Screw Our Listeners

Second Fiddle

“The New 97.5 – The Fanatic” – as the second-rated sports-talk station in Philadelphia recently started calling itself – told its listeners to Stick it where the sun don’t shine over the Fourth of July weekend just passed.

I checked in from time to time on both Saturday and Sunday to see who – and what – was on the air.

Several times I was greeted by Southern-drawling good-old-boys talking about the possibilities of conference realignments in the upcoming NCAA football season. I heard the name Tommy Tuberville mentioned more than once.

Who in Philadelphia cares about the realignment of the college football conferences on the Fourth of July? Or about Tommy Tuberville at any time of the year?

I don’t. In fact, I barely care about college football during football season and never have any thoughts about Tommy Tuberville. But that’s the programming “The New 97.5 – The Fanatic” rammed down their listeners’ ears over the weekend.

Feeds directly from ESPN
National topics
Nothing local
Never the hint of a show hosted by any regular or fill-in hosts

Knowing that Joe Staszak, Matt Lombardo, and Phil (from Mt. Airy) Allen often work evenings on the weekends, I still checked back several times. But none of them were on all night either. So I gave up the ghost and stopped checking in.

“OUTRAGE” is what Tony Bruno might have said upon discovering same.

“Disgraceful and shabby treatment of your listeners” is the way I see it.

Frank Bond

Years ago, I managed the Holiday Spa at 15th & Chestnut and later the one at Cherry Hill Mall. They were million-dollar facilities. Our president – Frank Bond – owned about twenty such facilities stretching out from New Jersey to Virginia.

One year, he took a tour of the country from Disneyland to Disney World with intermediate stops at many of the higher-profile entertainment parks and amusements centers in between. He was brainstorming for new ideas to improve his facilities – which in turn would increase sales – which in turn would increase his bottom line.

You know what he learned?

Many of our members were off from work on weekends.
Most were off on holidays.

I coulda told him that and saved him the time and travel costs – but he never asked me.

But from that day forward, he declared that we were going to make ourselves available to our members on weekends and on holidays. He said we owed it to our members to be available when they were most available. Our facilities were not only going to be open on weekends and holidays, but our front-line staff – managers included – would also be working on those days.

How did that simple strategy work?

Frank Bond – who started with a shoebox full of collectibles on index cards twenty years earlier – eventually sold his company to Donald Trump for nearly $30-million.

Frank was great at implementing new ideas into his business.

People’s Champion

Since most of your listeners are off on holidays, they deserve regular programming – not the ESPN crap you transmitted over the airwaves in the Philly market.

Your programming was shameful.

So, like a true people’s champion, I decided to try to get to the bottom of things and sent an email to program director Matt Nahigian asking two simple questions.

In addition to my name, I included my website address, email address, and phone number to grease the wheels of communication.

To his credit, Matt Nahigian responded quickly via email.

He answered my first question. He was the one responsible for the programming over the weekend. That left only the second question unanswered: Why?

As you can see, Matt gave me his phone number and told me to feel free to call him. Which I did between noon and 1 p.m. But, as expected, I got a recorded message. So I left my phone number and asked for follow-up. But none came.

I tried again around 3:30 in the afternoon.

Same thing – the old recorded message runaround. I was pretty sure he was ducking me but still delayed this publication for 24 hours because I wanted to give Matt Nahigian ample time to respond. I really wanted to know why he made that decision.

Before moving on, let me make one thing perfectly clear. I don’t begrudge any of the hosts taking some time off to be with their kids and their families, to go down to the shore or up to the mountains, to have a cookout, to play a round of golf, to watch fireworks – or to do whatever they felt like doing in the name of rest and relaxation. But I guarantee you that, if given the chance, there would be no problem finding volunteers who would’ve jumped at the opportunity to log some air-time over the weekend.

But they were deprived of that opportunity – just as the station’s regular listeners were deprived of decent, local programming.

It’s decisions such as saying “Screw our listeners” – plus the decision to use ESPN programming on the overnights – that will keep “The New 975 The Fanatic” in the same position as the old Fanatic: in second place in a two-team league.

What About that Other Station?

Hats off – and thanks to – WIP for offering regular programming. Yes, there was some shuffling of hosts, but the shows went on as usual from Saturday morning thru the Sunday-Monday overnight. Here a list of the the hosts I heard on WIP – some of whom were on more than once:

Howard Eskin
Glen Macnow
Ray Didinger
Joe Giglio
Hollis Thomas
Jody McDonald
Rickie Ricardo
Jon Johnson
Rob Charry
Marc Farzetta
Paul Jolovitz

Thanks to all you guys – and thanks to WIP – for providing the programming your listeners are accustomed to – and deserve. Sorry if I missed anyone. Please let me know if I did.

Barry Bowe is the author of: