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Mike Felger: Radio Row Allows Us to Do Something Different

“We don’t do a lot of guests…I don’t like having guests on. Let’s face it. Most guests don’t say anything anyway.”
Ricky Keeler

Published

2 months ago

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When you are doing something you love as a job or when it gets very busy at your place of employment, the day can tend to go quicker than usual. While a four-hour show may seem like a long time to talk about sports, it can be the quickest part of the day for others. Mike Felger, the co-host of Felger and Mazz on 98.5 The Sports Hub, was a guest on The Press Box Podcast with Bryan Curtis this week and he said that the show is the quickest four hours of his day and it’s because of the prep that the guys put into the show.

“Quickest 4 hours of my day. It flies. We try to keep it moving, We put a lot into it. I think one of the reasons it goes quickly for me because we are pretty much working the whole time. We sort of map out the whole show before. All 16 segments, they are not scripted, but we will talk about this here, that there. We put something into all 16 segments.

“Mostly, if there is a game the night before, we will either have watched the game or portions of the game, we will have either watched or read the postgame press conferences, we will have read some of the coverage, and the trick there is to find something there that bugs you even if they won. What did you see in the game that you didn’t like? What did someone write that you thought was stupid or off the mark? Did someone say something that bothered you in the postgame? We put effort into the sports part of it and then we grind it out the next day. It goes quickly because we put a lot into it.”

The show is at the Super Bowl this week in Arizona as a part of Radio Row and Felger mentioned it allows the show to do something different since they don’t usually have guests on.

“For us, it’s a chance to get out of the studio, do something different, and talk to a few people. We are kind of a rare sports talk show where we don’t do a lot of guests. I don’t like having guests on. I don’t like phoners, I think it interrupts the momentum of a show, the flow of the show. Let’s face it. Most guests don’t say anything anyway.

“We don’t really do guests. We will go weeks at a time without a single phone guest or someone from outside the show. This sort of forces us to sit down and talk to some other people. It’s also just a change of scenery. We are also simulcast so it’s also a different backdrop, we are out of the studio. It’s just a little something different for us.”

While the show doesn’t have a lot of guests on, they will take a good amount of callers. With that being said, in Felger’s mind, the calls have to be quick and a good point has to be made for the show to have a good tempo.

“I like the way we do them. It’s 30 seconds. You get 30 seconds. At most, if it’s good, we will let you go to 45. It’s rare that a caller is on for a minute. If you suck, we will drop it at 12 seconds. It’s about tempo and pace of the show. I think calls are good if you go from one to the next to the next and they have to be good. If listeners can’t hear you, can’t do it. We have to hear you and you have to have a point. If you don’t have any of those things, I’m sorry, I love you, but you are gone.

“I think calls are valuable for how they pace the show. They bring tempo to the show if you do it quickly and pointedly.”

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Los Angeles Angels: Costs Don’t Justify Sending Radio Crew On Road

“We just found that the economics – 40,000-50,000 miles is not going to change that experience.”
Jordan Bondurant

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8 hours ago

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March 30, 2023

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The 2023 Los Angeles Angels begin their new season Thursday in Oakland, and almost 400 miles south of RingCentral Coliseum at Angel Stadium of Anaheim. The team’s radio broadcasters will be virtually alone in the broadcast booth calling the game remotely.

Terry Smith and Mark Langston, the Angels’ radio broadcast team, will not travel for road games this season. It marks the fourth year since the COVID-shortened season in 2020 that the team has decided to keep the radio crew grounded.

The Angels and the Toronto Blue Jays are the only two teams that don’t send their main English speaking radio broadcasters to road games. Both in Anaheim and Toronto, the moves are viewed as a cost-cutting measure.

“We just found that the economics – 40,000-50,000 miles is not going to change that experience,” Angels owner Arte Moreno said earlier this month in a press conference earlier this week.

As for the Angels’ Spanish speaking broadcasts, half of the 2023 season will air on KWKW. Rolando Gonzalez will be the play-by-play voice.

