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Wizards Delivering Radio Party

Jason Barrett

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“In some ways I feel like a bartender,” Dave Johnson mused before a recent Wizards game. “I used to always wonder how bartenders could remember what somebody’s drink is, what everybody’s story is. Now I’m starting to get it.”

Johnson, the play-by-place voice for Washington’s wackiest sports broadcast, then launched into a play-by-play of a different sort, one about the lives of his regulars. David from Las Vegas was traveling that week, and would be in the upper Midwest. Noah was in Hawaii. Donald Paul Raymond was observing Lent. Stef in Virginia Beach was with her kids, Brandon and Lauren. Jen would be doing a puzzle. Tracy and Michael were over in section 203. Mathew M. had gotten his cousin Chico involved. Dan and Tony were in Austin.

“I can tell you when somebody’s been away, how old they are,” Johnson continued. “If you want to spend the next three hours I can keep going down the list, tell you everybody’s life story.”

Such a claim might be normal for a talk-show host; it’s probably less typical for an NBA play-by-play man. But Johnson’s broadcast has transformed in recent years from a mere description of the action to what he and color analyst Glenn Consor now call the “Radio Party,” a frenetic, interactive bit of madness that sometimes feels more like a family reunion than a basketball game.

Johnson greets individual listeners by name coming in and out of commercial breaks, dozens and dozens of regulars. They send tweets to Johnson before and during games, apologizing if they’re “checking in” late and telling him where they’re tuning in from. Listeners inside the arena grab Johnson’s co-host, Glenn Consor, during his halftime bathroom breaks to talk about what they’ve just witnessed. Johnson and Consor turn in their section 216 perch and wave to farflung sections of Verizon Center, where individual listeners have tweeted their greetings. Listeners mail them cookies and alcohol, coasters and cufflinks. And Johnson recognizes the whole absurd gang, one by one, during his broadcast.

“Johnny, checking in from the UPS truck,” Johnson said during a recent game. “We promise to try to deliver a win.”

“You know where David is tonight: listening from Colby, Kansas,” he said later.

“Fred’s listening in Miami, is heading to Jamaica in the morning,” he said still later.

“Tyrone wants to wish his son a happy 21st birthday,” Consor added.

“Timothy Lawson is back with us, El Capitan,” Johnson said, and on and on it goes. Last spring, an intern counted nearly a thousand Twitter users who tweeted into the “Radio Party” during a playoff game.

“They turned a totally passive activity into something that’s really interactive, and kind of created a community of Wizards fans and listeners,” said Chris Kinard, the sports director for WNEW, which airs Wizards broadcasts. “Everyone wants to hear their name on the radio. It’s a pretty simple concept. That’s been the case since radio started. The audience usually has no role in play-by-play activity other than just listening to it, and now they’re getting shouted out on the radio.”

That’s what led Kinard to tweet to Johnson, getting a kick out of hearing his own name during a game. That’s what makes my daughter listen to Wizards broadcasts, gawking in amazement when family members are mentioned. That’s why Gloria Mamaed, a 48-year old from Reston, wore earbuds to her office holiday party, and again during her family’s Christmas brunch, so she could still be a part of the Radio Party. (“It’s like we’re there. we’re all watching together,” she said.) That’s why Rob Embrey, a 46-year old from McLean, now listens to the vast majority of Wizards broadcasts from his new home in Southern California.

“It’s a weird phenomenon,” said Embrey, who appeared on air with Johnson and Consor during a road game against the Lakers. “It’s a personal touch. It makes you feel more involved, and it’s gotten us involved with each other. We all follow each other on Twitter, we interact with each other. There’s a camaraderie that comes out of it, a family-ness, as corny as that sounds.”

