We criticize the local media on here a lot, and rightly so.

But I have to give props to one thing. Tuned into 640 on Sunday afternoon and the Bucs-Mercer game was on.

Admittedly the NASCAR race ran on Saturday night and the Braves were on the coast, but there was a time, with the same people in charge of the flagship station of ETSU, that the Bucs were preempted for high school basketball broadcasts (and the seeds of my everlasting hatred for high school basketball blossomed).

Okay, I'm sure ETSU had to buy the time, and 640 wasn't going to sell it otherwise.

But less than 20 years ago, ETSU broadcasts

A: Were preempted by high school basketball

B: Womens basketball and baseball, if broadcast at all, were not broadcast on the same station as the men's hoops and football. So it was much more difficult to follow.

And they were broadcast because Frank Santore bought the time himself to call the games.

C: Were sometimes called by incompetents. I am convinced that one of the reasons ETSU football was cancelled was because of Chuck Jones. He made the Bucs appear to be something less than Little League. How he was permitted to go on beyond a single game, "football fans," I don't know.

In a real sports town, Jones would still be the butt of jokes.

Oh, what am I talking about? In a real sports town Jones would never have gone on the air.

Regardless, now they are a major and viable part of an all sports station with a quality signal.

One thought occurs. I was listening in to the afternoon talk show and heard Bobby Rader struggle to get calls and read off national headlines.

I don't know how much longer that can really go on. I'm suggesting that if the show is to remain viable, it won't be viable if it is talking about the same things the network shows are only without as much knowledge.

The idea is that they will have to go local, and that will mean more ETSU coverage.

Thanks to The Morning Monster, there is more ETSU talk.

Good for us.

As Bill Meade continues to be a joke, it'll eventually lead to Cumulus telling them how to program their station, which basically will mean look at 104.5 The Zone and follow the model. Insert Gerald Sensabaugh to be the Tri-Cities Blaine Bishop (only Gerald won't turn into a cartoon character), a solid host and a third.

Wouldn't bet on that.

I know very little about this, but there is another sports talk show on the air. It's on 97.7 FM (WKPT(?)), and I think it's 4-6 PM, I think, when they aren't having live sports (like high school baseball). I'm not recommending it, since it's still commercial radio, but just in case you guys don't know about it, and want to see what it's like...

Interesting that you, Pitt, hate high school basketball for what WJCW did to ETSU. I certainly share your outrage. Absolutely I do. I was in utter disbelief at the time, too.
But to allow that to be the seeds of your "everlasting hatred" seems misguided. After all, it wasn't the high school basketball that caused that, it was WJCW (with probably a little help from ETSU). High school basketball isn't particularly hate-worthy *inherently*, it's just relatively boring and less exciting to watch than even moderate-quality college ball. Not that I ever liked WJCW, but that caused me to completely lose what tiny bit of respect I still had for that organization left over from WQUT's glory days. And hey, it's your right to feel that way, I'm just sayin'.....

Sadly, and I hope not presaging a repeat of that, the current state of ETSU basketball is not a whole lot less demoralizing than it was at that point in time.

You want to know why it happened? There's a couple of folks in the now Cumulus (Then Citadel) fold that do high school play by play that do not do and weren't given the chance to do ETSU play by play.
And I'll say this, if it's ever said that an ETSU basketball play "roars and scores, goes walkin on the rim or goes downtown Leroy Brown," any and all ETSU memorabilia and apparel I own will be buried in the depths of my attic to never be seen again.
As for copycat programming, Cumulus is horrible for doing that stuff, along with running stations directly into the ground. Dave Ramsey won't work for them (He left his flagship in Nashville to go on an all sports format), George Plaster quit his job twice to get away from them (Think Bill Meade, but prepared, informative, well not really Bill at all). With 104.5 in Nashville having the highest ratings for a sportstalk station in the country, Cumulus sees it and already has been trying to mimic what they have.
Don't hate the game, hate the slackjaws who put their personal agendas and desire to hear themselves on the radio above better programming.

You're forgetting this about high school basketball-

The way it promotes a thug culture

The absolute boredom of watching it

The arrogance of the coaches and players who all think they are one step away from the NBA

By the way, Luv, Overbay is a former ETSU football color commentator.

And we wonder why the program went away. . .

You're saying high school ball promotes a "thug culture" more than college ball? Not so, at least in this area. In larger metropolitan areas, maybe, but only because there are more high schools and it's more easily "accessible". On a degree-of-exposure basis, college ball trumps high school ball probably 3- or 5-to-1 (in terms of "promoting a thug culture"). Probably even more than that; I'm being charitable to your argument by even guesstimating that.

Furthermore, I submit that there are *very* few players or coaches at the high school level locally who suffer from arrogant delusions of grandeur. Yes, they exist, but they are a tiny minority.

