By Jeff Moss
June 20, 2012
DetroitSportsRag@gmail.com

I want to say up front that I don’t listen to “sports” talk radio in Detroit any longer.  The product is currently Total Puke Garbage nor do I wish to support a station that had their stormtroopers physically assault me.

With that said, I get MULTIPLE Tweets, Facebook messages and SMS’s from friends and Dirt readers about the goings on of WDFN, WXYT-FM and now ESPN1090.

Just yesterday I got a text from DSR co-founder, Gregg Schultz, instructing me to turn on “The Ticket” because noted legal expert, Matt Dery, was advising parents that they should allow recent high school grads to drink beer at graduation parties.

The Alan Derschowitz of CAREER UPDATE jocks thought it was perfectly fine for adults to serve underage teens at these parties not withstanding the potential legal and civil ramifications that might ensue.

Then later that evening I got a slew of messages telling me that I needed to listen to Pat Caputo’s postgame show on 97.1 because he was continuing his Quintin Berry idiocy.   Unfortunately, I had a meeting today at 9am and couldn’t stay up to 2am with the rest of the insomniacs and truckers to listen to that imbecile spew his nonsense.

This is the torment I must endure for creating this website, but sometimes it does payoff like it did this afternoon.

I received the following “Ticket Text” that was sent by DSR contributor, “Voe,” to “Benedict Arnold and the Hippopatumus.”   I mean, Doug Karsch and Scott Anderson.

Here is Voe’s message (H/T to Michael Bochenek) and Doug Karsch’s asinine response:

Voe: NICE SPORTS TOPICS. what a train wreck of a show, Tigers are on a roll, Lebron is about to win his first title, NFL training camp is right around the corner, NHL free agency starts in a week and half, and you losers are talking about “Wheres up north”, and “bad money spent”,  AWFUL RADIO

Karsch: We introduced all of those topics-no calls.  What do you do for a living? When the customer tells u what they want, do you not give it to them?

Here-in lies the problem with this abortion of a station.  They switched over to FM and convinced themselves that they couldn’t predominantly talk sports to get an FM audience.

They then made the HORRID decision to let their CALLERS drive the programs.  Yep, the unemployed morons who have NOTHING better to do at 1:30pm than call a 40-year old man on the radio who still goes grooming supply shopping with his mom at Target.

Even though the CALLERS only make up a tiny fraction of the entire listening audience.  What a total calamity of epic proportions.

And the ratings are excellent for this shit.  You know why? Because SPORTS FANS aren’t the ones listening anymore since the station atrophied.  Nope.  The people who actually tune in religiously to this station might care a LITTLE about sports, but they are the kind of people who want to argue about where Ishpeming is on the map or if Ray LaHood should give Detroit $25 million for the freaking light rail program.

This isn’t a sports station and has not been one for years and Doug Karsch just told you so HIMSELF in that “Ticket Text.”  Our most important guest is you which means we are going to dumb down the dialogue for EVERYONE ELSE.

If our retarded callers don’t want to discuss the NBA Finals or the Tigers, well, far be it from little old us to tell them anything to the contrary.

97.1 basically put 1130 out of business by switching to the FM dial and then hired almost ALL of their old employees and assimilated them into this atrocious style.

It is the equivalent of Home Depot opening up these mega stores, putting all of the small operators out of business, hiring their staff and then after all the mom and pops were closed, DECIDING TO SELL WOMEN’S LINGERIE instead of hardware.

That is what 97.1 has done to this market.  So now we have a WDFN which is run on the cheap by an Allentown dance DJ and another station (ESPN1090) that allegedly bounces checks to their program director on his first week of work.

And who, by the way, have already gone through one General Manager (Buzz Van Houten) and one Sports Director (Rob Otto) and now have handed the keys over to a country music programmer.  Mike “NSF” Scott.

I have been able to forego Detroit sports talk radio for years, but I still need to find a way to avoid the constant reminders of the abortion it has become.

Unfortunately, unless I pull a Jesse ‘The Body’ Ventura, move to Mexico and go “off-the-grid”, I don’t see how that will be possible.