1540 Is No Longer The Ticket

For those who happen to care, KMPC 1540 'The Ticket' here in Los Angeles has officially done away with all their local sports talk and are going to conentrate on bringing you more of the pre-packaged national sports talk that the majority of sports talk radio format fans here in the city don't really care about. I am sure that if I wanted to know the ins and outs of Auburn football, I would tune into to any number of jag offs at the other stations to hear them spew meaningless rushing stats against Florida. That is not great sports talk. Great sports talk was being able to call up Petros or Freddie Roggin, hell even that horrid Dave Smith on occasion, and talk about why Brian Cook was a worthless peice o'Shite or why Grady Little had a better chance of managing a McDonalds franchise then a winning Dodger team. You listened to the local only afternoon format because you wanted to call the 'P' and talk about getting faded in the parking lot at the Coli while waiting to enter the USC game. You listened also because you wanted to hear Mario in La Habra or Ronathon in Gardena say something incrediblly stupid and be laughed at by the crew. It was all once so great.

Now, we are left with the usual host of gas bags and dead air specialists that have zero talent and only speak to listen to themselves talk. Arnie Spanner has never been cool nor informative or entertaining for that matter. I am sure that if I was a die hard Knick fan, or a serious follower of ACC college football, I would be in seven heaven. Steve Mason and John Ireland prove on a constistant bases over on KSPN that they haven't had an original thought nor a clue for the better part of 10 years now, and the black hole that is Xtra Sports is a down right disgrace. Truly awful times.

Now I know that sports talk is, in the grand scheme of things, not very important at all. As Big Eddie Shultz once said on his radio show, sports talk is the type of format that will get you worked up about a guy striking out with the bases loaded on a daily bases. I don't need that type of drama in my life. However, the afternoons at KMPC was great escapism for me, when I was unemployed and bored out of my mind, when I was having rough times at home, sitting in gridlock trying to get home, or simply to forget about the disaster the real world has become. I tuned into the Petros Show and knew that for the next three hours, I would laugh the hardest I have in a while, and I would be able to forget about the problems I may have had. I may be getting sappy and sentimental, but the radio has truly lost one of the greatest things going for it.

And it is quite sad, actually, that the second largest market in the country has no NFL team and now no real local sports talk. We are stuck in sports limbo having to listen to the worries of Florida State fan or the rants of Buckeye Bob in Ohio. I could really care less. All I want is to listen to great sports talk, worry about who will win the Fight Club Forum match up, and listen to young Lincoln Baum talk about bagging another breezie in the Michigan dorm.