"He wouldn't be any good on a local station but here he is a national success. I don't get it."- Bob

Agreed, he stinks.

Cowherd is nothing more than a product of ESPN. If he wasn't forced to be carried then he would sink into oblivion faster than a Meek fastball.

Can someone please take Seibel off the air? He is terrible. He is even ruining the experience of listening to Pitt games.
I always he the FAN say how long they make callers wait to get on the air, but when they get on and the caller makes a point/statement, the host hangs up and moves on.... no back-n-forth?
I don't get it..........


It's station policy. They want the callers but they don't want to give them air time. ``Thanks for the call.'' -- Bob Smizik

One factor in the Fan's favor is that it is part of a cluster of stations, which can help to reduce overhead costs but also can be a tool used by the sales staff.

But there is no way the morning show can survive with those ratings for much longer.

Hummmm. I have seen this espn thing up for the past 2 months it seems. Personally when I drive 20min to work or home, its the biz/traffic channel. If in a cocky mood its 1970s rock station, or one of my Best of Bob Marley, Skynard, Charlie Daniels, Rolling Stones or Pink; lets get this party started song LOL! ESPN is tv only, for evenings if the Steelers win or if our Pirates front office and manager ever get fired!!!!!!
Go SF GIANTS, and former pirates Freddie Sanchez, Lopez, Guillen!! Up 3 games with 3 to go. Play the Padres who are 3 games back, its playoff fever locally, while the Pirates fire a winning AA coach of the year manager. INSANE!
Back to your Radio ESPN show :----)

Cowherd is terrible no doubt, he made the comment last month that the Cincinnati Reds were frauds and that those small market frauds with a low payroll would be exposed by the Cardinals before October 1, because as any knowlegable fan would know, it take big money to win.

As a Bucs and Reds fan, I am glad to see how that worked out.

Also as a 30 year broadcast vetern, Bob you and I both know why Cowherd is on the air as a national "success", in this business its' not how good you are but whose tail you kiss and I am sure that is where his true talent is applied.

Cowherd, though, is a reason to remove 1250 ESPN from your pre-set buttons.

Absolutely. He refused to recognize the Steelers as Super Bowl XL Champions. That plus his general nonsense and I haven't listened to him since.

Bob, did your source provide any information as to why the large drop in revenues? Absent anything else, I presume the answer is the economy.

Good riddance. Too much talk on radio anyway. Play some dang music

@ Brasher99. I agree 100 percent. Maybe it's just me but there is way too much pregame hype on radio and TV, along with all the postgame crap.
In an totally unrelated matter, remember when MTV actually showed music videos - hence the name MUSIC TELEVISION!
I must be getting old.

I hope someone picks up Mike & Mike and it would be great if Stan and Guy also reappear.

I want to like The Fan but I can't.

Giannoti sounds over-caffeinated; Alexander sounds like he's on Valium. Colony's updates are the only thing worthwhile.

Vinny and Cook sound like two guys who stuck on an elevator and are waiting to be rescued.

Seibel, "Mr Absolute" as in everything is absolutely one way or the other, and Starkey are not connecting. Rather hear Bendel on a bad signal.

Filliponi, with a voice that makes Myron Cope sound like an opera singer, is actually tolerable.

BOB,
baseball attendance is down in many cities, restaurants and complete strip malls are empty and going out of business, taxes are going up, banks have tanked..... the economy has tanked!!!
What part of this don't you understand?
1250's dilemma is a microcosm of America in general.
**********
"He refused to recognize the Steelers as Super Bowl XL Champions" ..... he said they were the best team in the NFL a few days ago!!!

Bob having listened to Cowherd, I 1000% agree with your assessment.

colin makes very honest and truthful observations, not only with sports but with every day life situations

he is very popular across the country, which is why he has a tv show sportsnation

all you people bashing him are in the minority, notice how your favorite sports radio shows are disappearing?

maybe you don't like colin because he speaks the truth and the truth tends to hurt?

oh and colin says the steelers are the best organization in football, he loves the steelers so if you are basing your hate on him because you think he hates the steelers you are way off base

if he was angry about XL it's because he is from seattle

ESPN 1250 must have been remotely broadcasting from Mt. Lebanon that morning. You can thank Duquense Light.

