BNM Writers
Mark Davis Was Always Fascinated Hearing Folks On Radio
Mark Davis told Barrett News Media’s Jim Cryns that growing up he was always fascinated hearing folks on the radio, leading to an eventual career.

Published
10 months agoon
By
Jim Cryns
I’d only been speaking with Mark Davis for about thirty seconds when an epitaph for his tombstone occurred to me.
Here lies Mark Davis. An unapologetic conservative, but he was never a jerk about it.
A few moments later we were discussing An Evening with Mark Davis and Mike Gallagher, to be held on April 18, 2023, in Grapevine, Texas, in the heart of Dallas-Ft. Worth. Gallagher makes a daily appearance on the Davis morning show just ahead of his own program on the Salem Radio Network. I suggested it reminded me of the current tour with Steve Martin and Martin Short.
“That’s a wonderful comparison,” Davis said. “During this event, you’ll see an obvious mutual affection that enables us to deliver a show reflective of the segment we do on the air. We’ll cover a lot of topics, put our spin on things and have a good time. I think that will appeal to a lot of people.”
Davis said it’s natural for him and Gallagher to do a joint event given their chemistry. It could be as natural as two old friends sitting on a couch in the middle of the stage, sipping Scotch or coffee. Whatever two opinionated old men drink. Two avuncular figures getting together for a chat, yelling at kids to get off their lawn.
“Mike is a true friend, someone I love to spend time with both on and off the air,” Davis said. “Our relationship on radio is our predominant connection, but we’re constantly on the phone with each other. I’ve been with him through loss, various moves, issues both large and small. He’s always there for me, in good times and bad. He’s like the brother I never had.”
Davis said Gallagher is a guy you’d like to have a cup of coffee with, adding that his friend enjoys the rough and tumble of topical talk radio, but always with a giving spirit.
“We both want to do shows to make a person’s day better. Give people something to both think and laugh about. We go through tough times but that doesn’t mean we can’t approach things in upbeat tones.”
You can listen to The Mark Davis Show weekdays from 7-10 am on 660 AM The Answer (KSKY) in the DFW area, or online at 660amtheanswer.com
Growing up, Davis said he was always fascinated hearing folks on the radio.
“As a teenager I was captivated listening to people having conversations. This was before I ever thought of doing this for a living. It made me appreciate the magic of hearing people in a studio across town, yet it felt like it was presented just for me.”
His father was a career Air Force man. His mother stayed home to raise her only son until he went to high school. She then sold real estate and was an executive with United Way in Washington, DC.
“I was given a lot of latitude to follow any career I wanted,” Davis said. “I was an only child, but we were solid middle class. It’s not like I was pampered. But do the math. I got 100 percent of the parental attention.”
“They were always there for me,” Davis explained. “I was loved. If I had the choice, I guess I’d rather have had a sibling. To have someone who was in the same proverbial boat. A shared experience with the same mother and father. I never knew what that felt like.”
When he was 16 and growing up in the Watergate era, Davis was very interested in current events, news, and journalism. The imagery was all around, and he’d already enjoyed writing.
Davis wanted to study something in school that would give him a chance for a job. He didn’t think a degree in history or English screamed employability. Both of his parents recognized their son’s interest in reading and told him covering news might be a logical career choice.
At the University of Maryland in 1975, Davis started taking courses in print journalism.
“I learned to write headlines, turn column inches into certain amounts of space,” Davis explained. “But in my junior year I discovered WMUC, the campus radio station. That changed everything for me. Part of the charm of college radio is you get the opportunity to do it all. I was a disc jockey, I worked the record library, I did sports play-by-play, I covered news.”
That’s when it dawned on Davis this was what he wanted to do with his life. During his junior and senior years at the University of Maryland–College Park, Davis was cutting tape, writing stories, writing into audio, anchoring newscasts.
“A lot of journalism is collaboration,” Davis said. “In a newspaper, your piece of writing goes through various editors, a group of people along the path to print. On television, the story you see on the airwaves is handled by a lot of people. On the radio, it’s just you, a tape recorder and a typewriter. You write around sound, anchor the newscast. If it’s all good, you did it. If it’s bad, it’s all on you.”
