photo courtesy thestar.com
by Rob Gregg
Here’s your drive home lineups
On Sportsnet 590 The FAN from 4-7pm, Prime Time Sports with Bob McCown. Damien Cox co-hosts from 5pm:
400 – Phones
520 – Gregg Zaun, Sportsnet
540 – Bill Lee, former MLB pitcher
600 – Doug McLean, Sportsnet
620 – Sam Mitchell, former Raptors coach
640 – Alex Anthopoulos, Jays GM
On TSN Radio 1050 from 4-7pm, Cybulski & Co., with James Cybulski. Bob Mackowycz co-hosts:
430 – TSN Analyst Jamie McLennan in studio
530 – J.P. Ricciardi
600 – Ian Pulver, NHL player agent
630 – Randy Couture
On TSN (5pm) & TSN2 (6:30pm), Off the Record with Michael Landsberg:
Best of Off the Record – ESPY’s Red Carpet Show
Tonight on Sportsline:
TBA
Anyone happen to hear McCown’s response to the caller today on how he prepares for the show and interviews? Good grief. I cringed all the way through it.
I’ve been a listener to McCown and 590 since I moved to the area 7 years ago, but his admission today is enough to drive me to 1050. Oddly, he is such an open fan of “The Newsroom” and yet has become the epitome of the lazy journalist himself. When someone who can be good chooses not to be good, well…it’s just sad.
I predicted this afternoon that would a talking point here. Id rathervhave a talk show host emulate charlie rose than larry king.
A listener call segment I actually should pay a lot of attention to for my review I guess. xD
Just listened to it. 🙂 I don’t necessarily disagree with his strategy for interviews (not doing prep work, going in cold, like the audience would), but there’s a few things it relies on. One is his memory. Bob says he only writes down questions he thinks he’d forget. The problem is, as many people here have noted, his memory has gotten worse lately, and I wonder if he’s able to admit that to himself and write down more questions. Another, is his interest level. Is he asking questions he thinks the audience would want to know, or is he asking questions for himself, because if it’s for himself, it means that if he’s not interested in the sport, he may pass up the questions that the audience wants to know. Also, his knowledge of sports and people he interviews differs a lot, so he’ll asked more advanced questions to golf analysts for instance, and less advanced ones to soccer analysts, and he’ll ask different questions to people he knows well vs. strangers.
I think the concern that’s been expressed in this community (at least from my reading of it) isn’t necessarily how much prep work he does for interviews, but about current events in sports in general.
It does confirm my sometime frustration when bob passes up “obvious”question on a topic. Itsbecause he doesnt know the background on a story, esp in segments with hiestand/deitsch and rovell.
But that’s what I mean by prep work – being prepared for the topics that he will discuss.
Sorry, but I think there’s no real way to rationalize his sophomoric comments.
Oh My god!!! can we take Cox out back and have him not return. That chat segment at the top of hour 2 was painful
i haven’t listened to a call-in segment on PTS in ages but, as everyone else has noted, the revelation that Bob doesn’t do any prep is hardly surprising.
i recall Tim or Sid asking him if he ever listens back to interviews to see what he could have done differently, and Bob’s response was that he NEVER reviews his shows. I believe the quote was “you can just tell when it was a good interview.”
the sad/fitting part of that comment is that this was around the time Bob was widely panned for his softball interview with Burke after weeks of tough talk with callers and guests about Burke’s performance.
In every job it’s important to have someone on the outside whose judgment you trust on whom you can rely to tell you if things could have been done better. Bob clearly doesn’t have any such person and doesn’t feel like he needs one … he can “just tell.”
As I’ve mentioned
here before, Bob neglects to do the most basic requirement of a radio host –
that is to identify the person he’s interviewing. Sorry Bob, I can’t see the
dude you’re speaking with. After a few minutes I can usually figure it out but
if its a specialist/lawyer/doctor that the average fan wouldn’t know, the listener will have no clue.
Its one of the
things I like about Brady – he does it.
It really was. -_- Cox was in prime internet-troll form.
I don’t actually think Bob is being truthful when he says these things. Like, he claims he doesn’t care about what people think about him, but he often gets upset about things he reads on this site.
I agree. I’m not trying to rationalize it. I’m just explaining what I think the flaws in his strategy is. There’s nothing wrong, per se, w/ what he’s doing, provided that he’s watching a lot of sports, that his memory is in good shape, and that he is able to go into each subject caring about it , and I’m not sure that’s true anymore. :
He also often fails to ask the guest to describe the background of a story he does know about, and sometimes I’m left wondering what they’re talking about. :
Ami said: I don’t actually think Bob is being truthful when he says these things. Like, he claims he doesn’t care about what people think about him, but he often gets upset about things he reads on this site.
yeah, he really doesn’t like the “FOB” talk here. Speaking of … anyone heard from Gord Kirke lately? Is he still Bob’s agent?