Mike Missanelli invited me on his show Friday afternoon. Must have been a slow day. The phone lines were spotty and there wasn’t anything worth talking about in Philly sports, so he programmed his first two hours around the topic of sports talk radio callers and the columns I wrote on Thursday. In a conversation spanning about five minutes, Mikey Miss was soundly defeated:

There were moments in this discussion so ironic that Alanis Morissette would have written a song about it. Here we are talking about phone calls, but the phone lines don’t work. The talented Ray Dunne, one of the few Spring-Ford Rams worth engaging, had to pull a rabbit out of his hat just to get me on the air. Then Mike, who has blocked half of Philly sports Twitter, had the audacity to accuse ME of sitting on a high horse and punching down. You’ve got to be kidding me! If Mike Missanelli is the blue collar champion of the Philadelphia everyman, then I’ve got oceanfront property in Bensalem to sell you.

Other than that, it was good. Mostly cordial. Two academic heavyweights going at it. Mike thinks that listeners deserve the opportunity to call up and partake in the discussion. I don’t. I think they can contribute on the text line, social media, and YouTube chat, because the show just flows better, with elevated discourse. I’m sure you can relate to a situation when there was an interesting discussion taking place, then it came to a screeching halt because, for some reason, they needed to take a call from Bobby in the Northeast, who doesn’t have anything more valuable to say than any of the hosts, or the guests.

And sure, you can do the Howard Stern thing and create the rat pack of daily callers and turn it into a bit, kind of like WIP does with Herb from the Northeast and Chuck from Mt. Airy and OG Wade and all of those guys. When Mike’s show was competitive in the ratings, many moons ago, he used to take calls from Vicente from Ecuador and Bernie from Broomall, which was great entertainment. Hola Mike! If you have a fun caller and they make you laugh, then no problem. It’s the bozos who don’t know what they’re talking about who bring the show down.

The interesting thing is that if you listen to sports talk radio elsewhere in the country, they really do not rely on phone calls the way that Philadelphia radio does. I believe Philly is probably a top-five market in the frequency of phone calls taken. Other cities program their shows differently, and line up 4-5 guests every day, while Philly might book 1-2 and rely more on phone calls. We’re probably an outlier when it comes to the way that sports talk radio is structured.


Anyway, there was some guy who called up after my spot and ripped me, saying that he delivers packages or something. He went on a tirade about how sports talk radio is for the working class American who doesn’t have time to read because they are busy doing physical labor and/or essential tasks. For the record, no one is criticizing sports talk radio LISTENERS, the criticism is of sports talk radio CALLERS, and the radio hosts and programmers who give them too much time on the air. I guess this caller thought I was stereotyping working class Americans as idiots, the way Mike does when he encounters a Republican.

Have a great weekend.