During the summer of 1973, the Watergate hearings were in high gear. Davis was still in high school when Richard Nixon resigned his presidency.
“I didn’t go into journalism hoping to bring down the next president,” Davis said. “I saw it as a force for good. To uncover secrets. Shine a light on things the government was trying to get away with.”
Davis looks back with gratitude on his full life. His family, his career, and his friendships. He said, ultimately, by virtue of being born, you’re lucky. It’s a gift from God.
“Make the most of that, make the country or world a better place,” he said. “Support your family and find a sense of service. When you’re finally able to pull your own head out of your butt, you can discover it’s time to serve others. My faith guides me to this. If I start using my days in devotion to others, my life will be better. I imagine people driving around, hanging out in their homes and offices, and I have the opportunity to speak with them. They give their time to me, and there’s nothing more valuable than their time.”
Davis said his approach to being on the air is to welcome more people, not turn them away. “Now more than ever,” Davis explained. “We’re so entrenched in arguments. We may be bruised and even bloodied, but optimism and success are possible, even in the toughest battles I’m trying to fight.”
You can’t fake a daily show. People often ask Davis what it takes to be a talker on the air.
“I tell them you need your unique picture of the world, know a little about a lot, care about a lot, be curious about a lot,” Davis said. “Figure out what you believe and make it clear you believe it. You might run afoul of some people, but you’ve got to find a way to navigate those times. People can agree, disagree, but let’s reasonably come together. Be welcoming.”
Davis explained he’s always been interested in inviting a reasoned argument from the other side. Does he consider himself a journalist? Yes, he does. “That doesn’t make me the sole definer of what is or is not news,” Davis said. But he doesn’t consider himself a reporter, as he was at the start of his career.
“I did that years before talk radio landed in my lap,” Davis said. “To be a reporter you must be objective, give everything equal weight. I’m not required to do that, but I do try to be fair.”
Talk radio is opinion-based. You share your views, mingle with others, and offer up your ideas. Even though Davis has been working in what he calls ‘opinion journalism’ for 40 years, he’s still chronicling events as they happen. Interviewing people along a journalistic path.
“I’ve always been open to opposing views,” Davis continued.
“Is that vital in today’s terrestrial radio? Sadly, I don’t know. It may not be. It’s not that every show needs to be like mine. Some like mine succeed. Some come at you like a sledgehammer and some of those succeed, too. Markets will embrace what they will embrace. I have to be honest with myself every day. I don’t know how people sleep after saying things they don’t believe. I have to derive some sense of satisfaction. Not just from getting calls, making a good living, but sharing things I believe. Dealing honestly in agreement and disagreement. People may like or dislike me, but they’ll always know I’m sharing what I feel honestly.”
Davis said issues we used to talk about with friends and neighbors just don’t happen anymore.
“It’s through talk radio we discuss borders, gun control, abortion rights, drugs, and education,” he said. “We’re reacting on the fly and discussing what people used to talk about at the water coolers and over the fence in the backyard. We don’t have those personal relationships anymore. We’re not talking to neighbors.”
I spoke with Davis about the current situation in Memphis regarding the fired officers and alleged beating of a suspect. He said one of the big problems in society is people are not getting all the facts before jumping to conclusions. There are people that are going to immediately assume the police are guilty.
“It’s my default setting to support the police,” Davis said, “until or unless I see evidence that they were in the wrong. The George Floyd situation was enormously complicated. It was a horrible day of police work, but I have a tough time calling it murder. There are people who seek what they call justice by remedying past wrongs with current racial revenge.”
I asked Davis if he felt today’s America was the most divided ever.
“Some of my listeners perhaps don’t recall 9/11,” Davis said. “Some don’t really know what happened in the 1960s. Some say we’ve never been this divided before. That’s crazy. We’ve probably always been a divided country. But cable TV shout-fests and social media make it seem worse. The problem isn’t that we’re divided, the problem is we’re arguing with each other like we’re toddlers. Never listening.”
