It's Not Too Early to ask Some Hard(line) Questions -- PART 4(b)

January is Rhynerrific!

In my last installment, I opined that if Mike were to depart a month from now, The Hardline and BaD Radio would stay put and they would try to find a replacement for the OGW. You can still argue about that in the comments if you want, but today's topic is: If The Hardline survives, who might replace Mike on The Hardline?

Get your tomatoes, eggs, and brickbats ready. This is going to take awhile; it's actually three articles in one, so grab a bev and settle in.

[And please, trolls: I know Mike's exit is unlikely. We've said it now for weeks. This series is based on the assumption that Mike's contract nonrenewal, however remote the possibility, would be an extremely disruptive event that merits the attention of this single-topic site. So I would be most grateful if you would refrain from advising us on how we're wasting our time. And this article is going to be real, real long, with lots of words, so if that shuts you down as well, this would be an excellent time to click on http://www.grubesismyleader.com/. Sorry to be snarky, but really, trolls -- topic-selection and article-length are off the table for the time being. However, it remains entirely proper to opine that my views are unsound.]

As I also wrote, it is not possible to "replace" Mike if you want The Hardline to march onward sounding exactly as it does now. He's one of a kind so let's just admit to ourselves that The Hardline without Mike will be a different showgram. So when you think about your own candidates to fill that slot, think about who might put on a good presentation with Corby/Danny/Grubes/Ty and not about how to salvage The Hardline's current sound.

And I'm trying to be a little realistic, although you may find my choices so unlikely as to be just the opposite. The candidate has to be someone who is available. I don't care if our candidate comes from The Ticket or elsewhere but he must at least be someone who is on site or hirable.

I have two candidates in mind:

Candidate 1:

Although Mike's seat is a huge prize (and an even bigger challenge to the successful candidate), I don't think it's necessary that it be filled by an established radio bigfoot. There will be a built-in audience for the show, and if consistent quality and interest can be established early on, The Hardline should survive relatively undiminished, especially given the weakness of the competition. So:

I like Scot Harrison. Like him a lot. I know that a significant percentage of Confessors are not crazy about The Soul Patch but since its early days with Jean-Jacques Taylor and through a plus one or so before being teamed with Matt McClearin, Harrison has gotten fairly good reviews. No, not everyone likes him, thinks he's got a bag of nothin', just some generic radio pipes, etc. To my ear, there's a real warmth to those pipes. And they seem to be attached to some brains. Knows enough sports, and if he had a full-time gig he'd probably be even better on that score. (His current full-time gig is with American National Bank of Texas, where he's been for approximately 2 years.) If I'm guessing right from his LinkedIn profile, it looks like he's in his mid-to-late forties. (6-7 years from beginning college at A&M to graduation from UT Arlington in 1989, so if he were say, 24 or 25 when he graduated, he'd be 46-47 now.)

Only Scot Harrison image I could find other than the hat picture

He has a mature sound about him, and to that limited extent he would fill that portion of Mike's function as the stable, guiding host. (Although Mike claims he doesn't want to be viewed in that way.) But he also has a sense of humor and could deal with Corby the Snake and Danny the Merchant of Hip as well as making sure The Hardline occasionally makes its way to some sports topic. I think he could roll with the established spirit of The Hardline.

He's got a solid background in local sports media: Again, according to LinkedIn: From 1989 through 2003, he worked in radio and television production: KWCS, Wise County, Texas; KIKT/KGVL, Hunt County, Texas; KRLD, Dallas/Fort Worth; Jeff Watts Productions, Fort Worth, Texas; Metrosports Communications, Arlington, Texas. From 2003 through 2008, he owned and operated Game Winning Productions, a "broadcast production company engaged in sales, marketing, and production of sporting events on radio."

So we're not talking about elevating an amateur here when it comes to moving him into Mike's chair. Wherever he came from, he's a credible, market-knowledgeable guy with an adult presence who seems to have sports/guy/pop-culture chops and could roll with Corby and Danny. Don't hold those golden pipes against him.

And here we have to detour just a bit to make a point that applies to Candidate 2 as well: I have expressed the thought in the past that Corby is more versatile than he is given credit for. He doesn't have to be The Snake at all times; he can sling a much more responsible but still entertaining radio persona. If I'm right that Harrison might take show prep a little more seriously than Mike now does, I think it would do Corby's game a world of good. I wouldn't worry about Corby chafing under a more disciplined regime. I think he might even welcome it and in my view he has the talent to adapt to it. The same analysis applies to Danny, who is also a more responsible broadcaster than he'd like to let on; runs his own show as a host and it's pretty good. The point is that we don't necessarily need to think about a Hardline where Corby and Danny themselves don't change, adapt, work hard to sustain The Hardline's success.

Candidate 2:

OK, get ready.

First, another detour.

For almost a year I've been teasing the Nation that I have been harboring an incendiary STD about BaD Radio. I'm not just trying to be provocative with the following proposal, even though I acknowledge that it is very unlikely of realization. I truly believe it would be a good solution to the problems created by Mike's departure.

Confessors will recall that I did that three-parter on BaD in August 2010. At that time I concluded that it was a good show, I could listen to it, but that I was having some trouble warming up to Dan McDowell. In addition, it seemed to me that Dan and a lot of the rest of The Ticket somehow held one another at arm's length -- that he was "on, but not of," the Little One. I promised the Nation that I would keep listening since I wanted to be fair to Dan and because I heard and continue to hear from so many Confessors who were and are big fans of Dan and BaD.

So I did try to listen more.