I hate when there is too much talk on a sports talk radio station......

"He is even ruining the experience of listening to Pitt games. "

That's REALLY saying something!

The Cow-Herder gets his name remembered by making nasty comments. Couldn't agree more with the long-deserved comments about his style.

Bob: You are absolutely right! Listening to Colin Cowherd is like sitting through a Pirate triple header. -- don

Cowherd's testimonials for all the products he fronts give him poor marks in credibility. "You pay, I say" rings hollow when he moves from hawking TV sets, health products and go-to- meeting.com to whether Reggie Bush should return the Heisman.

If I need that I'll listen to Rob Pratte on KDKA weekend mornings. His theme song is "Shill be coming 'round the mountain." He is the king of all shills.

I am waiting for Iraqi Tourism to be his next offering.

I don't get it either. I really enjoy Cowherd and am a faithful reader of Smizik's blog. Love your sense of humor, Bob!

I agree with chilco on the underlying cause but would add:

- financial market pressures which reward "centralize till it hurts, localize until it works" thinking. The pendulum has been swinging away from the local end for a while.

- we are witnessing "relentless disintermediation" on all levels of business. Local businesses can appear to be national and national businesses can be made to look local. And it costs less to do it than before. So the big don't always have to eat the small.

Anybody call consultant BINGO! on me yet?...

If a group of local Pgh on-air talent decided they wanted to control their own destiny, I'm guessing there is a viable market for a Pittsburgh-oriented sports Internet/satellite radio station. Particularly if its effectively promoted and sold to Steeler Nation. Paul Feinbaum is on satellite with an Alabama FB audience, and I'm pretty sure Steeler nation is larger than the whole state of Alabama. You'd get a mix of national and local ad revenue along with subscription fees. Avoiding brick and mortar via Internet means lower cost of entry and the quality of local talent covering Pittsburgh teams is much richer than the empty calories one gets from national shows.

I would call my satellite radio provider tomorrow and sign up if such a channel existed.

...if Stan Savran was on it.

Cowherd also bugs me at times, and his knowledge is often suspect (not to mention that he has a man-crush on freaking Tom Brady), but the show he co-hosts on tv has actually become my second-favorite show on espn behind PTI. I think it's mostly due to his co-host.

I'm certain if Pittsburgh fans had an ex-coal miner slurping on an Iron City and eating a jumbo sandwich on Towntalk Bread (on air)and rattling on about the Stillers 24/7, the ratings would go thru the roof. Whatta yinz think?

*t makes no difference if you dont get or like a show. There must be more than enough listeners that do get it or like it...and in that business, thats what matters.
As per ESPN 1250, they lost even more ratings and ads after Madden was canned. As much as some people dont like him...he gets ratings

Can't be 24/7..need an hour down time per week to redd up.

Bob,
I still maintain that if a local sales force of four/five people could not contact 40 merchants in Greater Pgh. daily and put them on the air/ESPN.
Then it was a major factor in the station's demise.
Almost everyone knows of Stan,Guy,Mike Logan and
the multitalented Scott Paulsen.
A rating book is not used when you talk to a local merchant.
What a travesty.

Bob,

I'll agree with the chorus that Colin Cowherd is the worst of the talk show worst.

What makes his show especially so galling is that he succeeded Tony Kornheiser's daily show on ESPN Radio. Tony's current daily show in Washington, D.C. is a fantastic listen. (And I believe you agree, Bob.)

In my opinion, Tony makes listeners both laugh and think, which is quite atypical of a sports talk show host, or any talk show host, for that matter. Even though he's not heard locally in Pittsburgh, his show is available by podcast if you know where to look.

I love the coverage of local radio. Keep up the great work.

Mr. Tony will talk about anything he feels like - his dog, his kids, his hair. I'm sure he annoys many, but not like Cowherd. I was a 980 Tony K. fan.


Kornheiser's ESPN show from 10 to 1 was the best ever on radio. -- Bob Smizik

This is a true story. A few weeks ago a friend of mine down here in FLA who had been in the radio advertising business for over 40 years was at an industry golf outing in Westchester NY and meet Tim McCarthy. He told Mr. McCarthy he had a friend (me) who was looking for work to relocate back to Western PA and that I was a big Pittsburgh Sports fan. Mr. McCarthy told him they were always looking for good ad execs and I should contact him. I reached out to him about 2 weeks ago by email and phone and got no reply. Well I guess this was the reason.

