built a local sports media brand over a quarter of a century of sweat equity in Towson – and a soulless corporate entity doing lousy, lazy content while pocketing gobs of corporate agency money and laughing to the bank.
I’ve silently watched 105.7 The Fan and CBS crawl back into business with the honorable Peter G. Angelos, who has banned their prime competitor – that would be me – from fair and ethical media access to the Baltimore Orioles. You can let Jay Newman know that I see all of those mesothelioma ads on the mothership on The Hill. When those checks from Mr. Angelos flow into the CBS cesspool at the top of the funnel at end of the month, I know what that means for the whole operation.
And I know how Mr. Angelos feels about free speech and the media. He told me himself:
I’ve also watched 105.7 The Fan boast about being the “only” sports radio station in the marketplace. Crazy to think that a company’s primary slogan would be a complete lie to anyone with a brain or who has actually lived in Baltimore since the Ravens came to town in 1996.
So does everyone else.
I’ve watched them brag about being the self-proclaimed “market leader.”
I’ve walked into many sales meetings in my WNST gear and have seen and heard the poison trail their associates have left behind about my brand and my radio signal, my “ratings,” my character, etc. – blah, blah, blah.
I have a stock line for that one, which I once used on Lee Mazzilli: “No one listens to me or WNST but somehow everyone hears every word I say?”
How is that possible? How is it possible that you’re here right now? Arbitron has told advertisers for 25 years that WNST has never had a single listener.
And then I go on the road and cover the Baltimore Ravens for the 20th straight year – I’ve only missed four Ravens games in their existence, all end-of-the-season road games in bad seasons – and I look around the press box and locker room and there’s no one from CBS Radio or 105.7 The Fan anywhere near the team.
The truth is that 105.7 The Fan doesn’t even cover the team that they spend dozens of hours pretending to be “experts” about. And it’s been that way from the beginning – even when they were the flagship of the only team of significance in Baltimore and pissed away that relationship to WBAL-AM 1090 after a decade of simply dreadful shoulder programming to a Super Bowl-winning team.
And while the Orioles rot again from the core in 2015, the radio hosts at 105.7 The Fan are barely watching the games and their audience is calling and bitching about the Ravens with phone calls so insipidly stupid as to defy any logic.
“John Harbaugh sucks!”
“Joe Flacco sucks!”
“Ozzie Newsome can’t draft!”
“Bench Jimmy Smith!”
“I know more about defense than Dean Pees!”
It’s bad radio.
I do good radio at WNST.
Their hosts don’t cover the teams. Their journalistic contribution to the marketplace is virtually zero. When is the last time that 105.7 broke a news story of any kind? Their social media is a corporately run joke – a daily embarrassment. You might as well follow a fax machine than follow 105.7 The Fan on Twitter. Their “breaking news” comes hours late or once someone on their staff has received information from a source like the WNST Text Service.
This information is easily visible in a transparent world of social media. Ask anyone about our Text Service. If you’re among the more than 9,000 folks who subscribe, you know the quality of our product.
And then there are the blogs full of crap like this attached to the daily CBS email spam or this gem about Adam Jones I get every morning. And then there are the tweets where spelling is, apparently, optional.
Seriously, most of the writing on the CBS local website wouldn’t get a D-minus in my 1985 Dundalk High journalism class. And this is just a morsel of the quality workmanship you get at CBS Radio.
And when they’re not giving you subpar – or nonexistent – social media and blogs littered with clues about their lack of writing prowess, over the past decade they’ve hired out-of-town luminaries such as Anita Marks and Jennifer Royle and tried to pass off sub-par, pretty girl sports radio as faux jock intelligence or “uncensored” radio.
Maybe the 105.7 The Fan audience is smarter than I give them credit for being. At least those last two are gone from a market and a conversation that they had no business ever being a part of in Baltimore sports media.
But, hey, Philips and programmers over at 105.7 The Fan served you dog food for sports radio every afternoon and told you it was filet mignon. Welcome to Corporate Radio 101.
I could dish about some fascinatingly demeaning conversations I’ve had with Bob Philips over the years but
