So tell us how you REALLY feel...another view of Roggin and Simers Squared

LAist has posted a review of the Roggin and Simers Squared morning sports radio show on KLAC, to which I may have referred a time or two or three or more on this blog.

Would it give too much away if I revealed the title of the review, Why Is This Show Still On The Air??

Roggin and Simers2 (squared) is absolutely the [worst] thing in the Southern California airwaves (worse than Ryan Seacrest on KIIS-FM).

I wonder where LAist ranks Rick Dees. I'd rather listen to Seacrest do the entire play-by-play for the Super Bowl than to hear two minutes of Dees Sleaze. But I digress.

Not only is T.J. Simers a nasty, annoying, and witless personality, but it makes it worse that he drags his daughter, Tracy, and our beloved Fred Roggin into this sloppy mess....

Roggin spends most of the show defending their guests from Simer's confrontational and mindlessly abusive questions. While Tracy waits for an opportunity to talk, as her father goes on and on about whatever. Not only is this show a depressing, witless, and pathetic excuse for a program, but it is boring.

Now let's see what LAist likes:

Good radio sports talk shows should have entertainment (see The P.M.S. Show), listener interaction (see The Loose Canons), hard-hitting interviews (see Jim Rome) and intelligence (see Lee "Hacksaw" Hamilton)....

I don't like to see anyone lose their jobs, but we have to some standards. There are plenty of other intriguing sports talk hosts out there that deserve a chance in this time slot (see Roger Lodge, Lee Cline, Dave Smith, JT The Brick, etc.).

Two additional points are made, which I want to address below (I can't really say whether Roger Lodge is a better sports radio host):

The program is so bad that they don't even take phone calls from listeners....

T.J. Simers has been alienated by almost every single active athlete and coach in Southern California, which has made him irrelevant. How can someone be a sports columnist for the L.A. Times and host of morning radio show, when no one wants to talk to him?

Regarding phone calls: as long-time listeners to the show know, this is actually a source of disagreement between Fred and T.J. Roggin would like to include listener calls to the show, while T.J. argues that most listener calls are inane. Probably the best way to evaluate this is to listen to the calls from other shows that accept them, and judge whether they contribute anything or not. (In my view, the calls to Jim Rome are especially worthless; they're just a forum for the clones to do clone things, and include no interaction with Rome himself.)

Regarding T.J. and the sports community: another way to look at it is that the rest of the sports "journalists" are adept at kissing the derrieres of the active sports athletes and coaches, so some of them are going to gravitate toward the easy interviews rather than the challenging ones. In other words, it's the same thing that induces politicians to go on Larry King instead of Bill O'Reilly or 60 Minutes or whoever.

And regarding a comparison of Simers vs. other journalists, this statement from Kobe Bryant (yes, today's Simers article is finally up) pretty much says it all:

"You're the only one who is asking about the Lakers," the Kobester said. "Let it go."

That statement says volumes about the other "journalists" who are interviewing Kobe. Perhaps Kobe should be playing softball instead of basketball; he can lead the "journalist" team.

[27 SEPTEMBER 2007 - AND NOW WE HAVE DAN PATRICK. ALL GOOD THINGS MUST COME TO AN END.]

rogginandsimerssquared

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