Kornheiser's ESPN show from 10 to 1 was the best ever on radio. -- Bob Smizik

Absolutely. And when he didn't come back to XM after his last year of Monday Night Football, it was a major bummer.

Tony K's show is a reward for dealing with the Beltway.

Cowherd is indeed awful, and I've already removed 1250 from my preset because of him. He's abrasive and not nearly as knowledgeable as he thinks he is or pretends to be....kind of like Mark Madden. It's no secret why he's popular; for some reason, people in this country flock to radio hosts like that.

And I agree Bob, Tony Kornheiser's show was the best ever. I loved it to death, and this was when I was in my late teens. I miss it.

Now that 1250 is gone, I've grudgingly moved to the Fan. Rather, I've tried. Wow, but their web presence is primitive. They have zero presence on podcast aggregators like Podcaster or iTunes. There's no way to subscribe by RSS, which every 12 year old broadcasting from his parents' basement has figured out. You have to download each clip manually from your browser, and if don't have Flash (as iDevice users don't), forget about being able to do even that. What an embarrassment. Am I missing something?

Like a lot of people who live away from the 'burgh, I listened on the web or on the ESPN iPhone app.

It always seemed strange that the commercial ads they ran were almost all public service announcements about drunk driving or the disability act, so wonder if they couldn't get any true paid advertising which contributed to their poor revenue.

@eggra
why don't you just use the CBS Radio app?

@KingKoopa Because I didn't know about that app. That works for streaming live (although without support for multitasking), but it doesn't seem to include podcasts, which is what I really want. When it comes to the Internet, CBS lags way behind the rest of the media industry for some reason.

P.S. It's funny how time and again, one of us talks about how inadequate The Fan is compared to--and how they should emulate--the station that's folding.

''In the past two years the station went from billing just under $3 million (in advertising) to around $1.4 million, which means losses went from around $500,000 to about $2.5 million.''

Let's remember for a moment that these stations - just like most newspapers - aren't losing money. They just aren't making as much as they used to. Big, big difference.

I live close to Boston and thankful CBS started a FM sports talk station a little more than a year ago so that I don't have to listen to ESPN. It's tough sometimes listening to people talk about the Patriots and Red Sox, but its so worth it to hear them whine when the teams lose.

For yunz Tony Kornheiser fans - he has a local 2-hour show at 10:00am on SportsTalk980 (as they now call themselves) & I believe they stream live, so he can be heard over the internet. Like his prior ESPN radio show, it's often not about sports.

As for no more ESPN Radio in PGH, consider the loss of the contrived Mike&Mike a an advancement that cuts down noise pollution.

I heard that Steve Czaban was coming back on the air with a national program. I just hope its not satellite. I am not going to pay to listen to radio. If you haven't caught his show in the past on Fox radio it was very good. Good sports, opinion, and a bit of humor. And for the Yinzers out there, he loved the Steelers organization. He currently has a good blog about Ben on his website that's worth reading.

''In the past two years the station went from billing just under $3 million (in advertising) to around $1.4 million, which means losses went from around $500,000 to about $2.5 million.''

Madden's been off the air a tad over two years, no?

Niblick - Yes indeed, Steve Czaban is back in the mornings on Sporting News Radio network. His show is streamed on SportsTalk570, which airs ESPN radio shows the remainder of the day. I'm sure other stations carry Sporting News Radio, which can be found with some research.

One thing that got me more interested in sports talk as a 30 yr old woman was the opportunity to listen to it whenever I could via podcast. The ESPN shows had the show on podcast and not just random interview segments. I felt like I was truly listening to the show albeit abbreviated.

As was mentioned before the CBS station Fan and KDKA1020 and sorely lacking in that department. Even WXDX Mark Madden you can download via itunes, but Benz I can not. Manually downloading certain interviews is time consuming and they do not offer many I am interested in. So unfortunately may days of hearing local sports talk are pretty much over.

Funny thing too when I was in my office, mostly only during winter months. I could get 1250 clear as day. The Fan is too staticy I can barely hear anything. Crazy that I got a better signal on a "worse" signal station.