2008. Long presiding over the number-one radio show in the NYC-area afternoon drive demo, Francesa and ESPN rival Michael Kay find themselves locked in a close battle for sports dominance. (Check back for updates on the winter ratings book.) Coming out of his brief retirement, “sports doctor” Francesa appears to be sick of sports or vice versa. He’s lost his grip on the rhetorical fastball. One wonders how long WFAN or Mike himself, who is operating without a contract with the Entercom-owned station, will keep going through the motions. And the madness is hardly restricted to March.
NBA superstar LeBron James, the self-proclaimed greatest player of all time, made headlines recently by accusing NFL owners of harboring a slave mentality and also sharing anti-Semitic rap lyrics on his Instagram page. FS1 panelist and Fox Sports Radio host Clay Travis says that LBJ benefits from athlete privilege enabled, in large part, by the fawning liberal sports media. Plus, the Lakers luminary himself could be a something of a modern-day slave master for his Nike sneaker deal, Travis argued.
When sanctimonious Get Up co-host Michelle Beadle on Thursday grandstanded/virtue-signalled about no longer watching football in the aftermath of the Urban Meyer scandal, the NFL-centric ESPN obviously had already decided to send her back to Los Angeles (did she keep her apartment and put her furniture in a storage unit?) to increase her role in NBA coverage. She also supposedly leveraged a contract extension out of the schedule reshuffle.
New ESPN President Jimmy Pitaro seems to be trying undo the damage left behind by former “Worldwide Leader” boss John Skipper, who turned the sports network into a tedious, left-wing, social justice platform.
WokeCenter is a disastrous programming strategy — the worst in the nearly forty year history of ESPN. It doesn’t work because WokeSports Twitter isn’t real life. There’s no actual audience for this type of programming.
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