Johnson is careful not to mix the Radio Party with his play-by-play call; he talks to his listeners before the game and during halftime, going to commercial and coming out of timeouts. He keeps Twitter open on his laptop during the game, glancing at it during breaks, replying to some listeners and retweeting others. He reads their comments and advice, and consoles them when things go poorly — “We’ll get through this,” he said, during a recent blowout. “Hang in there gang.” And because of all that, he doesn’t rest for a single second during a broadcast.

“You know, it probably makes you a little bit more exhausted,” Johnson said. “But I think in some ways it energizes me, because again, it really does feel like you’re throwing a party.”

And he feels like it’s working. WNEW’s ratings on weekday nights among adults ages 25-54 have more than doubled since November, although some of that is surely due to the team’s success. Mavericks owner Mark Cuban caught the spirit during a broadcast last spring: “Listening to wizards radio on nba on Sirius,” Cuban tweeted. “Vintage bananas. Hashtag hashtag! Love it.”

“I know by doing this we’re trending younger, we’re getting more women involved,” Johnson said. “I think we break the stereotypes. People are connecting. But we’re having a blast, that’s the bottom line.”

It’s why Johnson now feels like a bartender, sympathizing with fans who are distraught, keeping up with their vacations, tracking teenage listeners as they go off to college, following his regulars in their careers. He said he’s never experienced anything quite like this during his 30-year broadcasting career, and he said the interaction has brought a new energy to his play-by-play.

“I really believe strongly that radio is the most personal of mediums,” he said. “We invade your personal space, whether I’m in your car or I’m in your ear phones. I just think it’s amazing — radio is the oldest of the mediums, yet in some ways it’s the most adaptable.”

So Johnson will keep his Radio Party going, greeting Anna on her way home from a fundraiser, and Stephen on his way to Atlanta, and Ryan in Fargo, and Sammy in the 400-level, and everyone else who checks in.

“Remember,” he told his listeners moments before a recent game began. “United we tweet; divided we wind up on Myspace.”

Credit to the Washington Post who originally published this article

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Doug Gottlieb: There’s a “Less Than Remote Chance” On Getting Oklahoma State Job

“I was offered a job to be an assistant coach at Oklahoma State last offseason. Initially, the plan was to be able to do radio and be an assistant.”

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Doug Gottlieb

For the first time in seven years, Oklahoma State is looking for a new head men’s basketball coach. The school fired Mike Boynton late last week after posting a 119-109 record. Fox Sports Radio’s Doug Gottlieb, a former Oklahoma State point guard, has openly and publicly campaigned for the position in the past. It was brought up again recently on The Doug Gottlieb Show.

“If you go back seven years ago, when I had just started at Fox Sports Radio, that’s when Mike [Boynton] was hired,” Gottlieb said, “and I was, I think, a finalist…What you should know since then is, yeah, I’ve tinkered around with college coaching. I’ve always tried to protect still doing the radio show. One, because I love this, and two because I’m treated really, really well. And three, I was never in a position I thought, financially, to just walk away from stuff and start all over.”

“…I have been a consultant this year for the program, spent a lot of time there,” Gottlieb continued. “Last year at this time I was actually a finalist for a job at Wisconsin-Green Bay.”

Later, Gottlied got right to the heart of the matter, saying, “I think there’s a less than remote chance that I would get that job, and I know that because I have a good relationship with the Athletic Director Chad Weiberg…He called me, honestly, right after the news broke and in the very nicest way possible said, ‘Look man, I just had a coach for seven years who had not been a head coach before. I can’t hire another coach who has not even been a college assistant before.’

Gottlieb makes a case for himself stating he thinks he would be welcome in gyms and homes where he would need to be in order to recruit. He also says he has many connections between his own coaching in AAU basketball as well as his family’s history and connections in the area. “I think I fit how college basketball is now more so than previously,” he said.

Gottlieb told his audience, “I was offered a job to be an assistant coach at Oklahoma State last offseason. Initially, the plan was to be able to do radio and be an assistant. Then that plan kind of changed, they were like, ‘Hey, you gotta make a decision. Do you want to do the radio show and all of the other stuff you do, or be an assistant coach?’ I wasn’t ready…my girls are seniors in high school, it felt like a sacrifice, frankly, not worth making.”

