A reader forwarded us an e-mail they recently got from KFNS, one of the approximately 17 sports talk stations in town, to show us how amazingly crappy their “E-Blast” is. They were right, it suucccckkksss! …but we weren’t exactly surprised and gather that the other stations in town offer more of the same, so they should all be paying attention instead of laughing at the back of the classroom while we whip out the ruler on poor KFNS.

In a word, we would describe this email as “insulting”. Insulting that they think their listeners…scratch that…their die-hard listeners that actually sign up for clubs, are stupid. They must if they are calling this exclusive content. We bet the KFNS brass also thinks they’re fooling people when one of their hosts does a live read just after they come back from a commercial break “Frank’s talking so it’s not an ad! He must just really want me to go to that tire dealer because it relates to the Cardinals somehow!” Come on. Despite the listener sample that calls in to your station to suggest we trade Holliday and Pujols for Jeter, they aren’t all that stupid.

We even went through this copy of the “E-Blast” and scratched out all the ad copy to get down to the actual “exclusive content”:

As you can see, it’s mostly ads. Ads their salespeople are running around selling you as an “engaged listener…who we have full email access to!” There is one thing that isn’t technically an ad though. It’s the box on the top left of the email…the one that’s telling you to sign up to be a KFNS Insider, which is kind of an ad…oh and also completely freaking pointless because the fact that you got this email means you already signed up for their club! Jesus. One little spot for content and you waste it on an internal ad that by definition won’t get any action because the users have already done what you’re asking them to do. It’s like sending out emails telling people to go get email accounts, or going around to the retarded folks that watch the show NCIS and asking them if you could hit them in the head repeatedly until they suffer severe enough brain damage to be labeled officially retarded and start watching NCIS. We guess you can technically be “more retarded”, which would involve also watching NCIS: Los Angeles. Ok, the latter example wasn’t great, but you get the idea.

To the people: Don’t sign up for these. You don’t get “deals”, you just get your email farmed out to any jackoff company that has a few pennies to give to [insert ration station here].

To the stations: Maybe actually deliver some exclusive content in these? …oh wait, that would mean you’d have to worry about actually making exclusive content, which really would need to come after the other content you don’t have enough of. We see your point now. It is much easier to just shove ads down the throats of suckers…er…we mean “cherished listeners”!

In this clip from 101ESPN (WXOS)’s Superbowl media coverage, Bob Stelton interviews Jay Mohr and just before Stelton does the most obvious thing ever and asks Morh to do his Christopher Walken impression for the 23 Millionth time, Mohr gives the Cardinals some advice:

Mohr: [Thankfully interrupting Stelton from whatever boring thing he was saying...] Are they going to pay Pujols?

Stelton: Yes they are.

Mohr: They have to.

Stelton: Unless he gets silly. Listen, if he starts asking for, you know, $35 Million a year…they gotta draw the line somewhere.

Mohr: He’s worth every penny.

Mohr goes on to say that the Cardinals are “pitching, Pujols, and a bunch of guys no one’s ever heard of.” We can’t disagree…well not totally. Uh hello?! We happen to think a guy that goes by the name of Aaron Miles had a lot to do with last year’s…uh…success. Mohr also goes on to do what everyone does when first meeting 101ESPN Program Director Jason Barrett: Recoil in fear, followed by laughter, then awkwardly befriend him…if Mohr had stayed at the table for another six months to a year he would have experienced the next phase: Barrett firing him.

Now if only they could convince Mohr to say the name of the radio station as Christopher Walken. Oh baby that would be sweet!

If you noticed a distinct lack of “sports” talk that is 8 parts gay jokes and 2 parts Mizzou talk, its probably because your only choice for sports talk was 101ESPN‘s Mike & Mike in the Morning after Monday night’s storm kicked over the flattened out coat hanger 590 AM KFNS uses to broadcast.

The morning static was confirmed by the station’s morning show host, Tim McKernan…

McKernan, who’s InsideSTL.com handles most of the day’s programming on KFNS, did their show through the internets until the station came back on line a few hours later.

KFNS themselves however, decided to pretend none of this happened, or realizes that no one cares about losing one of the many “sports talk” station in the city for a few hours since there was nary a mention on their site, KFNS.com or their Twitter profile as of this writing.

Meanwhile the folks at KFNS sister station KSLG 1380 remained on the air so that the homeless guy sitting outside the 1380 offices on the Landing could get somewhat clear audio of…you know, we have no idea what’s on that station. Not even enough for a joke. Did they go out too? Not really sure. There are CB radio conversations that have more listeners.

