Wednesday, August 11, 2010

One network's bonehead mistake is another network's discovered gem

We saw two similarly colossal blunders made in broadcasting over the past year, and both have now been righted.

The first blunder happened in December 2009, when Steve Czaban's radio show, wildly successful for 7 years, was canned by Fox Sports Radio. I won't even mention his replacement beceause he doesn't deserve the publicity obtained by being mentioned on a sports blog with 7 readers, but trust me, he's been predictably awful since replacing Czabe.

The second came in January 2010, when NBC yanked Conan O'Brien from the Tonight Show after just 8 months, in favor of former host and current has-been Jay Leno. ("Ehhhhh, Kato Kaelin in the news again...")

Fast forward to August. Conan is less than 3 months from beginning his new late night show with TBS. And this glorious announcement came yesterday: Steve Czaban is returning to the morning sports radio landscape, joining the Sporting News Radio network in September.

NBC's and Fox's losses are examples of how arrogant, clueless network executives can screw up something that didn't need changing. But their losses are TBS's and SNR's gains, simply doing the common sense thing and scooping up tremendous talent that should have never become available in the first place.

The good news for TBS and SNR is, these common sense moves will pay huge dividends for years to come...provided they too don't screw up a good thing.

2 comments:

mkenny59 said...

SNR is all I listen to when it comes to sports talk radio. I love me some Bob Kemp. And now Czabe!

Anonymous said...

Bill,

I think you'll REALLY like SNR...

Joe