By Jeff Moss
DetroitSportsRag@GMail.com
August 10, 2013
At 11:00am Monday inside the Greater Media compound in Ferndale, a press conference will be held to announce that 105.1-FM will be flipping from adult contemporary WMGC to an ESPN sports affiliate.
The long-rumored switch should come as no surprise to anyone on this website as I broke the news on July 1st that Drew Lane of “Drew and Mike” fame would be headlining the new station, which will be in direct competition to WXYT-FM (97.1.)
Regular readers of the DSR know that I despise everything about 97.1 “The Ticket” and have been anxiously awaiting an FM challenge to that garbage product for over five years now, so this is very welcome news even though I am dubious that a lot will be different up the dial at the upstart challenger.
And my distaste for 97.1 isn’t just content related. Yes, the caller-driven format is an utter abortion as allowing a bunch of out-of-work losers with nothing better to do than call a radio station to program your station is atrocious.
And yes, the on-air “talent” is also severely lacking. When one of your “stars” is a 40-year old morbidly obese virgin who giggles like a schoolgirl at the #69 and who would rather eat a lightly dressed salad than discuss sabermetrics, well, you’re an embarrassment.
Please don’t get me started on that travesty of a morning show or the minor league talent (Pat Caputo, Dennis Fithian, Jeff Riger, Eric Thomas, Dan Leach, etc.) or the fact that 97.1 really isn’t a sports station but instead a wolf in sheep’s clothing. They broadcast the games of all of the city’s major sports teams , but attract an audience that would rather discuss food trucks and streetlights than anything remotely SPORTS related.
But my Django-esque blood vendetta in response to CBS Radio’s destruction of the sports talk genre in the Motor City goes far behind the unlistenable nature of the programming.
One of their trash hosts (Terry Foster) called me a racist repeatedly on Twitter for pointing out that he was originally hired at WDFN because he was an African-American. Something that can easily be verified by asking Art Regner or Gregg Henson if that statement is accurate.
Then two 97.1 security thugs physically assaulted me in Grand Circus Park on Opening Day 2012 outside a live broadcast of the “Valenti & Foster” eardrum abomination.
And, of course, there have been various Twitter incidents including Riger creating a “Fake Jeff Moss” account to mock me, not to mention various Social Media “Wars” including one with a pissant minimum-wage-earning call-screener by the name of Josh Holub.
So …. no matter how badly 105.1 disappoints me (and their lack of live local shows to start with and the hiring of Denny Kapp isn’t exactly a Bill Goldberg-esque entrance), they can’t do any worse than WXYT. It just isn’t humanly possible.
Anyway, I figured as a nice gesture from the DSR to Greater Media I would give them the following gift as an olive branch. The release of a couple of emails from the executive producer of 97.1’s AM drive show that were sent to me last year.
The backstory: I have been fairly friendly with Tom “The Gov” Millikan for years going back to his days producing the old “Stoney and Wojo” show at WDFN.
I really thought “The Gov” was one of the “good” ones in this cesspool of a business. When Millikan thought Mike Stone and Bob Wojnowski’s program had become stale and boring, he attempted to coerce the resting-on-their-laurels pair to shake things up. When that failed, he quit the show.
Millikan eventually migrated back to WDFN and was producing Matt Shepard’s morning show when I received a call from “The Gov” around Christmastime in 2011. Shepard was on vacation and Russ McNamara was filling in at the time. Millikan wanted to know if I wanted to come in for a couple of hours and “co-host” the morning program with McNamara.
So I appeared on 1130’s airwaves that morning, which I am sure thrilled Clear Channel executives when they discovered it later. If they were even paying attention at all. Which is doubtful. HAVE YOU HEARD THAT PRODUCT?
Anyway, several months after my appearance occurred, WDFN hired disc jockey Eric “Dance All Night” Chase from Allentown, PA as the dead-in-the-water station’s new program director. Chase was putrid and not qualified for the gig and I attacked him from the get-go, which put Millikan in an odd position because of our relationship.
At one point, Chase cornered “The Gov” and told the producer that being Jeff Moss’s friend on Facebook didn’t look very good within the Clear Channel Compound. Yet, Millikan refused to “unfriend” me even after this confrontation.
I figured that was a pretty loyal thing to do on Millikan’s part and I would never again question his allegiance to the DSR. Ummm, I was wrong.
THEN “The Gov” got fired from WDFN in March of 2012. THEN Millikan got the gig as Stoney and Bill “Manbag” McAllister’s executive producer at 97.1 on that train wreck of a “sports” show.
AND I HAVE NEVER HEARD FROM THE GUY AGAIN. Like he fell off the planet. Now, I am not sure if he stopped talking to me out of self-preservation or because the higher-ups at CBS told him he could no longer converse with me, but I am guessing it is the latter based on information from people in the industry.
Since I am obviously never going to hear from “The Gov” again, I figured I would ingratiate myself with 105.1 by producing two emails that the 97.1 producer sent me while still at WDFN.
The first is from March 6, 2012 with the subject of “Foster” ……..
Yes. The dude who is the executive producer of the 97.1 morning show called the co-host of the 97.1 afternoon show “Fraudster.” The employee who is in charge of interviewing all potential producers at “The Ticket” believes the Detroit radio market is laughable partially because of the travesty between 2-6pm on his OWN station.
Like, people wonder why I doubted the legitimacy of Terry Foster’s column about Louis Delmas and Tony Scheffler? Maybe it has something to do with his CO-WORKERS coming up with clever ways to call Foster a fraud. I mean ….
Now, when reading the next email, just try to keep in mind that there is rampant speculation that Matt Dery is going to be part of 105.1’s lineup. I heard one rumor today that he will be doing a midday show with Mark “The Man” Wilson.
(Peace with 105.1 is going to be a real chore if this is true. While I am not a fan of Dery’s duplicitous behavior, I have always wanted to hear him have his own show. Unlike most of the other jackholes in this town, the guy is actually intelligent and not a flat-earther. Mark Wilson though? Where did they dig this carcass up from? Oh, right. The Sima Birach, Jr. graveyard. What? Greater Media couldn’t exhume Fred “More Heumann Than” Heumann’s corpse?)
All of that is beside the point in relation to this email from Millikan regarding who should be co-hosting HIS station’s PM Drive show with Valenti …..
Yep. You read that correctly. If rumors are true, an executive producer at 97.1 believes that a new employee of 105.1 would be a better co-host on 97.1’s signature show than Terry Fraudster.
This shit is hilarious and there is nothing I enjoy more than creating unrest, havoc and uncomfortable moments at “The Ticket”, but I do feel bad for “Gov” as he is a good guy and probably deserves none of this. Actually, I KNOW he deserves none of this. He is just collateral damage in my ongoing pursuit to fuck with Calvin Candie, errr, I mean 97.1.
But that’s what happens when you go to work for my personal Evil Empire. Although I am pretty sure this latest despicable act on my part will guarantee that nobody ever sends me an email ever again.
Come back to the websight™ (Terry Fraudster) on Monday evening for updates on the 105.1 announcement and the station’s first day as legitimate competition to 97.1.
Supposedly I will be doing a live Podcast on Monday evening discussing the potential rivalry between the two stations with former WDFN morning host Greg Brady, who currently holds that same position at AM590 in Toronto.