As this earlier post noted, Houstonians are currently enduring a glut of sports talk radio stations. With the rare exception of a show such as Charlie Pallilo‘s, the shows on these stations range from merely unlistenable to truly offensive. To make matters worse, Houston’s mainstream professional sports teams are currently horrid, from the Texans’ historic mediocrity, to the Rockets’ decade of playoff incompetence, to the Stros’ downward trend. What on earth is there to talk about?
At any rate, while cruising around doing pre-Christmas errands the other day, one of my sons had a local sports talk radio show on his car radio. One of the talk show hosts made the following observation about the Rockets — who have lost 14 of their last 21 games — and the Texans, who had just been thoroughly waxed by the Colts:
“Compared to the Rockets, I am quite optimistic about the Texans.”
My son and I cracked up laughing. The host, on the other hand, was dead serious. That pretty well sums up the quality of discourse on Houston sports talk radio these days.
But isn’t this to a certain degree subjective? While I don’t like Palillo (I think he’s smug & arrogant know-it-all), I do respect that he knows what he is talking about. Conversely, I would guess some people don’t like some of KGOW’s programming (John & Lance or Sean & John, both good shows who “work blue” too often for some palates), even though they are sharp as well.
I do agree that most of the hosts are unlistenable. A lot of it has to do with the callers. Nearly every caller has no clue about how trades work, has a grudge (against Mario or Drayton or Van Gundy or any one of a dozen other popular targets), or spews an indefensible opinion. I love sports talk radio, but hearing the same calls (“the Texans should have taken VY!” or “Drayton is cheap!” or “Steve Francis needs to start!”) makes me want to rip the radio out of the car.
Bouj, my main gripe with most of the radio hosts, Pallilo and Craig Roberts excepted, is that they do not read anything but mainstream media sports articles. As a result, the level of discourse is abominable. Moreover, even the reasonably bright hosts make little effort to inform themselves regarding areas outside their main interest. For example, Lance Zerlein, who knows what he is talking about in regard to football, regularly makes absurd statements about baseball and basketball. The hosts who are not as bright as Zerlein are even worse.
Sports talk radio is dispositive proof of the decling of Western Civilization. ;^)