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.

If you’ve even listen to 101 ESPN, the city’s leading sports talk station, you’ve no doubt heard their promos.

“Randy Karraker rides his bike to work…”

“D’Marco Farr is blah blah…”

“Bob Ramsey something…”

How do they do it?! How do they make such great promos that never* want to make you bash your head against the dashboard and then hit the dial so hard you break your radio? Well we took the promos the lab and tried to figure out their secret. It took a lot of work, at least three beakers with blue liquid bubbling over, at least one of those twirly drippy things, and two lab coats, but we got it!

The secret formula to the 101 ESPN promo is…

[Personality Name] is/does [something wacky] but that just [something awesome] + [rarely audible movie quote] + Hear [name] on 101 ESPN!

The key here is the inaudible movie quote in the middle. That’s what takes this normal promo and makes its special enough that we never* hear them and then make eye-contact with the car next to us and realize he’s also contemplating suicide and make a mental pact to drive in to one another hopefully either killing us or at least destroying our radios in the crash.

Look, we know you are the sports talk “leader” and you don’t have to try at this point with the other guy buying up crap like old lady at an antique store, but these promos have to stop. Enough with the horrible movie quotes!

* By never, we mean always.

We didn’t care one bit about the news a few weeks back that sports talk host Tim McKernan, in conjunction with InsideSTL.com, was buying the first half of the day on the stumpy-towered 1380 AM, but we have to say, the usually funny Morning After show on 1380 has tanked recently.  The new focus on interviewing broads for another show has taken the time that was usually filled with actual talk about sports.

More and more we find ourselves flipping to Mike and Mike on competitor 101ESPN in the morning and sometimes even sitting through their seemingly endless commercial breaks.

I made a quick mention in my Friday night post about 101 ESPN and JC Corcoran that even the shadowy figure in the 101 ESPN banner looks a hell of a lot like JC.  Well if there’s anything that screamed “Photoshop me some more evidence!” this is it right?

Bam:

Would 101 be already making banners but still not ready to make an announcement?  Who knows, but I’ll be dammed if that shadow doesn’t look exactly like JC’s noggin.

101ESPN fired the other, stiffer, less black, half of the widely criticized mid-morning show “Parris and Burwell” the other day.  Did you hear who Pat Parris’ replacement is?  Well, they apparently will work for cheap and be dumb enough to think working with Burwell on a sport radio gig is a “prize”.  Guess what?!  Its you!   …maybe.  Are you drunk enough right now to think this is a good idea?

…as much as Bryan [Burwell] is respected for his straight forward approach, he also loves to laugh, have fun, interact with listeners and debate the world of sports with his colleagues. However there’s one small problem – he’s got nobody to do it with on a daily basis!

So rather than watch Burwell walk around the office like a little boy without his favorite toy, we’ve decided to help him find a brand new partner. In the weeks and months ahead you will hear many different voices and styles on “Burwell and Company” and the search will continue until we have the right person sitting next to Bryan permanently.

Does it seem weird to anyone else this sounds like Pat Parris left on his own?  Because he didn’t.  They fired him.  We aren’t saying we disagree with the move mind you, we’re just saying its odd and kind of insulting the way this was phrased.

What’s with this hooky idea?  Is the plan to have the sillouette sponsored by Baue Funeral Homes?  Plus, now that Parris is out, it finally leaves a chair next to Burwell for his ego, so I can’t imagine he’s cool with idea of filling it with another stiff white guy so quickly.  It seems that WXOS is under the impression that their hype machine is a little bigger than it actually is.  Reality check (its been a while since I’ve given them one, so this is quite the flash back): No one cares.  We’d prefer to just let Bernie’s show take over both time slots and be done with the damn thing.

…on the other hand…Could this be a time-killing idea to get the recently let go JC Corcoran in to the fold?  That’s what our tipster thinks, and we completely agree.  Although Corcoran is now a “consultant” for Emmis, according to Corcoran himself on his long-winded open letter he states his contracts has an out…

I’ll be paid in full through February of 2011 unless I choose to accept a job at another station before then.

The JC and 101 ESPN match is clearly a love connection on both sides which isn’t much of a secret and this kind of BS seems like filler until both sides can get a deal done.  Hell even the damn shadow in the banner below kind of looks like Corcoran!

Ok, so the premise is dumb.  We got that covered, now lets turn our attention to the banner on their site:

In case you can’t see the “tag line” there it reads:

Got what it takes 2 B the new guy? We’re looking 4U!

