Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Reality Radio - Petros and Money Didn't Have This on Fight Club

One of the things that radio broadcasters (as opposed to radio "personalities") try to do is to inject some reality into their shows. Rather than playing the consistent superficial happy guy, they refrain from masking their feelings. I'll grant that this reality can itself be faked, but nevertheless it makes for more interesting radio than, say, Rick Dees. (Then again, things can be a little too real - take Tracy Morgan.)

Whether by design or by accident, Don Martin has assembled an interesting bunch of radio broadcasters at KLAC, including Joe McDonnell, who is never afraid to speak his mind, and T.J. Simers, who makes a living out of speaking his mind.

Hence the on-air fight between T.J. and his show's producer, with Tracy Simers aligning with her father on this one.

The producer, identified only as "Producer Laura," is usually only heard when she does one of the inane promotions (This segment brought to you by StubHub), at which point Fred Roggin provides an attaboy for her excellence in reading from the script.

However, this is only a minor part of a radio producer's job. One of Laura's major responsibilities is to arrange for guests to appear on the show. This can be difficult at times, because of a variety of circumstances - for example, if your team has lost a big game, you may not be so charged up about going on the radio.

For the last few days, T.J. Simers has been asking why Karl Dorrell wouldn't appear on the Roggin and Simers Squared radio show after UCLA's loss to Utah.

Yesterday, T.J. Simers interviewed Dorrell in connection with Simers' other job at the Los Angeles Times, and ended up writing a column about it.

During and after the interview, Simers got the impression that Dorrell would appear on Roggin and Simers Squared today (Wednesday), and (according to Simers) Don Martin got the same impression.

When Dorrell cancelled his appearance, Simers wanted to know why, so Producer Laura was brought on-air. As Laura talked, she mentioned that the cancellation was probably due to "T.J. Fatigue."

Well, that did it.

While some people are clearly fatigued by T.J., Simers (and his daughter) maintained that Karl Dorrell, Pete Carroll, and Phil Jackson didn't fall into that category. T.J. emphasized the relationships that he has built up with these people over the years, and stated that he knew more about Dorrell's feelings than Producer Laura, who only deals with the PR people and not with the guests themselves.

All in all, a very interesting exchange, with Fred Roggin sitting on the sidelines, trying to (in Dorrell's words) "move on."

Did anyone else hear this exchange? What were your impressions?

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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well it looks like Producer Laura will have the last laugh!

USC_Guy said...

I heard it. Sounded pretty funny, especially that airhead Tracy sounding like a 10 year, when sticking up for her daddy. I knew the show was doomed when they had the Goldmans on last week. In fact, I called Don Martin and gave him an earful. Why a sports show would give those whores even 30 seconds of airtime, I don't know! They have NOTHING to do with sports!! So, I lauged my @$$ off when I heard a week later that they were being canceled. Also, their attempt to make it sound as if they were OK with the decision was pathetic.