Regarding the kerfuffle over New York congressman George Santos and the web of lies he spun to get elected, Davis said not every story has an instant satisfying resolution. “He was duly elected. Many of the voters on Long Island are disgusted and want to get rid of him. Others still prefer him to a Democrat. The end of his term will come up fast and they’ll be able to get rid of him if they wish. Redemption may be at hand, but ultimately it’s up to the voters.”
We discussed our shared love of film and its ability to teach life lessons.
“You’ve got the collaborative effort of actors, directors, set designers all coming together to create a visual experience,” Davis said. “When it’s at its best, it can change lives. When I was 12 years old, I saw George C. Scott in Patton.” He said Patton’s devotion to duty, history, and to his men was something he can’t shake from his head. “I revisit that performance in my mind. I think the most important thing is selflessness.”
Davis said another portrayal that has stuck with him is Peter Sellers as Chance the gardener in the cult classic Being There.
“Chance, the character played by Sellers, is the dimmest bulb imaginable,” Davis said, “but he was representative of the way our country behaves. There are many awesome moral messages in that film. Basically at his heart Chance is a good person.”

Jim Cryns writes features for Barrett News Media. He has spent time in radio as a reporter for WTMJ, and has served as an author and former writer for the Milwaukee Brewers. To touch base or pick up a copy of his new book: Talk To Me – Profiles on News Talkers and Media Leaders From Top 50 Markets, log on to Amazon or shoot Jim an email at [email protected].
BNM Writers
Is the NFL Really an Unchallengeable TV Product?
If most opportunities to watch the NFL in primetime are regarded as miserable, is there really no way to beat the league in the ratings or has no one actually tried?

Published
22 hours agoon
November 29, 2023
When the NFL placed Thursday Night Football on a streaming service, I wondered if anyone in sports television would really take the opportunity to challenge the league. So far, no one has, and likely will.
But that leaves me asking the question: is the NFL really that unchallengeable? Is it really this 1,000-pound gorilla that can’t be toppled?
In some aspects, yes, absolutely, 100%. But in others, no, I don’t think so.
For instance, any TV executive would be a fool to try to beat the league in the 1:00 PM and 4:00 PM ET timeslots on FOX and CBS. And really, you can’t hardly attack the league on Sunday Night Football or Monday Night Football, either.
But Thursday Night Football? Earlier this month, our Ryan Brown argued that the NFL put a bad product on Thursday nights and usurped the evening away from the college ranks and ESPN. And he’s right to a certain degree. Once Thursday Night Football really got going, ESPN essentially abandoned the idea of putting marquee matchups against the package.
My pitch to ESPN, or even FOX (although both are unlikely to want to anger the strongest strategic partner in television), would be that Thursday Night Football is as vulnerable as its ever been. It makes nearly weekly headlines for its lackluster schedule, which in turn leads to headlines about the lack of enthusiasm legendary broadcaster Al Michaels has to broadcast the lackluster schedule.
Also, if you pull up X on a given Thursday evening, you’ll see your timeline flooded with complaints about the viewing experience being miserable, fans struggling through buffering and distorted pictures, and overall complaints about the product. Now, for the record, I don’t have those issues, I think everyone else just needs to get better internet, but that’s another column.
But if most opportunities to watch the NFL in primetime are regarded as miserable, is there really no way to beat the league in the ratings or has no one actually tried?
My contention is that if ESPN or FOX were to put up real, actual, truly marquee college football games on Thursdays in primetime, they would have a chance to do really well. And I think it’s something the Worldwide Leader should consider now that it holds the rights to the SEC. With the additions of Texas and Oklahoma, the league, and in turn ESPN, will have some of the biggest games in college football, and there are only so many Saturdays and only so many good timeslots to put those broadcasts.
Why not look through the schedule and say “Ok, LSU vs Texas A&M, we’re going to put you on Thursday night at 8:00 PM ET up against the 1-10 Carolina Panthers versus the 4-8 Chicago Bears“?