You see the kids today shorten words to write faster and if you shorten your words you seem hip and cool…and like the last time you opened a book a cartoon bunny popped up out of the page.  I can’t believe that Burwell would allow “writing” like that to go out next to his name!

Let me try to get through to them…

Ur b@nn3r sux & it m@kez u s0und r3t@rded!!!!

The only thing we know 100% (though JC stuff is pretty high) is that until a proper co-host is in place the seat is just going to be a rotation between Brian Stull and the wooden Brian Feldman.  …and you thought you hated the show before!

From 101ESPN.com via our awesome little tipster!

• The Moonrise Hotel is great for the Loop, but horrible for Delmar. The street just can’t handle it.  If one person heading east wants to turn in to the Moonrise it backs up traffic all the way through the Loop.
• The Cardinals aren’t going to re-sign Matt Holliday.  Deal with it.
• Batman couldn’t really get around very well in St. Louis in his usual rooftop style.  There are too many breaks in the buildings.
• There are too many Thai restaurants in the Loop.  Please eliminate three.
• Dear 101 ESPN, you aren’t “the all new” anything any more.  Please knock that crap off and spend the money for new bumpers.

Yesterday was a big St. Louis sporting news day!  Tony LaRussa made his decision to return to manage the Cardinals for at least 2010 official and confirmed the rumor that Mark McGwire would be on board as the team’s new hitting coach!

This is a major local news story that broke through the bounds of St. Louis and got national coverage.  Obviously the network synonymous with sports, ESPN, picked up and story and when they needed that local view they turned to the obvious radio station choice…KMOX?!?!

Ouch.  Now that’s gotta sting over the local ESPN Radio affiliate WXOS, 101 ESPN.  Its one thing to have a falling out in private, but to have your old flame have their new slut’s name all over the place?  Wow.  So sad.

Lets relive it shall we?

What do you have to do to not even get a phone call from the company you pay to broadcast their content?

First off, let me do a little finger wagging at 101 ESPN for not including the mighty Punching Kitty on their press release list.

Secondly, here’s their new publicity stunt.  Its so obviously as stunt we normally wouldn’t report on it, but we really like Randy Karraker around here, so what the hell…

Here’s the part the matters:

WXOS-FM’s Randy Karraker announced that he is stepping up to the plate in a bid to purchase the St. Louis Rams NFL franchise.  Karraker made this announcement on the air this afternoon at 5:05pm on 101 ESPN.

With the recent debacle of Rush Limbaugh’s efforts to join Dave Checketts’ quest to purchase the team, and the rampant rumors about the Rams potential sale and move back to Los Angeles, Karraker was reminded of how bad it hurt whenleft St. Louis.  And although there are a reported six potential groups interested in purchasing the team, none have stood football  out from the rest of the competition.  Rather than just sit and watch it happen again, Karraker decided to do something about it, and has created the Randy Karraker: Save the Rams Fund-and Fan-Raising Campaign.

Of course nothing can come out of ESPN 101 without having several mentions of Program Director Jason Barrett.

101 ESPN Program Director Jason Barrett notes, “Randy is pulling together all of the people he knows, and is calling on the public to raise the funds necessary to keep the Rams where they belong, right here in St. Louis.” Barrett continues, “He realizes this is a huge uphill climb and he doesn’t expect it to be easy. But Randy is going to do his best to make a difference and he hopes to do it with the full support of the public.”

We know you are the PD Jason, you don’t have a piss on everything so it smells like you.  …also don’t get us started on those dreadful new commercials for Bernie’s mid-day show with you reading your lines like a coked out porno star.

Back to Karraker:  Its a noble effort to collect money, but if anyone is under the assumption that the donators will be “part owners” of the team, I got some bad news for you: (source)

Green Bay is the only team with [a public ownership] structure in the NFL; such ownership is technically in direct violation of league rules, which stipulate a limit of 32 owners of one team and one of those owners having a minimum 30% stake. However, the Packers corporation was grandfathered when the NFL’s current ownership policy was established, and are thus exempt.

All in all?  This is a good move by 101.  Its a fun little PR stunt with their most personable host at the focal point and when it all comes to a hault, the money goes to charity which makes the local Bonneville chapter look good to the Mormon overlords.

Meanwhile the staff at KFNS 590AM are getting their listeners to pool their money so they can afford the rest of that Frank Cusumano contract.

More at 101 ESPN.com