Industry Poll: Angelo Cataldi and John Kincade Rank in the Top 12 for "Major Market Sports Radio Morning Shows"
Barrett Sports Media does industry polling every year that results in a variety of sports talk radio rankings.
Last year, Spike Eskin was voted the #1 program director in America, and Tuesday BSM released the results for top major market sports talk radio shows.
The process is pretty simple. They pull together 46 executives from various companies, like Audacy, Beasley, iHeart, ESPN, FOX, etc. Those executives then rank 32 eligible shows based on “the ear test, ratings success, originality, ability to entertain, multi-platform impact, and on-air chemistry.”
Here’s what they came up with:
- Toucher and Rich (Boston)
- Boomer and Gio (New York)
- Cataldi (Phila)
- Sports Junkies (D.C.)
- The Musers (Dallas)
- The Power Trip (Minneapolis)
- Schlereth and Evans (Denver)
- Murph and Mac (San Fran)
- Mully and Haugh (Chicago)
- Stoney and Jansen (Detroit)
- Shan and RJ (Dallas)
- Kincade (Phila)
- Kap and J Hood (Chicago)
- Greg Hill Show (Boston)
- Bickley and Marotta (Phoenix)
Now I haven’t heard 75% of these shows, but I feel confident in saying that if Toucher and Rich and Angelo Cataldi take home two of the top three slots in this poll, that the state of morning sports radio in America is pretty sad. Everybody knows Cataldi is a total fraud, but if you don’t remember Toucher, he’s the Boston doofus who hung up on the Carolina Hurricanes reporter because he “just can’t listen to a guy with a southern accent talk about hockey.”
One thing I do know is that Kincade’s show is better than Cataldi’s show. The level of discourse is higher and there are no phone calls from dopey dopes like Butch from Manayunk and (insert first name here) from the Dirty 30. So those two should certainly be flipped. Boomer and Gio isn’t horrible, based on limited listening. That show used to be Boomer with Craig Carton before Carton was thrown in jail, so it’s undergone a rebrand in recent years.
By the way, have you noticed that Angelo’s Wednesday replacements have all been internal WIP employees so far? Angelo is only working four days a week before his end-of-year retirement. Jon Johnson filled in the first few times, then Jon Marks hosted, and then Joe “The Hammer” DeCamara filled in last Wednesday. The show is infinitely better with any three of those guys hosting. It was the first time in years that I did not change the dial within 60 seconds. And I’ll go as far to say that I think Al Morganti and Rhea Hughes and Jonesy are much better without Angelo there. When Angelo’s vacuous bloviating is removed from the equation, the rest of the show improves drastically. It’s like the rest of the crew is liberated. They could very easily make an internal hire and keep the remainder of the morning team in place and the show would be so much better.
BSM is releasing more top 20 lists this month. Thursday, it’ll be afternoon shows, then program directors on Friday and overall station rankings on Monday. Tuesday will be top 20 original sports podcasts, and if Snow the Goalie isn’t #1, then we riot.