In true internet spitballing fashion, that question leads me to another one: who says no?
The NFL is the unquestioned king of live television. I’m not foolish enough to think otherwise. But the ratings from the league’s first-ever Black Friday game featuring the Miami Dolphins and New York Jets had to be, in my estimation, slightly underwhelming with 9.6 million viewers.
But, just because you’re dominant doesn’t mean you’re bulletproof, either. I think there’s a hole in the NFL’s armor. And I think the league knows it, too, but operates from such a position of strength it believes it can’t be toppled. All it takes is someone to have the gumption to attack it.

Garrett Searight is the Editor of Barrett Sports Media and Barrett News Media. He previously was the Program Director and Afternoon Co-Host on 93.1 The Fan in Lima, OH. He is also the radio play-by-play voice of Northern Michigan University hockey. Reach him at [email protected].
BNM Writers
Dagen McDowell Is Ready For A New Adventure With Fox Business
“Every decision in America is born of policy, On the show, we bring that to our show. Talk about the news of the day.”

Published
10 months agoon
February 3, 2023By
Jim Cryns
To know Dagen McDowell, you must understand what she comes from, where she comes from. You won’t know her until you know the lessons, kindness, and determination set forth by her parents.
Her parents operated a small grocery store, LW Roark and Company. Charles and Joyce McDowell were high school sweethearts and both went to college but decided to go back home and open a business. “This is in the middle of nowhere,” McDowell said. “It was a wholesale grocery store. They sold it in the late 90s.”
She said her parents were smart, encouraging, and took every opportunity to teach McDowell and her brother.
“They’d constantly talk up people who came into the store. Both of them have and had an insatiable curiosity about everything. They felt they learned things through their customers. It was more fun to learn about things from other people.”
McDowell’s parents never took a week off work. Never. The family took no vacations as most families would. Once while McDowell was in college at Wake Forest University, the family visited the Air and Space Museum on the Mall in D.C.
“Both of my parents were very interested in architecture and landscapes. We’d go to Williamsburg and just look at the buildings.”
McDowell joined FOX News Channel in 2003 and helped launch FOX Business Network as a founding anchor in 2007.
Her mother passed away three years ago and her father is still very much a part of her life. Her father was a constant teacher.
“One time my father, who we called Dowell McDowell, was putting up an outbuilding and asked me how long one line should be if the other line was such and such. He taught me the Pythagorean theorem when I was about 4 years old.”
McDowell was nurtured by parents with endless curiosity.
“I was raised by parents who would always debate and converse around the dinner table. We shared breakfast and dinner together every day. They loved learning, were always inquisitive, never afraid to ask a question. My parents shared a fearlessness and passed that on to me. I’ve never been embarrassed to ask people questions. I love talking to people and finding out about things.”
For a long time, McDowell had no idea what she wanted to do for a living. She knew if she worked at different jobs she’d eventually figure out what she was good at.
“I knew I was a decent writer, but I always tried to get information out of people, what they were doing. Ask if they were fulfilled and happy.”
At Wake, Forest McDowell majored in art history and had every intention of working in a museum, possibly as a curator.
“I interned at the Center for Contemporary Arts. I lived in Venice, Italy for a while. Wake Forest owns a house in Venice.”
After that it was Colorado. She moved back to New York during the recession of 1991 with a duffel bag. She took the Amtrak to New York City and sublet an apartment for six months.
“I had no TV, just a radio. I knew I could find something good to do in New York, there were so many jobs. I always wanted to live in the city. Either the city or way out in the country. Nowhere in between.”
She said being in New York made her feel anything was possible. This was January in 1994 when job ads were still in the physical newspaper, like the New York Times. McDowell interviewed at Institutional Investor through a referral from a friend.
“It was a brilliant magazine with terrific writing,” McDowell explained. “Very prominent in the industry. They were looking for someone to work with the newsletter written for the financial community.”
She’d cover topics like the bond business, Wall Street, and money management. The magazine made her take a reporting test where you’d make up a story and write it. She was offered a job and worked there for three years.
