In lieu of American Idol, we give you Baltimore Sports Media Idol in the morning

I’m not sure whether it’s good news or bad news for Baltimore, but I’ll be filling in for Drew Forrester on the Morning Reaction three days this week and will be bringing along one of my favorite annual competitions — the “So you think you can do this better than me” competition for sports radio, media and the web.

As many of you know, virtually every host or writer we’ve ever had at WNST has come to me in this very format — they’ve all come in with a dream of doing this for a living and some have survived, some have thrived and others have provided entertainment and comedy along the way.

It really kinda IS like American Idol from my perspective, except the winner only gets $500 in WNST gift cards and merchandise.

It’s not about the prize as much as it is the opportunity. But it’s hard to tell someone they suck when they just did three minutes of the worst sports radio I’ve ever heard and they think they’re Chris Berman.

It’s also been rewarding in finding really cool people like last year’s winner Luke Jones, who has gone on to a hosting role here at WNST.net and covering the Orioles, Ravens and running various evening chats we’ve had in our LIVE CHAT.

This week we’ll give 18 more hopefuls a chance to compete and do a few minutes radio and then we can follow them via their blogs here at the WNST.net BARSTOOL.

I’m filling in for Drew on Monday, Thursday and Friday and executive producer Glenn Clark will be the Paula Abdul of our competition from the other side of the microphone.

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All of their work will also be featured on WNST.net. I’ll leave it up to them to put their resumes and credentials out to the world via their blogs and social media.

It’s not easy being a successful host and blogger at WNST.net. There’s a lot more work than any of our listeners or readers understand. Tomorrow a journey begins for some and either way it’ll be a whole lot of fun.

I love seeing the passion and the energy in the prospective hosts each year. I wish them all luck.

Here’s the lineup for the week:

Monday 8/16

6:20 Steve Marengo

6:40 Garrett Wampler

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7 John West

7:20 Joe Giglio

7:40 Brad Stevenson

9 Shawn Credle

9:20 Doug Newton

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Thursday 8/19

7:20 Andy Sussman

7:40 Brian Malan

8:00 Sylanus Uagbor

8:20 Terry Cook

8:45 Justin Lindner

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9 Kiera Massette Somers

Friday 8/20

7:00 Rob Adcock

8 Rachel Ciarleglio

8:20 Chris Vinson

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9 Nick Nocar

920 Domenic Vadala