In the end, Gottlieb made it clear he knows he may never be the head coach at his alma mater and part of that is because of how much he enjoys what he is currently doing. “I am not chasing anything,” he said. “… It’s an itch that I don’t know if it will ever be scratched. I love what I do and the people I get to meet along the way. But, if the right thing presents itself and it feels right, well yeah. But, I don’t think I need to pack anytime soon to be the head coach at Oklahoma State. Even if I do believe that I’m the right guy there, I truly believe that.”

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Adam Crowley: Joe Lunardi “Should Be Ashamed of Himself”

“That is such a low-class, low-rent, jerkwad move that I’m never sticking up for the guy again.”

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Phot of Adam Crowley and Joe Lunardi
Credit: Audacy, FanBuzz.com

Adam Crowley, co-host of The Fan Morning Show on 93.7 The Fan in Pittsburgh, did not take kindly to a social post from ESPN bracketologist Joe Lunardi. Prior to the start of ‘Selection Sunday,’ the X account for the University of Pittsburgh men’s basketball team posted a graphic with some information about their resume to make the NCAA Tournament. Lunardi quoted their post and said, “The line with the 343 [Non-Conference Strength-of-Schedule] must have gotten cut off on my screen.”

In a bit titled, ‘Social Media’s Biggest Loser,’ Crowley chose Lunardi as his pick and said, “I’ve been defending Joe Lunardi for weeks, as the ‘messenger who was being shot.’ Joe is just predicting what the committee, in a flawed system, was going to do. That’s all he was doing. But, this was too far for me.”

In explaining to his audience the social exchange, Crowley said, “Pitt basketball tweeted out a worthy resume and posted a really nice graphic…It had all of the reasons why they should’ve been included in the dance.”

After reading the response from Lunardi, Crowley exclaimed, “Look, that’s why they got left out. Joe, you don’t gotta be dunkin’, man. That is such a low-class, low-rent, jerkwad move that I’m never sticking up for the guy again.

“And I get that he probably got worn down by Pitt fans…you gotta have thicker skin, Joe, and you don’t gotta be dunking on a fan base an hour before they find out that they’re not making the NCAA Tournament. That to me was such a low-class, jabroni move by him. It’s not a professional thing, its just a bad move on his part and I think he should be ashamed of himself.”

As he wrapped up the segment, Cowley added, “What do you hope to gain from that?… A big ‘L’ for Joe Lunardi there.”

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Report: Mike Missanelli Could Be Headed Back to 97.5 The Fanatic

“Mike’s name has come up. He’s a great talent, and we’ll just have to wait and see what happens. A lot of people are interested in the radio station right now. So I’ll leave it at that.”

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Photo of Mike Missanelli

As 97.5 The Fanatic in Philadelphia announced changes to its lineup last week, The Philadelphia Inquirer has reported there may be another change ahead. The newspaper reported former host Mike Missanelli could be headed back to the station and has had conversation with station management.

Program Director, Scott Masteller, who took over those duties in January of 2024, told the Inquirer. “Mike’s name has come up. He’s a great talent, and we’ll just have to wait and see what happens. A lot of people are interested in the radio station right now. So I’ll leave it at that.”

Missanelli had been with the station for 15 years before his surprise exit on the final day of May in 2022. At the time, Missanelli said on the air, “The station and I are talking about me remaining with the company in some kind of a role, but who knows. What I can tell you is they already have a replacement show under contract and I’m sure you’ll be hearing about that in the next few days.”

Andrew Salciunas has been moved from middays to mornings to work with John Kincade and Former Philadelphia Daily News writer Bob Cooney has been shifted to the midday slot. Speculation in the market has been Missanelli could jump in with Cooney should he return.

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