I have no idea who the people involved at WKPT-FM are; I only listened a very, very few minutes. I have no dog in that hunt.

(05-15-2013 08:49 AM)PittsburghBucs Wrote:  You're forgetting this about high school basketball-

The way it promotes a thug culture

The absolute boredom of watching it

The arrogance of the coaches and players who all think they are one step away from the NBA

By the way, Luv, Overbay is a former ETSU football color commentator.

And we wonder why the program went away. . .

In Memphis at White Station I would agree with you, or at the high school Hunter Harris went to. I don't think there's a thug culture at any school outside of D-B and Science Hill up there. The thug culture you're speaking of is the AAU circuit, they're the basketball's version of what Don King was to boxing.
Everyone who has basketball talent has NBA delusions, even when they get to ETSU.
I had forgotten Overbay did ETSU color, shows how memorable it was. Him doing color analysis furthers my position of the "Well hell that's good enough for ETSU" culture that STILL seems to infecting people. Until that's gone, I don't care how many student fees or hall of fame worthy coaches you have helping you, you won't be successful.

Lover- Haven't I always spoken about the inferiority complex at ETSU?

Overbay was the color guy on ETSU football for years and years, at least through the nineties up through 1997 when the games went to WGOC and John Robert Bell did the color with P.J. Grinsell.

You'd read Overbay's bio in the ETSU program and wonder why he was the color guy. Was he a former player that everybody liked? Was he a local coach or a real sports media personality?

No, He played high school basketball for Dickie Warren.

And you wonder why I hate high school basketball.

By the way, to the both of you, your selective arguments about where the thug culture exists in high school basketball (it is at the big school- but not over there at the prep school!) does nothing for me.

(05-15-2013 07:28 AM)Buccaneerlover Wrote:  You want to know why it happened? There's a couple of folks in the now Cumulus (Then Citadel) fold that do high school play by play that do not do and weren't given the chance to do ETSU play by play.
And I'll say this, if it's ever said that an ETSU basketball play "roars and scores, goes walkin on the rim or goes downtown Leroy Brown," any and all ETSU memorabilia and apparel I own will be buried in the depths of my attic to never be seen again.
As for copycat programming, Cumulus is horrible for doing that stuff, along with running stations directly into the ground. Dave Ramsey won't work for them (He left his flagship in Nashville to go on an all sports format), George Plaster quit his job twice to get away from them (Think Bill Meade, but prepared, informative, well not really Bill at all). With 104.5 in Nashville having the highest ratings for a sportstalk station in the country, Cumulus sees it and already has been trying to mimic what they have.
Don't hate the game, hate the slackjaws who put their personal agendas and desire to hear themselves on the radio above better programming.

See, you often speak like you know it all in local media and then here you fail to get it right.

Let's talk about these high school people you say had the opportunity to do ETSU play-by-play but weren't given the opportunity.

The guys I know who do play-by-play in the ETSU fold are

Meade

Overbay

Helman

Meade had numerous chances to do the ETSU play-by-play and in fact did do ETSU play-by-play when Jay was fighting in Iraq.

In 1996 when Chip Kessler left to create Sports Talk.

In 1997 when P.J. Grinsell was hired.

In 1999 when they went back to Kessler

In 2002 when Chuck Jones was given the job thanks to some absolutely idiotic and unethical internal politics.

In 2003 when Jay took over originally.

I really don't think Meade ever desired the ETSU job.

I know Overbay did. I assume Helman did, and he was the ETSU women's announcer.

What really happened was typical townie, small-time thinking of promoting what they were calling ahead of what, only three years before, had been a nationally ranked program that still was at that point respectable (before the bottom collapsed in 1995-96).

Add with that the public mindset of sheer stupidity that "Science Hill could beat ETSU" that was backed up and even given credibility by Kessler, and you had ETSU playing second fiddle to high schools on the radio and "ETSU screwed up when they hired Ed DeChellis instead of George Pitts."

But getting back on point, while I agree there is still a ways to go, isn't it saying something that we now do have Buc baseball games on the ETSU flagship station with some regularity, that we have competent announcers (usually we have, but there have been a few exceptions) to listen to, and that there is more ETSU content on the airwaves?

Incidentally, I do think the demise of ETSU conversation on Sportsline coincides not only with the high school basketball overload on the airwaves that began back then (and still exists today, even if the games aren't now pre-empting ETSU), but also DeChellis getting the ETSU job and Pitts never being a candidate (he wasn't qualified) and then Keener Frye, rightfully in my opinion, moving the games from WJCW for a year.

I'm told ETSU took a $30,000 bath on that one. But if Frye hadn't done it, ETSU would have forever taken second fiddle to high school basketball on the radio.

So bath is appropriate. ETSU eventually came out smelling like a rose, while high school basketball fans continue to overrate local talent and importance.

Those fans are, after all, the great unwashed.