By Jeff Moss
DetroitSportsRag@GMail.com
June 9, 2016

As you probably already know, this website has been tightly intertwined with Detroit Sports 105.1  since that station flipped from Easy Listening to an ESPN-affiliated challenger to 97.1 “The Ticket” back in 2013.

First, we broke the news that Greater Media (GM) was switching formats from Lionel Richie and Elton John hits to an all-sports channel. I then attended the press conference announcing the new home of Drew Lane and posed the only relevant questions asked.

And for the last three years I have broken pretty much every story that has been 105.1/related, from the recent firing of program director Dave Shore to the continued chronicling of the station’s abysmal ratings. (And the May ratings came in yesterday and …..uh …. they are not good.)

So, after the firing of Shore and the dismissal of the afternoon-drive team of Matt Dery and Drew Sharp, I decided to pen an article regarding what I would do if I were in charge of this failing radio station.

Interestingly enough, when I Tweeted out a link promoting this column, it was bizarrely “LIKED” by GM’s Senior Vice President of Program Development, Buzz Knight.

Weird. You see, Knight is a head honcho at GM who works out of their Boston offices and is believed to be the person with 105.1’s fate in his hands. Why was he “favoriting” my plan for HIS channel?

So at this point, I decided to reach out to Knight and offer to assist him in saving the second lowest-rated FM signal in Detroit. It was pretty magnanimous on my part if you ask me.

Now, I know what you are saying at this point. Aren’t you the guy who had the Oakland County sheriffs called on you by THIS station for golfing nearby their charity event?

Aren’t you the dude who responded to the cops being called on you — FOR NO REASON — by going after the station’s then-marketing director, posting an article about Ryan Ermanni’s divorce, calling one of the channel’s hosts a “pill-popper” and incessantly mocking Tom Mazawey’s concierge business?

The same person who tried to create friction between Dery and Lane by posting this piece? And who constantly has posted articles regarding  105.1’s terrible Arbitron People Meter ratings?

And finally, wasn’t it Jiff Muss who showed up at a Tim Horton’s in Wayne to record an “audition” for the station’s talent contest and spent the entire time mocking Detroit Sports 105.1?

Yep. Guilty as charged on all counts. But it wouldn’t be the first time in history that former adversaries let bygones be bygones for the greater good. Hillary Clinton agreed to become Barack Obama’s Secretary of State after a vicious campaign.

Hell, Grantland (an ESPN property at the time) offered a job to Tommy Craggs of Deadspin once upon a time. And the ESPN/Deadspin relationship makes the Hatfields and McCoys look like swingers.

And on Monday, Colin Cowherd will begin co-hosting a new show on Fox Sports with Jason McIntrye of The Big Lead.  The same website he once tried to sabotage because McIntrye posted something Cow didn’t like.

So there is precedent for this sort of thing to occur in the name of the almighty dollar.

So I sent the following LinkedIn message to Knight ……

I then received this response from Mr. Knight ….

Eight days went by and I hadn’t heard back from Knight regarding my generous lunch offer. Which led me to try again with the following correspondence:

At this point, I figured I was just getting the runaround so I figured I would send Knight an email giving Buzz more information about our planned lunch discussion.

And here is that 1,300 word email in all of its glory:

Mr. Knight,

Thank you for your reply on LinkedIn to my second message regarding meeting me to discuss the future of Detroit Sports 105.1.

I understand that you are a very busy man who doesn’t even live in this area but I would like to meet you before Greater Media makes a decision on their third program director in three years.

I figured it would be easier to email you than continue a LinkedIn discussion. And while my messages have been goofy in nature, I am dead serious about my offer to assist you in rebranding your station.

I am not sure how much you know about me or my website other than the toxic things you probably have heard from inside the Ferndale Compound from people who are responsible for the station having a current .8 rating.

(I know they are throwing a party over there because Rico and Ryan got to sixth in the 25 to 54 demo one week this month, but I am not sure that’s something to celebrate after nearly three years.)

I am not going sugar coat anything. I have been brutal to a lot of people at your station. I mean, your people called the COPS on me for golfing!! Hell, I have been vicious to MANY people in this media market when I think it has been warranted. But I have a fairly large audience considering this has been a hobby of mine as I also work a 40-hour plus job as a Vice President of an insurance appraisal business.

In fact, I have a larger social media audience than your 50,000 watt FM radio station which I mentioned in a previous missive. I wanted to back that assertion up with evidence.

Here is a Twitter audit of my followers:

And here is a Twitter audit of Detroit Sports 105.1’s account:

Once again, as a hobby I have more legitimate Twitter followers than 105.1. I don’t have an advertising budget. I don’t have billboards. I don’t have scantily clad “Knockout Girls” passing out literature at Tigers, Lions and Red Wings games. And I don’t have own the Pistons broadcast rights.

I have myself and my social media accounts and word of mouth. That’s it.

But it actually gets worse. Here is a breakdown of my Periscope followers:

And now here is the 105.1’s Periscope account info:

Yes, I have almost eight times the Periscope followers. In fact, the amount of 105.1 Periscope views was so anemic that when I kept pointing it out in my articles and on Twitter, Dave Shore finally pulled the plug on using that platform.

Because it was humiliating that an FM radio station couldn’t get 200 people to tune in for the promise of an announcement of a new morning team.