Gonzalez replaces longtime Spanish broadcaster Jose Tolentino, who told The Athletic that he was forced out of the role by the team.

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Mike Valenti: Mike Tannenbaum’s Mock Drafts Show Why He Got Fired As GM

“I think Tannenbaum’s gotta be drug tested, but I’ll take it.”
Jordan Bondurant

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8 hours ago

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March 30, 2023

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Former New York Jets general manager Mike Tannenbaum released the third edition of his mock first round of the upcoming NFL draft on Tuesday, and one host at 97.1 The Ticket in Detroit couldn’t stand some of Tannenbaum’s selections.

Mike Valenti asked for some of the surprises that Tannenbaum had in the first round and lost it when Tannenbaum had University of Tennessee quarterback Hendon Hooker coming off the board fifth overall.

“What is this guy on crack? Maybe that’s why Tannenbaum lost his job as a GM,” Valenti said Tuesday on The Valenti Show with Rico. “Hendon Hooker is a system quarterback where Josh Heupel managed to create unnatural matchups by putting receivers out of bounds basically.”

“Automatically I hate this mock draft,” he added.

Georgia defensive tackle Jalen Carter falls to the home town Lions at 18th overall on Tannenbaum’s board, and Valenti doesn’t believe Carter waits that long to be selected. But in this case, with Carter dealing with charges related to a fatal crash in January that killed Georgia teammate Devin Willock and recruiting staffer Chandler LeCroy, Valenti thinks Detroit gets a steal if Carter is still available.

“I think Tannenbaum’s gotta be drug tested, but I’ll take it,” Valenti said.

To be fair, Tannenbaum did write that he was going “a different route” with this year’s mock.

“I’m sliding into the general manager chair for each team with a first-rounder and making my own picks,” Tannenbaum wrote. “This isn’t what I’m expecting but rather how I’d personally approach each Day 1 selection. And what follows is based off my own evaluations, preferences and philosophies.”

The first round of the NFL draft is on Thursday, April 27.

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Dan Patrick: NBC Created ‘Something That Was Brilliant’ With Flex Scheduling

“Networks were so upset that NBC would go ‘Hey, you know what? We’re gonna take that game and we’re gonna have it on Sunday night.’ Then FOX and CBS would be scrambling there.”
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16 hours ago

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March 29, 2023

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Roger Goodell wants flex scheduling to come to Prime Video’s Thursday Night Football package. It could happen this season, but we won’t know for sure until May after league owners decided to table a vote on the proposal. On Wednesday, FOX Sports Radio’s Dan Patrick joined the chorus of critics calling it a bad idea.

Patrick said that the league always prioritizes revenue. If it were thinking about the fans, this isn’t something that would even be discussed.

The idea of flex scheduling was first introduced for NBC’s Sunday Night Football package in 2006. The goal was to make sure the prime time TV package could deliver high quality games every week.

“NBC did something that was brilliant where they were able to flex Sunday night games,” Patrick said. “Everyone wanted it.”

While the fate of flex scheduling for Thursdays remains up in the air, we do know that flex scheduling is coming to Monday Night Football on ESPN this season. Patrick, who worked for NBC when the practice was introduced, said that it always took care of one broadcast partner by screwing others.

“Networks were so upset that NBC would go ‘Hey, you know what? We’re gonna take that game and we’re gonna have it on Sunday night.’ Then FOX and CBS would be scrambling there.”

Dan Patrick suggested that perhaps Amazon’s Prime Video doesn’t deserve the same treatment as NBC or ESPN. Far fewer people watch the Thursday night game than any other primetime NFL contest.

Whether or not flex scheduling comes to Thursday Night Football, Patrick says it does not guarantee to change the package’s reputation for delivering largely unappealing games.

“I’ve long said it’s crazy to say you have to play Sunday and then turn around and play Thursday and we’d always go ‘Man, these Thursday games aren’t good,’” he concluded. “Well, was it the matchup or just the quality of play?”

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