Before I began writing this column, I went back to review everything I'd written about BaD and its hosts. Comparing that to my more recent listening experiences, I stand by all of it, with a major exception I'll describe in a moment. I'm sorry, I really am sorry, but Dan McDowell continues to make BaD Radio an at-best-average listening experience for me. The interrupting, the tendency to name-call-not-in-a-joshing-way, the belittling of staff. They're bits, you say? Maybe. But they're bad bits.

I have notes from a show on February 28 of last year that sums it up: Bob had packaged a LeBron segment. When he got to it, he started to make the point that maybe LeBron is not a go-to guy at the end of big games, or games in general. You would have thought that Bob was arguing that Dan's mom was on food stamps or something, because Dan interrupted almost immediately with a counter-argument that was (i) to my ear, and to Bob's, completely irrelevant to Bob's point, (ii) really loud, and (iii) intemperately expressed. He called Bob an "idiot" twice, I believe. (Might have been more -- I punched out after two.) Awful. Then there was an episode -- damn, where are those notes? my memory may be slightly off here -- where Ralph Strangis was on the show supposedly to tell the story of some of his rockier times. Well, you could forget that; it turned into a What's-on-Dan's-Mind segment. Complete chaos; what got teased never got broadcast. Ralphie was barely allowed to speak. Punch. Out.

And, as Danny B has said: Dan "bogs crap down." I've punched out on more than one occasion when Dan employed his frequent debate tactic of restating someone's point in an absurdly exaggerated fashion, and then attacking that. The old straw-man tactic. Stops the show in its tracks. Dan's Confessor defenders, for whom I have great respect, have argued that Dan must interrupt and be extreme to keep Bob from droning on for hours on end. Ain't buying it. Dan frequently interrupts before a speaker completes a single sentence.

The above notwithstanding, I am not even close to being a Dan-hater. In one respect, I find that I have gradually become a fairly enthusiastic Dan fan: He's really quite a good sports analyst. He's not Mr. Numbers like Bob, but he's an extremely intelligent guy -- one of the smartest at The Ticket -- and isn't afraid to think originally or to go with the evidence of what he sees before him, however unexpected it might be. And I think he does see things clearly, never drinks the Kool-Aid. When he's sports-talking, I find that I like it and like him. I've heard him call in to shows to talk after some sports event, and always found it very worthwhile, interestingly expressed, with a healthy dose of creative thinking. Dan has one quality that alone makes him a worthwhile listen when he's being serious: He's fearless. That's not a small thing and I've come to admire him for it.

Here's where I come out on Dan: Lots of skills for a sports-radio station, the voice you can get used to, and a much-better-than-average sports talker.

But there is one thing he is not: A Sports Humorist.

Yeah, I know, lots of people like the uber-cynical, sarcastic, smug style of commentary, and if you do then you'll like Dan. That's fine, I'm not going to tell anyone they shouldn't like Dan. And humor has got to be one of the most subjective emotions. For me, the guy's patter has never given rise to sensations of amusement. My problem, then, is not so much with Dan as a sports-talk host, where he's actually quite good; it's Dan's competing unfunnily for attention with Bob and the resulting bog. He's a real good broadcaster; he's just not a real good broadcast partner.

Unfortunately, that leaves us (me) with a problem because Dan is supposed to be the Sports Humorist.

But what has all of this to do with Mike's empty chair?

You probably see where this is going.

I warned you this was going to be wild.

If Mike R leaves The Ticket, it will be time to break up BaD Radio.

Send Bob to The Hardline, create a new afternoon show around Dan with Dan as the alpha sports guy on the show. That is, don't replace Bob with a sports-talker bigfoot, just find someone Dan can tolerate. Or don't replace Bob; I'd be OK with DaD Radio (Dan and Donovan). This would allow Dan to develop and exercise his broadcasting strengths as a principal host, actually elevating his stature at The Ticket. (I told you I wasn't a Dan-hater.) In addition, this would be a way of moving a strong performer to The Hardline without entirely uprooting the afternoon show. I understand that reviews of Dan were mixed during Bob's absence with the adoption. While I missed Bob, in some ways I found those shows more enjoyable than BaD, the bickering and snideness no longer a factor. If he knew the show were his, I expect that some of the tentativeness and insecurity we may have heard during Bob's absence would evaporate. In any event, finding Dan a radio pal is not our job today.

So let's think about a Bob/Corby/Danny show. 

Large sports brain at top of image

Bob is pretty straight-laced; The Hardline would take on a considerably different tone with him at the helm. But it seems to me that he tolerates some fairly blue material on BaD without himself participating much in it. I don't think the Snake would have to be permanently caged. With Bob you have (1) a guy who knows Corby and Danny and, to the best of my knowledge, gets along with them, and they respect him; (2) a mature and strong counterpoint to the scamps Corby and Danny who could maintain that balance I'm always harping on; (3) a Ticket stalwart who is well-known to and well-liked by the P1's; (4) a guy who can bring in the listeners who want to hear serious sports talk, filling a notable Hardline weakness; and (5) a guy with a growing national profile. And, as I have said above, I think Corby and Danny are very capable of dialing back some of the snark, devoting some attention to show prep, and following sportsy things a little more closely. While this would put two guys in love with mic on the same show, I think Bob and Corby could work it out. It's a relatively low-risk move for our hypothetical CTO.



There you have it, my two candidates. Both with risks; both promising a very different Hardline and/or BaD.

So -- what would you do with The Hardline if Mike doesn't re-up? ("Stop listening" is an acceptable, but unhelpful, response.)

Danny and Corby respectfully await Mike's decision

Next and finally: Leveraging Mike.