30 for 30 running thread

So you think sports talk radio began with Mike and the Mad Dog?

 

For what it has turned into, yes.

Were people doing it before, yes, but in fits and starts. But WFAN and them being the face of it was the breakthrough

 

Anyone who thinks Francesa and Russo started this genre need to look up the name Pete Franklin.

I'm already losing interest in this. Should have been a 30 for 30 short.

 

I'm aware of Pete Franklin.

Mike and the Mad Dog is about the duo -- how many shows in the top 100 are solo now? Where do you think that comes from. They were drive time for the first all sports station. That means a lot.

And I'm saying all this not as a listener to them.

 

Yeah, I switched the channel within two minutes.

 

I stuck it out. Agree that it should have been a short. Boring and drawn out.

 

Every large city in the country had the same sort of sports call in shows long before these two took to the air, as well as each having its own favorite "personality" doing the shows. They did not in any way whatsoever create that genre.

What did change in the 90s is we saw the proliferation of 24-hour all-sports-talk-radio stations. And, although WFAN may've been at the forefront, a quick google shows they began doing so on July 1, 1987, around two and a half years before "Mike and Mad Dog" was born. So they're not responsible for creating that format either.

The popularity of their show in NY was no doubt a substantial factor helping fuel the rate of growth of other such stations, but that doesn't mean the growth wouldn't have happened anyways.

 

Just from my own AM radio nerd days of my youth I know that Pittsburgh had Myron Cope in the mid-to-late 1980s, Cleveland had Franklin and Geoff Sindelar and WLUP in Chicago had Chet Coppock. So this idea that everyone went to Noo Yawk and copied the style of these guys in the 1990s was false.

 

Double yoi it did.

 

KNBR in SF has a sports talks show in the evenings in the late 70s and slowly morphed into all-sports after they took on the Giants in '79.

I was surprised to find out the Giants have only 12 affiliates in their radio network. I'm guessing it's because KNBR is a blowtorch and doesn't want to share the revenue.

 

Many of the 30 for 30s that I've liked the most are the ones on a topic I knew little or nothing about.

Hard for me to judge "Mike and the Mad Dog" because I know the story very well. Perhaps it's not as well done as the others.

But I thought it was pretty good. Their influence on the genre was certainly significant.

 

Twelve does seem low. I also wonder how many markets actually want to carry the Giants--Sacramento has traditionally been an As market and you get too far south you run into Dodgers territory. I believe Fresno does, the SLO area and then whichever stations along the North Coast. Plus AM carries a long way. So Nor Cal is covered, but I'm curious how many markets out of CA there are.