“I learned to be a journalist there,” McDowell said. “I could write but I became a better journalist. We’d break news, create our sources, and learn more and more about finance. People love to talk about what they do if you show interest.”
The next big job was SmartMoney.com, a resource and web newspaper for private investors. There McDowell wrote a personal finance column. She started doing commentary on television shows, the way a lot of people in different professions tend to do. “Then I started making more appearances on weekend financial or business shows,” McDowell said.
She got a call from Neil Cavuto about 20 years ago and he told McDowell, ‘Kid, you want a job? I know you don’t have much professional TV experience. We’ll give you some training and you’ll figure it out. If you do, you stay. If not, you go.’
McDowell said she was glad she was a writer first before she arrived at Fox. She writes her own scripts and has a background in finance and business writing.
“Before the business network was launched, they had only one business reporter and two senior business correspondents,” she said. “I’ve gotten to do so many different jobs, use different muscles, so to speak. As the years have passed I’ve discovered other talents I may have and I’m incredibly grateful for that.”
There’s a new show in town. McDowell and Sean Duffy will co-host The Bottom Line which will air on weeknights from 6-7:00 PM ET.
McDowell said she and Duffy come from extremely similar backgrounds. Duffy is from rural Wisconsin and McDowell is from Virginia.
“We know what small-town living is like, “McDowell said. “I might live in New York City but where I grew up affects the way I view the world. I’m still grounded in my hometown. On the show, we look south and west with everything we cover. You have to think of your audience. Rather than talking about them, we talk with them. That’s our shared background and vision. Sean is extremely down to earth and generous.”
McDowell said the show is not financially based, but steeped in business.
She said Duffy’s experience as a former U.S. Congressman, he understands policy as well as financial matters.
“Every decision in America is born of policy,” she said. “On the show, we bring that to our show. Talk about the news of the day.”
This is different from anything McDowell has done in the past.
“It’s a two-anchor show in the evening,” she explained. “This is not taking place during market hours. We tie all the business happenings together from the day. Again, it’s not about Washington or New York. It’s about the people we grew up with. We talk to them. Build a relationship with them on the air. For me, this is not just sitting in front of a camera. I can run off at the mouth as well as anyone, hang in there with the filibuster.”
McDowell says she is blunt, but hopes she isn’t rude. During a recent interview for the new show she used the terms ‘pig potatoes’ and ‘chapped backsides.’
“Those are terms I just made up,” she said. “I make up a lot of phrases and don’t always know what they mean. I have an entire repertoire of those kinds of phrases.”
Duffy assumed they were southern phrases he had to learn from McDowell, but she assured him she’d never heard them anywhere else.
“I’m just making stuff up,” McDowell said. “You can’t curse. Can’t say BS. At least you shouldn’t say BS on television. You don’t want to say manure. You never want to say something that makes people wince or evokes a smell.”
Dealing with people directly and bluntly seems to come from her mother.
“My mother had grit,” McDowell said. “She was also very kind, never syrupy. I used to say she had no magnolia-mouth.
That’s got to be a southern phrase.
McDowell said her mother was not a servile flatterer, but she was kind. Always there when somebody was in need.
“She had real grit. She’d stand and fight for her friends and family members.”
Her mother passed away after being diagnosed with stage-four cancer.
“She went through unimaginable pain,” McDowell said of her mother. “For nearly six years. You want to talk about somebody who was tough. There was nobody more pugnacious than my mother.”
She explained even with her illness, her mother was always on the go. Continuing to live her life. When questioned about being so active while she was ill, her mother continued to show grit.
“My mother would say she didn’t want to walk around looking like she had cancer. She asked, ‘What choice do I have? I could lay in bed and wait to die, or I can get up and do what I can .’”
McDowell said her mother’s illness taught her to be a caregiver in ways she never could have imagined. Her mother taught her to find moments of joy every single day, in the smallest of things.
“It can be as simple as telling a stranger to have a great day. Treat a perfect stranger with kindness. I do it all day long. I know it sounds corny, but I want to be known as a person who brings a casserole to a friend when they’re ill.”
