Sunday, July 04, 1999
SPORTS ON TV-RADIO
Vulgar talk radio absolutely $#@!&
BY JOHN FAY
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Let's preface this by saying I'm rarely offended by the spoken word. One of my favorite movies is Pulp Fiction. I love South Park. And I watch The Sopranos religiously. That said, I think sports talkers in town ought to clean up their act.
Last week on HOMER-AM (1360), I heard Marc Amazon call new Bengals fullback Nicky Sualua a name that is slang for a male body part.
A female listener was so offended she called and complained to Amazon off the air. Amazon did apologize on the air.
The woman is lucky she wasn't listening to WBOB-AM (1160) about the same time. A woman called trying to win tickets to the Allman Brothers concert at Riverbend. The host, Paul Sturgeon, told the woman she had to do an impersonation of Meg Ryan's famous scene from When Harry Met Sally to win. Well, first he asked her for her measurements. The woman didn't want to do the Meg scene, because her 2-year-old child was in the room. But Sturgeon wasn't giving up the tickets unless the woman gave in and did the dirty deed.
She gave in. She got the tickets. And she was happy to win.
But that's not the point. The point is: What's that got to do with sports?
If these were isolated incidents, I wouldn't think of it as a big deal. But there's too much locker room humor. Too much woman-bashing.Too many words that you don't want kids to hear.
BOB is much worse than HOMER. And it should be noted that Andy Furman, the main sports talker on WLW, keeps his show clean. He doesn't even use the favorite sports talk word. You know, the one that describes what a vacuum cleaner does.
Sturgeon, aka Raw Fish, is probably the worst offender. But BOB seems to play up the raunchy stuff. It seems like half the station promos are based on bawdy gags.
Again, I'm not saying bawdy is bad. I just don't think it has a place on sports talk.
A friend of mine won't listen to BOB with his 10-year-old son in the car. My guess is some of the gags on BOB would merit a PG-13 rating.
What you hear on sports talk here is tame compared with Howard Stern or other shock jocks. But the point of shock radio is to shock.
The point of sports talk is sports. You have to entertain, also, but Sturgeon could do a clean show and lose nothing. He is the funniest guy on local sports radio. He has a great knowledge of pop culture. He can talk about local and national sports with authority.
There's enough violence and drugs in sports that talkers are forced to discuss. Leave the sex out.
But, as is the custom here at this column, we want to know what you think. Should BOB clean up its act? Or are we overreacting? Is it all just good, dirty fun? Let us know. Call 768-8445 and leave a voice mail. Keep it short and leave your name and the part of town you live in.
JOHANSEN UPDATE: Channel 12 sports director Brad Johansen has been working without a contract for a couple of weeks.
Channel 12 General Manager Bill Moll said he expects Johansen to return.
“We'd like to have him, and we think he'd like to say,” Moll said.
Johansen said essentially the same thing but would not go so far as to say it's a foregone conclusion that he'll return.
“I hope we can reach a deal,” Johansen said.
Johansen also does play-by-play on Bengals preseason games.
JUST WONDERING: Do you think a local, over-the-air station would like to have the Reds' TV package right about now?
A station could pick up some games that Fox Sports Net Ohio isn't showing. But that would have to be approved by FSNO. Given what the ratings have been, that might be worth a station's while.
John Fay covers radio/TV sports for The Enquirer. He can be reached at 768-8445.
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