This was my Periscope audience from last week discussing an argument with my managing editor.

That STUPID video of mine ended up trending on Periscope.

Please don’t take the above data I am supplying to you as bragging. I am actually disappointed that after 13 years of running the DSR I don’t have a LARGER audience. But it isn’t easy to do when you are a pariah in the city and the Detroit News and Free Press have a policy not to mention your name or your website’s.

Not to mention the extreme aversion your station and 97.1 have to me.

But I would like you to imagine what I could actually do WITH a blow horn. With the infrastructure of a radio station. With advertising.

Do you think Ryan Ermanni, Rico Beard, Sean Baligian, Tom Mazawey, Jake Chapman or Rob Pascoe could start a website from scratch and build the kind of audience that I have?

The answer is clearly no because all of the above mentioned personalities haven’t been able to draw the eyeballs that I have even WITH the assistance of an FM station at their disposal.

I mean, Ermanni has a gig at 105.1 AND Fox-2 and I STILL have double his social media audience.

I am not going to bore you any longer with screenshots but I have DOUBLE the social media presence of any of your current  on-air staff.

Look, am I an asshole? Have I made waves in this town? Have I pissed off almost EVERYONE in a position of authority in Detroit? Of course. But name me a successful talk radio personality who hasn’t done some of those things.

I would never compare myself to my hero and inspiration in life Howard Stern, but I wouldn’t need to get to #1 in the New York market. I would have to chip away and eventually supplant an antiseptic, paint-by-numbers, corporate garbage product at 97.1 that I desperately want to destroy.

By any means necessary.

I originally made an offer to assist 105.1 three years ago by telling Marc Fellhauer I was available to assist in an informal fashion to take down 97.1 That offer was foolishly ignored.

Hell, because of my current work schedule I don’t even know what I could to help but I would like a chance to discuss this with you as I do make my own hours and I believe I am uniquely qualified to improve your station’s stagnant ratings.

Look, would I stop making fun of Mazawey if you brought me in as some sort of contributor? No. Would I ridicule Ermanni’s asinine takes? Absolutely.

But how did that work out for Stern when he was ridiculing Don Imus and cutting Soupy Sales piano wires while at WNBC?

Well, it got him fired but eventually he was making $100 million a year at Sirius for a reason.

I have studied Stern’s career like the Torah and I am ready to implement that playbook to destroy or at least cripple your competition.

And trust me, there is nobody that Valenti wants on your station less than me. I’d make his life miserable. How do I know that? Because his former program directed ORDERED him to stop reading my website back in the day because it was impacting his performance.

When Valenti was CAUGHT at the station reading the DSR he was admonished again. This is how he behaved when I was writing a BLOG. I can’t even imagine how he’d act if I was actually on your station going after him.

Oh, and did I mention the studio gangster Valenti once wanted to write for the DSR?

http://detroitsportsrag.net/mike-valenti-wanted-a-gig-at-the-detroitsportsrag-com/

You can’t make this stuff up.

It’s time for you to fight back against that station. Valenti has mocked your ratings. Jamie Samulesen — who might be the most vanilla broadcaster in the COUNTRY — was taking shots at your team’s management. Jamie Samuelsen. I have no words.

Not to mention how those bastards stole the Tigers broadcast rights from under your nose. (Which is a story I would love to investigate independently of any of this other stuff as I believe someone at the Tigers or CBS did something nefarious to steal the rights away from you.)

As I said earlier, I have been doing this for 13 years. And I have never applied for a job with any media entity. I have been working for the company I am currently employed since I was 20.

But I am finally writing this because I can’t take the current state of Detroit sports talk radio any longer. I was excited when I broke the news that WMGC was flipping from Celine Dion to sports and have been disappointed that the station hasn’t been able to give people like me a viable alternative.

Now, I want to be part of the solution.

Thanks for your time. Brevity has never been my strong suit.

Moss

After I sent that letter, another EIGHT days went by without any response from Buzzard. In the meantime, Mazawey went on the 105.1 airwaves and basically blamed rape victims for their own sexual assaults. Naturally, I wrote an article about this simpleton’s idiocy. You might have heard about it, as Mazawey’s ignorance went national.

At this point, I decided to send Knight another note ….

Believe it or not, that message DID get a response ….

“I certainly wish I had ears like you on the ground to keep the focus!”

Wow!!! That sure was a positive email. I started wondering when my first air-shift was going to be!!!!!

Even though DSR Music Editor Matt Porath warned me that I was being massaged, handled and Dale Carnegie’d by the GM VP, I didn’t believe him so I sent this email back to Knight:

But a few days went by and I STILL didn’t hear anything from Knight about our proposed lunch.

And then I started receiving notices from my social media followers that Knight was BLOCKING them on Twitter when they would suggest that Greater Media hire Juff Mest to save their low-rated monstrosity.

So I started investigating the nature of these Tweets and discovered that Buzz had BLOCKED ME!!!!

Hey! Whatever happened to “I certainly wish I had ears like you on the ground to keep the focus!”??????

And what did I do to get How Abouted?

Oh, the humanity.

So, let’s recap. I haven’t heard back from Buzz Knight in nine days now.

He blocked me on Twitter in the interim.

Poor Como’s.