A one-sheet from Fox tells you McDowell and the culmination of her background is perfect for The Bottom Line. The fact is, it’s true.

Jim Cryns writes features for Barrett News Media. He has spent time in radio as a reporter for WTMJ, and has served as an author and former writer for the Milwaukee Brewers. To touch base or pick up a copy of his new book: Talk To Me – Profiles on News Talkers and Media Leaders From Top 50 Markets, log on to Amazon or shoot Jim an email at [email protected].
BNM Writers
Airing The Tyre Nichols Video Was A Necessity
There were hard moments to watch in those videos, hard sounds to hear. But they aired.

Published
10 months agoon
February 2, 2023By
Bill Zito
Far be it for me not to address this outrageous and embarrassing instance in humanity. After the videos of Memphis police brutally beating Tyre Nichols were shown on television there really seemed to be more outrage emerging from society this time than from the media, for a change. One would think that’s how we wish things to be.
In instances like this, where the video and audio images are far from brief but are instead chaptered as they unfold, there are few options other than to let them run their course. Clocks — breaks hard and soft — are out the window, just as in live coverage.
Because that’s what this was, only the live this time was us, and as we all absorbed and reacted to actions disapprovingly familiar yet somehow foreign at the same time, the impact was still becoming apparent even though we already knew the outcome.
It’s happened before.
Not always like this but we’ve seen it before, police encounters shown on the news overtakes and become the news.
It takes effect as the sights and sounds are digested, dissected, and discussed, often before their potential impact could really be imagined.
In 1991, when the Handycam footage crossed screens for the first time and we learned Rodney King’s name, we didn’t know then but we had a feeling.
We were on the right track, though as newsrooms evolved and street reporting incorporated a different type of storytelling.
I was a cop in 1991. Changes came. Some.
It’s 2023, I’m no longer a cop. Changes will come again. Some.
Turning points — or the overused watershed moments — mean just as much to the news media as they do to law enforcement.
The “why’s” that make this a turning point are more society and community based this time around than they were in 1991.
At least I think so. And I don’t think it makes a bit of difference who’s involved this time.
There were hard moments to watch in those videos, and hard sounds to hear. But they aired. Where they couldn’t air, they were described in great detail; descriptions sometimes can be worse than the real thing. Sometimes, not this time.
And they should air, they shouldn’t stop airing. This is what happened and this is what people need to see and hear and this is exactly why we are here.
Warn them, provide them with a heads up that they’re not going to like what happens next. It’s life and we show life, and we show what some of us do with it when it’s someone else’s.
Overall, I would say the news platforms held their composure, even after the videos were released. I saw, read, and heard some refreshingly neutral coverage, even from outlets where I expected hard turns into the lanes on either side of the road.
Legitimate questions were asked by anchors and reporters and much of the time, the off-balance issues were raised more by those on the sidewalks and those on the other side of the cameras and microphones.
As much as I find myself in disagreement with what I often see on the cable networks — all the cable networks — I did find a sense of symmetry watching CNN’s Don Lemon speak with Memphis City Council Chair Martavius Jones in the hours after the videos were released.
Regular protocols be damned, Lemon and producers lingered patiently as Jones, visibly overcome by emotion, struggled to regain breath and composure enough to be able to speak. Rather than cut away or move to other elements, they stood fast and it became an example of what often requires no words.
There were fewer punches pulled on other platforms as well.
The sounds of the screams, the impacts, and the hate-filled commands were broadcast through car radios.
As were Tyre Nichol’s calls for his mom. They aired. They had to.

Bill Zito has devoted most of his work efforts to broadcast news since 1999. He made the career switch after serving a dozen years as a police officer on both coasts. Splitting the time between Radio and TV, he’s worked for ABC News and Fox News, News 12 New York , The Weather Channel and KIRO and KOMO in Seattle. He writes, edits and anchors for Audacy’s WTIC-AM in Hartford and lives in New England. You can find him on Twitter @BillZitoNEWS.