In what is no doubt the most anyone has ever talked about radio since…um…I don’t know…jesus radio metaphors are hard…probably because no one cares about radio. Except for the St. Louis sports media who still thinks its really really really really really important.

As first reported today on STLtoday.com, the team announced late this afternoon that it will return its radio broadcasts to KMOX next season after five years at KTRS, where they had been airing after a 51-year run at KMOX.

The Cardinals choose KMOX over the other options of staying at KTRS and moving to sports talk upstart WXOS, 101.1 FM saying “fan sentiment and feedback” was a major factor in the decision. Some would say they choose wrong, that AM radio, despite KMOX’s legendary signal, is somehow more dead than FM radio. True, but our initial guess is that the Cardinals asked that very question and KMOX’s owner CBS Radio had answer.

Our initial guess seems to be lining up with the rumors we have heard after talking to a few people after the news broke. Our guess? CBS promised the Cardinals that they too would be on the more robust FM signal soon. How? By killing KEZK and moving KMOX to 102.5 FM, leaving 112o AM to be a more sports-heavy talk sister station to KMOX, and of course, simulcast Cardinal games on both signals.

With that information in hand, the Cardinals had the perfect answer. Going to KMOX certainly wins by the old-folks crowd, and the move to FM nullifies any benefits that WOXS was offering. No brainer.

…you know what would be super cool though, is if someone could invent a device that also broadcasts video of the game along with the audio. That would really be something! You wouldn’t want Mike Shannon on there though, he gets a little sloppy. You’d want someone smooth, well spoken, but knows when to shut up and, of course, above reproach…eh, screw it. This guy will do:

via STLToday

Though the usually prompt expunging of a jettisoned host from a radio website still hasn’t happened as of this writing, Dan Ceasar of STLToday.com is reporting that his fellow columnist Bryan Burwell has been yanked from his own show on the FM sport talk station, 101 ESPN.

Sources said the move was ratings-related and not tied to any other issue, and that Burwell still could be involved in Rams game day programming. It is not known who – or if anyone – will replace Burwell alongside Bob Stelton in the 9-11 a.m weekday slot.

Stelton is expected to be off the show next week as fill-in hosts man the slot before a re-tooled program in unveiled after that.

The midday show has been the shakiest of any of the 101 ESPN shows from the very beginning with the odd hire and pairing of Fox Sports Midwest’s Pat Parris with Byran Burwell. Parris was later let go, leaving Burwell to his own devices with a smattering of co-hosts for a while until they found a “permeant” solution which ended up being out-of-towner Bob Stelton. Now Burwell himself appears to be out and its hardly a surprise. What is a surprise though is that his management doomed him to this fate with an ill-advised show change.

Burwell was always the standard “overbaring voice” that people like to experiment on air with and usually that meant teaming him with someone that tones him down (enter Pat Parris) since he, despite being a nice guy personally in our interactions with him, comes off as overly douchey on the air. It’s tough to tone down the constant name dropping and condescending blather, but that’s the right instinct since Burwell can be counted on to at least get a conversation going despite what you think of his side of the argument.

Recently though, with the pairing of his current partner, Bob Stelton, the direction seemed to have changed. It seemed as though he was being told to amp up his superiority act with joke setups by Stelton about Burwell’s ego and even the show’s imaging (sound bytes and bumpers) reenforcing the role. Bad move. The chances we had to listen to the 9a-11a broadcast were admittedly slim, but we did give it a chance on more than few occasions and to say it was “unlistenable” would be overly nice.

Stelton seems to have some talent though, despite being drug in to this SNL-sketch of a sports show. Hopefully they can go a different direction when the show returns and chill out on the self-inflated importance schtick for a mid-day “everyone just got to work so no one is listening” broadcast.

Maybe 101 ESPN can dust off that JC Corcoran silhouette again!

Back in November we mentioned that apart from how stupid 101 ESPN’s fake “contest” to be Bryan Burwell’s new co-host, we thought the recently canned JC Corcoran had the job.

We were wrong about that. We were dead on however that the shadowy head used in WXOS’ banners promoting the “search” were a perfect match for Corcoran. Recently even the man himself, JC, agreed on the July 2nd installment of his “Daily Dose” segment on JCOnTheLine.com which we’ve embedded below and cued to the pertinent parts (assuming YouTube cooperates, which if it doesn’t, go here to watch it on YouTube cued up.)

Thanks for the shout JC. Glad to hear you agree, since if anyone should be able to recognize your head it’s you.