It's Race Week with Rich Ph -- Oh, Wait, it's Carlos Leal!

At first, I thought it might be a bit.

Cirque du Sirois was wrapping up.  (By the way -- just as some Ticket hosts seem determined to deliberately mispronounce "Hitzges," which is not difficult to pronounce, some similarly seem to think the name of the show is Cirque de Sirois.  Sorry, I know it's nitpicky, but persistent errors on names that should be well-known to the broadcaseters just frost my ass.  It borders on disrespect.  Yeah, maybe it's a bit.)  And the Sirois team was mulling over whether there would be a Race Week, when Carlos Leal mentioned that he was going to be doing it.  After some initial banter over whether it was a bit, it soon became clear that Carlos would, indeed, be doing Race Week.

I didn't get to hear more than about fifteen minutes of it.  They didn't even change the intro, which still announced that Rich Phillips would be hosting.

I must say that Carlos handled his duties manfully.  I like all of the NewGen JVTickemen -- Carlos, John Fahey, and Logan Gourley.  I would not have expected him to be as fluid as Rich, and he wasn't.  It sounded like he was reading off a prepared text with his initial "news of the week" segment, whereas Rich's account always sounded like he knew what had happened and was easily winging it.  Carlos had trouble with some sentences, but seeing as how it was his inaugural effort, he got the news across clearly.  No problem.  Rich has been a live broadcaster for decades. Keep on swinging, Carlos.

(By the way -- pretty sure Carlos's delivery was live, no "Race Week CD" The Orphanage routinely accused Rich of generating.)

I'm not a broadcaster, but if I had one piece of advice to offer, it would be just to slow down, keep it conversational.   Rich's blitzkrieg delivery cannot be duplicated.

What interests me more than Carlos's performance is the conversations that must have taken place in deciding what to do about the 2-3 pm slot on Saturdays.

I don't know if Carlos is a NASCAR fan.   I don't know if he went to The Western Hemisphere Catman and offered his services, or maybe begged to be given a shot.  I don't know if Cat had a holy-s____ moment and sent out a memo saying who in the name of all things Tickety can we get to keep Race Week going? and everyone else took one step back.  I do know -- no, that's not right, I only suspect -- that most P1's thought that Rich's departure spelled the end of Race Week.

In any event, I'm always interested in new voices getting new opportunities, so I urge the P1 to keep The Ticket on while running errands on Saturday afternoon, and check out Race Week, starring Carlos Leal.

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Who the heck, or what the heck, is Giuffria?  and Zebra?

KTCK -- All Rich, All the Time

It happened again.  I was out running errands for The Memsahib and "Race Week" was on.  I know this site has been Rich Phillips-intensive the past few weeks, so I'll keep this short.

I'm listening to Rich doing the NASCAR stuff, doing an interview, just talking about races and The Chase (whatever that is -- feel free to educate me) and guys I've never heard of participating in a sport I care nothing about, but I didn't consider changing the channel for a second. 

I ask myself:  Why am I listening to this? 

You already know that I think Rich does a great job with Race Week, but I never stopped to wonder what it is that's so appealing about his broadcast.

I think it boils down to one thing:  Conviction.  Rich's devotion to the sport rockets out of the speakers.  It's not just that he's knowledgable, it's that he loves it, and his easy familiarity with the material makes it seem like a subject maybe you'd like to know more about, too.  (And now, I do.)  He's clearly not a hired set of smooth pipes doing an obligatory hour he was hired to do -- you know damned well he pitched this to management until they were sick of listening to him and gave him a shot.  

And now he's got a show that deserves a nationwide audience for the millions who are themselves devoted to this sport.  Mike R teases about syndicating Race Week, but I can't believe Cumulus isn't thinking about either syndicating it or clearing it in other Cumulus markets.  (Maybe they have -- anybody know?)  There's nothing local about it, at least no reason to have any local references (I thought I caught a reference to The Ticket on one episode). 

And then I come back to the SRT8 after dispatching one or another of my duties, and there he is broadcasting SMU football, which was also a pleasure to hear.

I've had several opportunities to observe that Rich is an interesting co-host with Donovan and with Bob.  He's the touchiest of The Ticket broadcasters (he makes Bob look like Winston Churchill in this regard).

I think they should let Rich take listener calls. 

And   .  .  .  mark that.

Who Is Rich Phillips?

Of course I know who Rich Phillips is. He does tickers. He does "Race Week." He does SMU Mustangs play-by-play.

He is also in Ticket management. I have forgotten his title, but I remember being startled when Cumulus announced his promotion. I thought the Musers were a little uncertain how to react to that as well. And I haven't heard anything much more about it.

Some on-air guys grow on me. Some decline in my estimation. At first, I didn't care for Phillips. I thought he was kind of a dark presence on the Musers, ill-tempered, sarcastic, antagonistic. Yeah, Gordon needs to be smacked down now and then, but it seemed pretty clear that Phillips just didn't like him and didn't really care to disguise it. (And Gordon doesn't care that some of the Ticket guys don't like him.)

But the more I heard of his work, the better I liked him. I could not care less about NASCAR, but when I'd hit the car radio on Saturdays and the Ticket (of course) would emerge from the speakers, there was "Race Week," and I found myself listening to this stuff in which I had no interest. And I realized it was because Rich Phillips was a pretty good broadcaster.

And I caught a few minutes of something else I don't care about – SMU football – and Phillips was phenomenal. Informative, enthusiastic without being sycophantic. His big-play calls were sensational. Man, he was really, really good.

I heard him on with Bob Sturm on Cowboys pre-game a couple of weeks ago. Now if you're on with Sturm, you're not going to be saying much. But he was pretty good there as well.

So I'm asking myself – who is Rich Phillips at the Ticket? Is he in line for a host job? Yeah, I know there aren't any obvious vacancies coming up . . . or are there?