Apparently 97.5 the Fanatic’s phone lines have been down for almost a week now and the entire system is being replaced. It’s cluster-wide issue, so it’s also affecting Preston and Steve, for instance. Photographer Craig is our resident Preston and Steve expert and he tells us they’ve been taking Zoom calls instead of phone calls, which seems to be working out okay for them.

On the other hand, the VIP line continues to function properly, so guest spots continue. Adam Schefter was on the Fanatic’s morning show Wednesday, then Derrick Gunn and Andrew DiCecco called in later. The text line is still accessible and Mikey Miss found some sort of temporary workaround to get General Knowledge Wednesday off the ground and take a limited amount of calls.

This has piqued my interest to the point where I listened to about an hour of Salciunas and DiCecco on Thursday morning (Andrew was filling in for John Kincade), then an hour of Mike and Bill Colarulo in the afternoon. And I have to tell you that I think the product is better.

Why? Well because there are no idiots junking up the show. No disrespect to Bobby in the Northeast, but nobody cares what Bobby in the Northeast thinks about the Eagles. Bobby in the Northeast doesn’t add anything to the show. He wants to trade A.J. Brown to the New England Patriots and then draft a receiver. Bobby in the Northeast thinks that Bob Myers is gonna take over the 76ers and trade Joel Embiid to the Pistons for three 1st round draft picks. Nobody needs to hear from Bobby in the Northeast because he’s a dum dum.

More than that, there’s a larger-level sticking point here.


When the hosts aren’t shoehorned into platforming the jabronies of the Delaware Valley, the shows breathe and flow better. We get more legitimate sports talk and less hypothetical fairy land nonsense. They can pivot to soundboard quotes and social media comments. They can selectively interact with listeners on YouTube. It’s not the start/stop nature of classic Philly sports talk radio, where phone calls have become a crutch of sorts. And to be completely fair, the abusing the phone lines has always been more of a WIP thing than a Fanatic thing. When Kincade came back from Atlanta, his show didn’t take many calls at all, and still doesn’t. Misannelli uses the phone lines but Tyrone and Ricky seem to be a little less reliant. I don’t have any kind of statistical proof, but I’m willing to bet that Tyrone takes fewer calls than Spike, Ike, and Jack at WIP.

Anyway, I used to think that we didn’t need to hear from callers every day, that we could go back to Tom Bigby’s “once per week, once on the weekends rule.” Now I’m realizing that we don’t need to hear from callers at all. Seriously. Has anybody ever said, “man, I really miss hearing from Ingy and Mad Mike“? No. They have not said that. No one has ever said that.